I used my passion for computer hacking to start earning $130,000 – it all began with the Terminator m… – The US Sun
A COMPUTER hacker used their passion to start earning $130,000 a year and it all began with the Terminator movies.
Growing up, William Sparks always wanted to be a hacker after being exposed to in the form of movie characters such as John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
He became hooked at an early age.
“It became a hobby. I was nine, or 10 years old asking, ‘What’s a firewall? How do I make my firewall do this or that so I can play my video games because they’re not working.’” he told Fortune.
Now, at age 29, Sparks is a cybersecurity engineer for a healthcare insurance company outside of Boston, Massachusetts.
There he makes about $130,000 a year, working alongside a team to help protect and prevent the company – and its customers – from hackers and employee misuse.
For Sparks, he knows that he’s in an extremely lucky position to be working his dream job while also making great money.
“Work will always be work, after all. But Yeah, enjoying that work certainly helps,” he said.
Despite his love for hacking, Sparks said he didn’t immediately take on the career path as there was no way, at the time, to turn his hobby into a career.
Growing up in a small town in Georgia, Sparks said he was the only person in his graduating class that was into computers.
Because of that, he said his guidance counselors didn’t know how to give him career advice.
“They didn’t know what the hell I was talking about… I didn’t really have anyone to talk to,” he said.
“I probably could have gotten to where I am three or four years sooner had I had the guidance. I think a lot of people struggle with that. They see something that interests them, but they don’t know how to get there.”
He attended a nearby community college and was only one of six students in the computer science course. After getting his associate’s degree, he worked at a small consulting business doing “generic IT work.”
Sparks was working with computers but he didn’t find the same enjoyment in it as when he watched science fiction movies growing up.
He worked at several computer-related jobs for a number of years until he discovered the cybersecurity industry, a more clean-cut version of his hacker dreams.
“When I first started in IT, I thought, I shouldn’t hate this [job] because I enjoy doing this stuff, and if it wasn’t work I would still probably be doing it. But I really didn’t enjoy it,” he said.
“Once I landed that first cybersecurity role, which was very entry level and still kind of monotonous, it was like, ‘Oh man, I’m here. I see it.’”
Sparks found his coworker’s projects more interesting than his own and says he pushed himself to do the same.
“I would pull one of them aside and be like, ‘Hey man, how did you get there?’” he said.
“I saw people doing the stuff that I wanted to do – not because it pays well, and not because of the title, but because it just sounds like fun.
“This guy is trying to break into a server that someone just built. That sounds cool as hell. I just want to watch him do that all day. I want to do that all day.”
When Sparks started working in cybersecurity, the industry had a market size of about $86.4billion but now it has become one of the fastest-growing markets and it's expected to surpass $400billion by 2027.
Sparks works on the defensive side of hacking, saying it’s like finding holes and fixing them.
“Imagine paying a guy to break into your house and he’s like, ‘OK, I got in through this window by doing this, this, and this, and we should fix it by doing this and this,” he said.
Sparks said he genuinely enjoys going to work now and doesn’t stare at the clock waiting for the minutes to pass, as he did with other jobs.
“I’ve worked at jobs where you’re just miserable and you think ‘Today’s the day when I quit.’ I don’t feel that,” he said.
“But at the same time, I would say I enjoy maybe 30 percent to 40 percent of what I do. The other 60 percent is going to meetings and I’ve got to do reports… When you do something you love that doesn’t make it not work. It’s still work. But it makes it a lot easier day-to-day.”
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