@jasonelrod as the leader of a red team at a large MNC I agree with this. But there’s another approach: I started as a penetration tester a million years ago, and later transitioned to doing a variety of work; I was purple before it was a team color. And I found that having the offensive experience was invaluable for defensive projects. So red team skills can be viewed as an investment towards more options down the road, rather than a direct line to maximizing compensation in the near term.