Japanese hacker earns $13,174 for reporting Google security holes

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/masatokinugawa/20110207/google_security

by chrisbroadfoot • 15 years ago

54 16 15 years ago

d.hatena.ne.jp

patio114• 15 years ago

At that rate, one would almost be tempted to do it full time. (That is 2 ~ 4 months of salary, depending on his seniority.)

tomjen3• 15 years ago

Are Japanese salaries really that low?

Almost makes it worth outsourcing at the price.

nandemo• 15 years ago

Yes, they're really low. Starting base salaries for programmers and technical workers in general in "regular" Japanese companies are in average $3M yen (=~ U$36k) with very little variance.

Salaries go up very slowly (but surely) and most engineers and developers will eventually reach a plateau under U$100k. Unlike US companies, there's no way you'll ever earn more than that without changing to management. On the other hand, most companies pay overtime and you have job security.

Exceptions are Japanese financial companies and foreign companies. They tend to pay much more than regular Japanese companies. Still, the only companies that pay on par with US companies are foreign banks and securities houses.

I think people underestimate how good it is to be in US if you're a software developer or IT professional in general.

patio114• 15 years ago

Japanese salaries for engineers are really, really low compared to American salaries. In Nagoya, the well-known algorithm is about "age times 100k yen", so a 30 year old engineer makes on the order of $36.5k. Opportunities for improving this based on demonstrable ability are very limited when working for Japanese companies. (I hear there are some better options in Tokyo, particularly at foreign companies. Still, published average wages for one of the world's most expensive cities would seem substandard for virtually any American metropolis.)

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

If you've been paying attention to Japan, that's allegedly one of their major problems right now. Young people cannot make decent wages or land job security, or anything else to encourage them to follow the traditional route, because compensation is being assigned largely based on seniority and the seniors are not relinquishing their positions.

lubos• 15 years ago

good job but I bet he wouldn't pass the job interview process at google.

hydrazine• 15 years ago

IMO Finding live vulnerabilities (with a passion!) outweighs most scripted interviews.

chaostheory• 15 years ago

English version:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...

flipdeadshot• 15 years ago

I'm pretty surprised that Google was allowing such blatantly obvious XSS attack vectors.

patio114• 15 years ago

Do folks want details? I'll translate if there is interest, but have some real work to do first.

patio114• 15 years ago

And here you go:

http://www.pastie.org/1536256

P.S. If I were still doing this professionally, I would have been more careful on the editing and y'all would have been more careful on paying the $200 to $300 promptly. (The sky is the limit on translation if you have a high-value high-difficulty niche, and software security counts for both.)

lapusta• 15 years ago

Russian gets ~20k$ http://blog.quintura.com/2011/01/13/russian-sergey-glazunov-...

nbpoole• 15 years ago

I'd be curious how many vulnerabilities he found that followed those three patterns. $13k is actually a lot to earn from the program (the average payout I've received per accepted vulnerability is ~$666). Regardless, those are some very nice finds. :)

Japanese hacker earns $13,174 for reporting Google security holes

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