I guess I haven’t clearly articulated this in writing, but friends do not let friends without substantive IT work experience and/or a credible IT degree take cybersecurity career bootcamps in 2025.
They are up to no good. Shenanigans. Malfeasance. They are not a safe way to get a job.
People salty that I am gatekeeping - I am literally trying to keep them out of paying a bunch of money to skeevy organizations who will not help them land a job at all in the collapsing cybersecurity job market.
Get a degree in CS or computer/network engineering. Pick a general niche in cybersecurity, preferably less popular. Get your basic IT certs. Get a generalist IT support role. Get your second-tier certs. Network with people like hell for a couple years. Keep up your self-study. Participate in the community. Get somewhat lucky.
If you can't get the degree, then everything is the same but a lot more of the general IT work and all the other stuff to make a lateral career move later. The military is a possibility if that's your thing.
@hacks4pancakes You, more than most, are welcoming everyone and actively helping people to break into cyber, so f... the detractors.
Bootcamps very often aren't conducive to learning anyways as many (not all) are not really using spaced repetition (due to time constraints etc) and while it is on the people participating to ensure continual learning it is hard if not applied in reality almost immediately after said bootcamp.
It would be awesome if corps accepted the need for juniors and accepted that as required for business continuity so we could all have one at work and make ourselves redundant eventually.
... Oh and for those wondering wtf he's ranting about, start by installing Anki (or similar) for your own learning :)
Lesley Carhart 
Martin Boller 
