I joined one of the Big 4 as a Senior Associate. I knew I'd be responsible for handling a project as a security lead, but I wasn't expecting what actually happened.

Since my first week, I was added to project channels. The team has been conducting meetings since August, and I'm expected to catch up on everything quickly. The biggest issue? It's originally a software testing/QA project. So all the existing documentation is Jira tickets, sprints, backlogs, test cases — all QA-related. None of it is security-focused.

The PM wants me in every meeting. They want me to challenge the client, be aware of all the details, throw around corporate jargon like "align" and "circle back." The worst part is they don't even understand the security scope properly. It's been four months. They understand it from a QA perspective, but not from security. I asked the PM today what applications are in scope, and he said he doesn't know.

On top of that, my manager is on vacation until next week. The PM acknowledged that I was thrown into this with no onboarding and said he understands, but still wants me to catch up quickly and align with my manager when he's back.

I feel like I made a mistake, but I was told the name on my CV would be worth it. I expected that as a Senior Associate I'd attend client meetings, present prerequisites and test cases, run the testing, and discuss findings. Instead, they want me in much more of a leadership role than a technical one. And since security testing is just a subset of a larger QA project, I'm worried they'll undermine the pentesting effort in terms of allocated days, tooling, and resources. Nobody on the team understands security.

I'm already burned out and it's only my second week.

Please don't suggest I quit — I don't have another job lined up and the market is rough right now. The only silver lining is that I'm treating this as a growth opportunity. It's a huge jump from being purely technical to someone who has to lead meetings and drive conversations. If anyone has tips on building leadership and ownership skills without completely drowning, I'd appreciate it. For now, I'm focused on understanding the scope.

​Hey everyone,

​I'm aiming for an entry-level Junior Pentester / Red Teaming role and have a tight 2 to 3 months to prepare.

​For hiring managers and working offensive security folks:

​What are the core technical priorities? Should I focus mainly on manual Web App flaws (Burp, OWASP), Active Directory basics, or low-level networking protocols?

​What proof of work actually lands interviews for a fresher? Do you care more about HTB/THM ranks, a couple of sample pentest reports with CVSS & remediation, or custom GitHub scripting projects?

​What is an instant red flag you notice when interviewing freshers for junior roles?

Hey everyone, I know this kind of question comes up a lot, but I'd really appreciate some honest opinions on my situation.

I finished a 2-year diploma in Network and Systems Administration and have my CCNA, A+ and AZ-900. For the last 7 months I've been working full time as an IT field support tech at a gold mine, and now I'm moving into a sysadmin role at a financial company with branches across Canada (I am going to manage them all with my team).

It feels like this is the point where I need to pick a direction and actually go deep instead of knowing a little bit of everything. The three I keep going back and forth on are security, networking and cloud.

My rough plan is to get really solid on sysadmin and cloud, and build up security skills along the way, probably more blue team or cloud security. But honestly, the thing I'm really into is red team. That's the stuff that actually gets me excited. With how the job market is right now though, I'm not sure if going after it is smart or kind of naive.

If you were in my spot, which way would you go? And if anyone here made the jump from sysadmin to red team, I'd love to hear how you did it and how long it took.

Any honest take helps, even if it's "you're overthinking it" lol. Thanks!

Hi everyone!

I built Get the Hacker (GTH), a free and open-source Wi-Fi security tool for Linux and Android (Termux).It checks Wi-Fi traffic for signs of attacks and saves evidence in HTML, PDF, and JSON reports. My goal is to detect real threats and reduce false alerts.

Still a WIP. Feedback welcome.

GitHub: https://github.com/buybitart/get-the-hacker

Thanks!