TL;DR up front: I've worked in a few roles at a couple different companies and the answer is that it's very dependent on the role you have. I currently really like and am happy with the role I'm in.

Personally, I worked at Company A for several years then left it for Company B during the great resignation for the higher paycheck. I worked at Company B for a little over a year before returning back to Company A.

Company A has amazing benefits and is a very easy company to coast at. Their salaries tend to be below market average, and their stance is that this is made up for by generous PTO and 401k benefits. While benefits are certainly a factor, PTO doesn't pay the mortgage. The work I did at Company A was pretty technical and I was able to do a variety of different things despite everything moving at a snail's pace. The tech was a bit outdated, but I was able to code, script, do some automation, etc.

Company A:

• Pay - 5/10

• Benefits - 9/10

• Work/life balance - 10/10

• Work enjoyment - 7/10

I left for Company B for an 80% increase in total compensation. My sign on bonus at Company B was 65% of my annual salary at Company A, just to put things into perspective. It was a huge step up. I hated almost every minute at Company B though. I worked with a lot of Company B's customers on a part time basis so the context switching was overwhelming. They said I'd be traveling (which I love), but never traveled once. They said I'd be doing technical work, but was basically filling out spreadsheets and doing qualitative security reviews and being pressed by managers to give my "seal of approval" on efforts that I was only allowed to spend an hour or two reviewing. The pay was fantastic, but the benefits and sense of fulfillment were essentially non-existent. Not to mention that my effective total compensation was about to go down because the company's stock tanked (like the market as a whole, not because of any inherent issue with the company).

Company B:

• Pay - 9/10

• Benefits - 3/10

• Work/life balance - 4/10

• Work enjoyment - 2/10

Fast forward a year and I decided to go back to Company A for a higher level position. Because of the leverage I got by moving to Company B, I was able to negotiate a dramatically higher salary at Company A. So now I have the best of both worlds: I have roughly the same cash compensation as Company B, with all of the benefits and quality of life perks of Company A.

Company A, part deux:

• Pay - 8/10

• Benefits - 9/10

• Work/life balance - 10/10

• Work enjoyment - 8/10

My point in typing all of this out is to say that there are enough niches in cyber security that I think most people could find one that they enjoy.

Are you a people person? Lots of sales, and project/product management roles out there.

Prefer to keep to yourself? Plenty of engineering/analyst positions.

Want to lead people? You can work your way up to management.

Are you somewhere in the middle? Architecture is a great career path.

Hell, even if you want to work with your hands, there are career paths for those who want to work in securing data centers.