Two controversial pieces of cybersecurity career advice I give to a lot of people I talk to on mentorship calls:

1) Don't become a manager unless you genuinely want to be a servant leader and devote yourself to people and program management for the joy and fulfillment of it.

2) Don't become a red teamer unless you genuinely in your heart of hearts want to be a red teamer, you understand what the role entails (even the boring parts), and you are willing to very deeply commit extra time and effort. They're generally much more competitive roles.

@hacks4pancakes Anecdata on point 2: I thought I wanted into red teaming so convinced my manager to pay for oscp, but it turned out I prefer building stuff. Red teaming is not my kind of problem solving.

So I stayed in software engineering, and have not regretted it yet.