He's way too young for this attitude.
I've hacked things in my teenage years too
and was obsessed with hacking for many years
before I started to do freelance work
- the feeling of being superior is a common problem
for all types of skills if you're young, no matter what,
so he definitely shares wisdom with his last paragraphs.
But I don't think the problem is not that society has problems finding
interesting challenges for highly skilled young people like him.
It's unfortunate his school doesn't have hackathons and other
activities, but he's not dependent on such circumstances.
I think his problem is that he doesn't recognize
that he's in full control of his life.
I've talked with several security researchers who hack IoT gadgets and other things
for a living - they write their own ROP chains, hack web applications
and test software for airlines with very high security standards
- and they told me that they take every talent they can get.
They're getting 4 to 5-digit daily rates for penetration test gigs and are
well-respected.
So there's demand and there are great people who want to share their knowledge.
So my question:
Instead of hacking printers, why not talk to companies who are searching for his talent?
I'm not defending the current state of CS education, it's really bad and decoupled from reality,
but it's no excuse for gifted people to give up and justify blackhat hacking - which is just
another word for being criminal.
I've always found these kind of comments unusual. How old is old enough? For me this usually came off as arrogant.
> the feeling of being superior is a common problem for all types of skills if you're young
I know plenty of people who still have that exhibit that sort of behavior in pretty much every age bracket. Arrogance doesn't correlate to age. It's kind of arrogant to say "You cant think that way, you're too young" too.
It's just sad to see that he's already so negative about his options. My comment wasn't about how old one has to be to justify his negativism, I'm sorry if it came across as such. I can relate to his feelings and it makes me sad, this is all I meant with this sentence.
When I was his age and doing similar things I felt the same way. I didn't understand how the university entrance game worked until it was too late because I was a poor first gen immigrant with no guidance or support. I thought I was going to be stuck washing dishes in the back of restaurants forever. Thankfully I finally got out of all that because I found people that actually valued my skills and would pay to take a chance on me, even though on paper I was probably not very attractive.
>So my question: Instead of hacking printers, why not talk to companies who are searching for his talent?
If you don't have debt, you have to prove you can already do the work required. I don't know where the idea comes from that software gets a magic exception to everything because 'potential'. Talent means you're already showing you can do what they want.
He tells us that he "was working on a sandbox to brush up [his] Linux kernel programming skills". I don't deny that he has to prove himself, but there's definitely potential. And I didn't mean that he will get paid like security professionals, he could even just search for an unpaid internship to get his foot in the door. - No unwarranted exception, but I can see what you mean.
But I don't think the problem is not that society has problems finding interesting challenges for highly skilled young people like him. It's unfortunate his school doesn't have hackathons and other activities, but he's not dependent on such circumstances. I think his problem is that he doesn't recognize that he's in full control of his life.
I've talked with several security researchers who hack IoT gadgets and other things for a living - they write their own ROP chains, hack web applications and test software for airlines with very high security standards - and they told me that they take every talent they can get. They're getting 4 to 5-digit daily rates for penetration test gigs and are well-respected. So there's demand and there are great people who want to share their knowledge.
So my question: Instead of hacking printers, why not talk to companies who are searching for his talent?
I'm not defending the current state of CS education, it's really bad and decoupled from reality, but it's no excuse for gifted people to give up and justify blackhat hacking - which is just another word for being criminal.
Edit: Absolutely agree on the click-baity title!