last comment:
advice i got from a very professional and good guy who helped me in my early days.
structure your learning. He was a pentester and did it along the lines of:
I am learning windows priv-esc now.
I am learning linux priv-esc now.
I am learning sqli now
I am learning XSS now.
Then go over all the topics you wanna learn, becomming expert in them one-by-one. It can be a mess of 1000 things at once. Take lots of notes, save stuff for later, and focus on certain areas one by one.
Yea I can hear what you wrote about Germany. I currently work with a client who outsources some of their management work to Germany and apart for the titles people have before their names, their technical knowledge is really poor.
As far as the startup route, I'm experimenting with various things on the side but do not rely on them. I suppose it might be worth trying to build some "pluggable" integrations into processes of non-tech companies and charge monthly for the service. I don't wanna call it a SaaS yet, but well see.
I also know a guy that's more on the dev side but he makes really good money being an expert in various banking systems. Rarely works overtime and is fully remote. That sounds like a pretty good strategy as well.
id like to emphasize i didnt say anything about the skill levels of german engineers. ive worked with really talented ones, and poor ones. but for me its impossible to land a job there, having no education and certs. definitely feel u. a lot of people u meet in corporate arent the hackers you expect. like anywhere, most people do the minimum not to get fired. and some people do all the work and suffer burnouts :D. wonderful world!
structure your learning. He was a pentester and did it along the lines of: I am learning windows priv-esc now. I am learning linux priv-esc now. I am learning sqli now I am learning XSS now.
Then go over all the topics you wanna learn, becomming expert in them one-by-one. It can be a mess of 1000 things at once. Take lots of notes, save stuff for later, and focus on certain areas one by one.