Hello there r/cybersecurity! We're Level Effect. Three of us are here today. We’re former NSA, and now also senior/principal engineers and consultants. We started this company in 2020. Built an EDR that was acquired by Huntress, then went all in on small live training cohorts seeing a gap in training at the time. We made the first “virtual SOC” cyber range at that time with a 1-week practical exam and have graduated 100s of students into the field. We've also live streamed close to 100 hours of free cybersecurity instruction from 0 to Tier 1 SOC. We’re shifting to more content creation and community interaction now. Giving back has always been important to us and we want to be more involved here in r/cybersecurity after this intro AMA. So how’s the industry doing? Is it all over now with AI? We don’t think so at all, but: The "entry-level" market is now more accurate to mid-level IT, and provable hands-on experience went from a nice-to-have to a must. The common advice of "just go work in IT first" doesn't always get you there either if you're stuck on end-user support forever, never touching malware triage or detection rule crafting. You’d be great with printers though. Guiding people to be ready for this field is still the same problem it was in 2020 in spite of many best efforts from a lot of talented educators out there. In some ways even harder actually. We’re here to help answer anything around: What we learned building enterprise security tooling Gaps and opportunities in the field What has actually helped our students get hired and what hasn't The shift toward provable skills over certs 2026 career trends and what's coming next Or anything else! Otherwise, we’ve got questions for you! What are you studying right now that's working well? If you're already in the field, what skills are still paying off? If you're hiring or mentoring, what are you seeing (or not seeing) from candidates? Let's hear it! Rob Noeth, Anthony Bendas & Jonny Johnson * Edit - Taking a break for the evening, thank you joining us today! We'll be back in the morning (US Eastern) to address any posts we missed. Edit - we're now past 24 hours of the AMA which I think means mods will lock it up soon? Otherwise feel free to post while you can and we'll respond. THANK YOU EVERYONE for the engagement and welcoming, this was awesome! We'll be more active in r/cybersecurity now moving forward and are always around in our Discord if you want to come hang out!   submitted by   /u/LevelEffectOfficial [link]   [comments]