I was looking to get started in working with computers during covid, my school closed and I moved to another part of the city, to Brooklyn. It was the middle of the pandemic and I had to find something to do. I decided to work on a hobby project, during covid while I got my bearings on how to proceed with this goal I had.
After a few months of working on this project, I saw an ad for Zero to Engineer and it seemed compelling. They said you don’t need college to work in IT, you can get trained in 4 months rather than 4 years. I knew that was a big promise they were making but they seemed backed by Y-Combinator and they had an Income Share agreement so I wasn’t losing anything but time to pursue their program. So I took the plunge.
In the back of my mind I was also thinking that maybe I can still get a solid education with Open Source Society University. It is a free self-study path to getting a complete computer science education. It just is massive so I put it on the backburner while working on NexGenT’s ZeroToEngineer Program
I did the Cyberssecurity program first from NexGenT and loved my instructor Shirl, along with the people from the Fall 2021 Cohort. Pretty soon after started it was going deep into security topics and I was learning alot. They talked about starting to look for a job early on and getting yourself prepared with your resume and netwroking. I really liked the advice I got from the career services.
After the NCSA program, (part 1 of the program) We Went on the the practical training labs. This is where I got my hands-on experience with labs. Pat Gorman was the instructor and mentor and we got to work on hackthebox academy and do hackthebox boxes. My favorite box was Blue, where I got to learn about a critical exploit called EtnernalBlue that was leaked to the public from the NSA. I got to exploit a machine with that exploit and get root access on a windows box.
Finally we prepared for the security+ in part three of the program. Henry Good was my intructor and mentor. He did an awesome job teaching us the concepts to prepare for the exam. In only two or three months we were prepared for the exam I took it on March 30th 2022 and passed. This was my first certification and I was the first persson in the cohort to get the certification.
When the program completed, it was time to look for a job. I had a couple interviews but it was challenging with just the security+ and my short time working helpdesk. I decided to start doing bug bounty and following youtubers in that space while keeping my options open and doing tryhackme. By september 2022 I was doing bug bounty part time and actively learning more cyber through platforms like tryhackme.
Overall I was satisfied with the result and decided to continue studying from NexGenT to get my networking knowledge as well.
Hope you enjoyed this post. If you set you’re mind to something and go about it in a good way, dreams can come true!
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PS. The zero to engineer program you can find more here zerotoengineer.com, if you want to see if it’s right for you I recommend the book first and trying the free network+ course they include as a bonus.