BSidesCharm 2025 - When The Fall Is All There Is – How to Lose a Gig Without Losing Your Mind

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see each other. Are we good? Is that fine? Is that good? Sweet. All right. Oh, these lazy [ __ ] What are they doing? All right. Well, welcome everybody. Um, we don't have slides because these are all personal stories from our many years and Jeff's many, many, many years in the industry. How many years have you been in the industry? Security proper 15. Damn years. Yeah, I told you. Baby. Um, I'm just a baby. But here's what I wanted to kick off with. We don't have slides. We have stories. And I'm all up for audience participation. If you have particular questions, it dawned on me. Well, before I get into this, I want to kick it off in the spirit in which this

talk was intended, which is community. And I'm so happy. I love charm because there's so many students here. And we get to influence them for take the motivation from that as you will sucker. Um, but I would not saying go find another field while you Yeah, just run. [ __ ] run. Um, but uh I would not be here without the likes quick story. I used my first sock security gig was spent listening to this man on security weekly on my trips to and from Philadelphia third shift for two hours it took me to get there. So without people like him, there's a particular person in the audience that I want to acknowledge really quick. Uh whether you

know him or not, he is a juggernaut in the hacker community and in the industry. We wouldn't we wouldn't be as solid as we are without people like you might know him as no hackme, but his name is also Mick Bachio. He is the reason and the fault that I am still in this godforsaken [Applause] industry, but it's a net positive as of this minute. Um, and Oh god, this went off. [ __ ] Yes. No. Maybe. Oh, did you thwart me? Nope. There it is. Hold on. Okay, cool. And one more thing. Um, I'm not even going to call it a shameless promotion because one of my first Defcons, I don't know if anybody you know, uh, my name's

Randall, by the way. This is the legendary Jeff Man. Let's get that out of the way. And, uh, I run a contest called Who Slies? Anyway, and one of my oldest friends who welcomed me in this again about community who welcomed me into this community and made me feel accepted and the reason I'm here today. His name is uh, Aaron. We also know him as Bind. Bind is unfortunately about to shuffle off our mortal coil. Uh we need to fly him from Seattle down to LA so he can be with his friends and family. And I'll be god damned if I'm not going to take my little platform and at least have this up here. So either share it with your

friends, give if you want, uh but I want also to know I am not the first person to do this and I learned it from by watching the likes of Jeff Man, everybody else. We give back to each other. We have our backs and the more of us that embrace that philosophy, the better off we're all going to be in the long run. So that's my friend Aaron and [ __ ] it, I'm gonna leave him up there the whole time. But we got stories to tell now. And I don't know, Jeff, how do you want to how do you want to go about this? Well, I would be remiss then since we're talking GoFundMe. Uh a few years

ago, my granddaughter was uh diagnosed with stage four cancer and we did a GoFundMe for her just to try to pay for all the extra stuff that insurance doesn't pay for, which is a lot. Um you know, like she got into John's Hopkins, great, but somebody's got to pay for the parking to go to John's Hopkins. And uh I was at Shmukcon four years ago, three years ago, something like that. and I meant to rando that there was this GoFundMe and he's like it's not full yet. He took it, started spreading it around. By the end of the weekend, the GoFundMe was done. So, thanks Rando. I like taking money from people for good causes. For good

causes. Yeah. My granddaughter is cancerree right now and uh that's very cool. All that to say is have to That's fine. Keep going, Jeff. mouse jrigler. If that goes out, it's fine. I think you guys have all seen it by now. And I also have a badge made out of the QR code. So, if you didn't get it, just scan me. So, let's start out this way. I I have for several years uh been noodling with the idea of geez, sometime I should give a talk on how to like survive getting fired in infosc. And uh Rando, you went through an experience just a couple months ago of being laid off and you were pretty

public about it on I guess LinkedIn is our de facto exceedingly public days. Um and I saw him again at Shmukcon and I was like, "Hey, I had this idea for a talk and you've just been through it." So we're like, "Let's give a talk on it." Um we didn't really know where we wanted to go with it. My original idea was don't be afraid to stick to your guns. Speak up when you see something wrong. Uh don't don't be afraid to ruffle feathers and don't be afraid to get fired. And then the last couple months happened and I'm not sure that's good advice anymore. Uh cuz you know you need to eat and pay for electricity and

and stuff like that, rent. Um, but in in better circumstances, I would say uh it's okay to like stick to your guns and you if you see something and you know it's right and you know you're right, push push push. Um, I think I'll try to temper that today with, you know, maybe do it better than I did or something like that. But I figured, you know, I've been in this industry security proper. Is that how you framed it? for uh 43 years, 44 years since before it was a thing. I mean, turning 44 communication security. When I started, uh it really wasn't had it didn't have anything to do with computers. If you had secrets, you

locked them in a safe. So, that's how long I've been in the business. Um uh and looking back I've I've been released from companies a few times but I haven't often told those stories. I told all the fun cool things I did but I don't talk sto about stories about how I I didn't do so well or in my view I failed an organization. And another overarching part of this is like he just mentioned might not be the greatest advice to just go leave your job right now. Um, but I'm going to personally share lessons that I've learned over the years. So, I've been laid off Rift or otherwise, whoever the that business is calling it about seven times over those

15 years. Yeah. Was that Yeah. Okay. rookie number. Yeah. Rookie. Seven. Noob. Get good scrub. Switch. Yeah. Switch. You should be up here, not me. Um, well, I've been fired quite a few times. Yeah. Uh, I only got fired once. They call it, well, we dissolved your position, but your position no longer exists. It was there five seconds ago. Um, but one of my important parts about this is trying to you'll never bulletproof yourself against this. And if there are students in this audience, I am so sorry. It's not as bleak as we make it out to be, but it kind of is. But it's not all about scary scary scary. It's going to be how to prepare

yourself for this. It's when the axe falls, it's going to be somebody somewhere never met you, never had a problem with you, but you make a little too much money or you're a little too new or whatever. So, you have to embrace the fact that you are all you have in that position. So, how do you plan for that? Right? I'm 43 years old. I just got the notion of having three months of salary and that even that I know that's a crazy privileged thing to say too, but I want to share. So part of my stories are going to be how to help guard against that and plan for that so it doesn't it's going to hit and it's going

to suck, but how to plan for it. So when Jeff's going to tell his stories, I'm going to give you guys the option. I have two or three stories that I deemed as important and I'm going to let you guys raise your hands to see which ones you want to hear first, but I'm going to let Jeff take it away on his. So where should I start? Um, in the beginning, God created. Well, if you've heard any of my stories before, I used to work at the National Security Agency and was doing some pretty cool things. Was there at the very beginning of internet security. Uh I was one of the founding members of what came to be known as the first red

team at NSA. And this is prior to 911. So this is back in the late 1900s. And um that always gets a lot. By the way, Gen Z thinks that's so goddamn funny. It's not. Um, I mean, it's hard to tell this contextually uh given the state of the world today, but NSA back in those days was a pretty secretive organization, had this mission that, uh, you know, protected the communications and all the secrets of the military and the government. and they were very conservative about it and they were very bureaucratic about it and very measured and um what we were doing is doing ethical hacking and pentesting and and breaking into organizations in their networks telling them what was

wrong. While it was a cool idea and everybody liked it, um it did sort of run into the politics of what NSA does and and who NSA does that to. Hard to believe maybe in this day and age, but NSA their charter is to only do what NSA does historically to anybody but US citizens. Um 9/11 changed that. That's another story. So us doing ethical hacking against other government agencies, while it was a cool idea and it was a new idea and we were one of the first in the government, at least in the intel community, to be doing this kind of stuff, we kind of ruffled some feathers. It came to a point where um we

were going to be doing a a job for the Department of Justice. So it was kind of outside of NSA's purview. NSA was in charge of all the classified networks and systems. At the time, an organization called NIST was responsible for unclassified networks. We were hired by the DOJ to do a a penetration test of their internet presence. And again, this is back in the late 19 late 1900s. Um, before we could start the job, because even even back then when I was trying to accelerate the process, it was a three-month process to get all the authorizations, it was especially sensitive because NSA wasn't supposed to do it. It was supposed to be NIST. But

back in those days, NIST didn't have the capability. So there was this sort of unwritten written bureaucratic procedure to go through which we went through took months before we could start. Uh the DOJ website was compromised. It was the first hack of a DoD system and and if you saw it these days it was very primitive. It was an HTML site and somebody figured out how to to break into it. They changed the attorney general's uh portrait, who was uh Janet Reno at the time, to Adolf Hitler. And if you scrolled down, it went south from there. I got a call. Sorry to Hitler and it got I mean nothing compared to what you can easily browse on these

days, but this was this is back in the days where it took like 10 minutes to load even a simple website because everything was over a phone line. back in the days when literally every system on the internet was connected by a copper wire. Um, despite what Google AI told me when I asked the question, um, I got a call on a Monday morning from the customer saying, "Help, we've been hacked over the weekend." I put together a forensics team. We went down to DC to DOJ headquarters and started trying to do some forensics and trying to help them figure out what went wrong and what happened. Third day into it, uh, I got a call from the home office

saying, "The [ __ ] hit the fan. You got to come back." Somebody blew the whistle on us. Somebody accused us of, um, violating the NSA charter because I was the leader. I was the one that was put on double secret probation and investigated. I found out years later, they weren't trying to just get me fired. They were trying to build a case to charge me with treason and put me in prison. kind of reminiscent of Edward Snowden, but I was accused of doing the things that Edward Snowden was accused in NSA of doing. Gosh, it's been 10 years ago at some point at this point. So, I didn't technically get fired from NSA, although they were trying to fire

me. Um, but that's sort of my first experience at not continuing to be employed and doing the things that I was doing because given the chance, I got out. Um, this DOJ website hack happened in the mid to late August of 1996. By the end of September 1996, I was no longer at the National Security Agency. I I left and went out into the private sector, sort of not letting the door hit behind me as I walked out. They were very happy to see me go. It turned out I didn't even get the glow going away party or anything like that. Uh, I did get a sweatshirt, uh, NSA logo, so that was cool. So, the lesson learned then

was we we we finally got vindicated and we got brought into a conference room and and we're being counseledled by senior management and they basically said, you know, we like what you guys are doing. We think it's important, but if you're going to do it, you have to do it following our rules. And I was sort of this young hacker thinking this is all kind of a new thing. I said there are no rules when it comes to hacking and breaking into you know systems. So no, we're not going to follow your rules. So I left. Not necessarily a negative story because I am here where I am today. But that's what got me started. That was technically the first

time I kind of sort of got it fired, but I didn't end up in prison is the good news. Was there anything you would have done differently looking back on it? 87 years in the future. Um, no, not really. I mean, there's a young Jeff man. I would have rather it not happened. I was perfectly content to keep going and doing what we were doing. Um, well, part of me like wanted to go out and get a job in the private sector and make more money, you know, make private sector money, not government money. I did like get a 30% raise Friday to Monday, quitting the government, going to work in the private sector. Um,

but I can't really point to anything that we did wrong. Um, so I no, there's nothing I would have changed. How do you deal with the because this is going to lead into another story that I have. How do you deal with the feelings of I did it right? I'm like I my principles are intact and I got slammed for this anyway. How do you deal with that on an emotional like intellectual level? Well, I've only uh been aware that I had emotions for about the last uh 15 months. Um yeah, you're pretty trepid before that. Yeah. So, um everybody's always asked me, "What do you feel about this?" I'm like, "I don't know how I

feel about this." Um pretend you had emotions. Pretend I had emotions. I mean, there's been other case other occasions and I can tell other stories where I know I was right and I got fired. Anyway, there's sort of a there is a satisfaction, if that's an emotion, in sticking to your guns and sticking to your ethics and doing what you know is the right thing to do. Um, it doesn't always end well on paper. Does it make the ramen taste better when you're I always say I I, you know, I sleep comfortably at night. My head hits the pillow and I, you know, I I sleep like a baby. I don't feel guilty. Like at least I tried, right? Um I guess I

don't know what emotions you ascribe to that. No, that's fine. That kind of bleeds in. I'm going to give you guys a choice. I have three separate stories and maybe we can get to all of them. What? B. You want do do you want the only C? Are you sure? Well, one's the only ever time I got fired that almost led to a lawsuit. One was my first security job, my first riff layoff ever being brand new. And the third is finally being on the inside and having to do the layoffs. Riff. Riff. The first one. The first one I ever went to. Okay. All right. We're going to do that. Um, how many people are new to the industry

or like haven't even started yet? Are we have any students or anything? Okay, we got enough. I'm not trying to scare you. Uh, I try to horrify. No, it's so it's the most important thing I tell everybody is that companies are great. They pay your salaries and that's fine, but you are your own personal brand. And you have to remember that in the end of the day, even as many well-wishers, you could have an army of Mickbotios right behind you, but you are still you're at the end of the day when the when all the sounds are off and your family is sleeping and you're by yourself, it's just you and people can only do so much

for you. So, how do you steal yourself against that? Um well the first is to know that it's probably going to come one day or it might come one day. So how do you deal with it? I have done it seven times. Six times I did it the wrong way and I think this last time I did it. Okay. Uh my first ever security job was I worked for a company you may or may not have heard heard of it called Mandant. Um small little boutique firm. I don't know it's you know not not a huge reputation or anything. Um, but I was brand new to the industry and I'm gonna try to make the story as quick as

I can because I have other ones I want to get to. But, um, I wanted this. So do I. I wanted this because well, my first official one was this little sock gig that I have where I met Mick, but that's a whole another thing. But I knew from that and from meeting him, that's why I introduced him in the beginning of this because he plays a very important part in my entire career. I was that no he didn't do the riff but he's the one that guided in my brain that this is something that I wanted to do and I couldn't let it go. So I I remember when I worked with him they used some of

Mandian's tools and I remember you know looking up to Kevin Mandia and I still do. The guy is a genius. Uh but I wanted to work for him. I wanted to work for Mandian and I had no goddamn business working for Mandian. I didn't know anything. My first interview with them, I went through three where they declined me every single time. And the first one, and she's a mentor to of mine to this day, her name is Jenires. She's a lovely woman, one of my favorite people. She was my first interview. Her first question was like, "Tell me about DNS. Fuck." Well, DN D, it's always DNS. DNS DNS ruins the internet and ruins my

career. Um, I was like, "Well, DNS is like this thing with names." And she's like, "Okay, thanks." That interview lasted 7 minutes. I was in this underground parking garage of this company I worked at and like I it's 7. I looked at my watch. I was settled for noon and I did 12:07 and I was like, "What the [ __ ] just happened to me?" But because and one of the only people that I knew was Mick. But Mick has this thing about him and he has this aura about him that's just infectious one way or the other. It could either be like a vaccine or [ __ ] cancer. It really depends on the day and

what kind of day he's having. But on that day, I'm like, I'm going to fight. So I emailed Jen right away. I said, this did not go well. She's I can imagine her being on the other end of the email and going, "No shit." But I was like, "But I'm coming back." Like, just so you know, I'm going to apply again and I'm going to work for you and I'm going to work for Kevin. I don't give a [ __ ] what it takes. I started a OneNote notebook. Uh, and I said, I'm going to, this is when you have to be a generalist, right? They want you to know reverse engineering and red team and IR and all these things.

And I'm like, [ __ ] I don't even know where to start. I was in a resume review village earlier and I got a lot of students who just don't know where to start. We have so many different disciplines. And I said, well, first you got to narrow it down. And I but I had flashbacks and like about how I had to study all these things. I all these books on malware, which I still don't [ __ ] know about. And but I said, I'm going to share this notebook with you and if you have time, take a look. if I'm going the wrong way with it, like please let me know, but I'm going to do

this." And she was like, "Yo, okay, bro." And uh a few months went by and uh she would actually call me periodically, like she would call me like once every couple of weeks. She had she This is how you be. By the way, this is also another like sto a lesson for all this. How to be a mentor if you want to be one. Jen is that mentor. She would check in on me when I never asked her to cuz I thought I didn't deserve her expertise. I thought that whole imposttor syndrome early on is such a [ __ ] And make no mistake, by the way, kids, uh, and adults, too, that might still have it.

When everybody has it, nobody has it, okay? So, don't let it get to you like that. It's a complete fallacy that your brain's lying to you about. But anyway, um so I see that there's a second uh a second position comes up. So I apply a second time and this time I actually get into the building. I was there in where is it? Alexandria, I think is where their office was. And I get into the building and Jen is there and she's she's very like she's happy to see me. She's like he's here to get beat up again. Uh and um but I had studied. Now, this was for a network-based like it was it Let me guess, she didn't ask DNS this

time. No, she was merciful enough to skip it. I had to study the [ __ ] out of it, too. I I knew all about recursion and all kinds of fancy [ __ ] Uh, see, recursion, that's that's a word in DNS. Um, and I was I was doing well. I was holding I was in this little conference. It couldn't have been bigger than the stage. And Jen was sitting looking very nice. And then I I don't remember what her name was, but there was another woman there who was on the endpoint side of things. Whoops. I was all about networking. She started asking about like or endpoint artifacts and shim cache and this and I just deer in the

[ __ ] headlights. I knew before I walked out that door I didn't have that shop. Matter of fact, I believe when I when I emailed the recruiter going, "Hey, how'd I do?" I think it was like, "Lol what?" Uh, [ __ ] And um then I got one of my next gigs. This was the gig where I listened to the lovely Jeff Man every night on my train ride and it was for this security operations center in in Philadelphia. Third shift and I'm walking down Broad Street one night 3:00 in the morning. I'm either going to get a hot dog or get stabbed. Uh it's 6:1 in Pickham. And I got a phone call and it's

a it's a Pacific Coast number and it's Jen. She goes, "I have a job for you. You have to interview tomorrow." And I was like, "I just started this gig. I love this team. I've been here for a couple months now." Like she goes, "Do you want to work for Kevin or not?" And I was like, "Well, that's a fair point." So, I get on this phone call and it's me, Jen, and his name's Justin Harvey. I don't know where he is now, but Justin's a very cool dude. And he says, "Listen, man. I'm really sorry. This was a remote gig, but now you have to move to San Francisco." And I was like, "Well,

that's not going to like I'm getting married. I'm not doing this." So, I was just crest fallen. I finally got like and I I knew I was going to be ready for this, but Jen on side channel was like, "Answer these like you're going to get this job. Do not," and you're going to run across this a lot, right? You're going to run across questions that you think you're just going to hit the wall with. You stick with it cuz I is practical application on my end. Then I'm I'm a [ __ ] idiot. Um, but I I sat through that job interview like I was going to get it knowing after I hung up,

I was like, "All right, what if you know third strike? I'll try for a fourth." And then like five minutes later, Jen's like, "All right, never mind. You can you can work for us. You can be remote." And I finally got the gig. Right. So that's a long form of the story. Eight months later, just about getting fired. You are going to get to that, right? It's coming right now. Thank you. But I had to set that stage. I had to set that stage to say how much I wanted it, right? How much I tried for it and how much I was like rejoicing. and you're gonna run into this. Nine, eight, nine months later,

they get acquired by Fire Eye. I get a meeting invite for 10:17 a.m. already not good of that. It was 10:10 and my boss is like, "Hey, can you hop on a call real quick?" Yeah, I heard somebody go, "Oh, can you hop on a call real quick?" You got it, boss, man. I'm like, "I I love my job. Let's hop on this phone call. And if you get on a phone call and it's a boss you've never seen before, plus your boss plus a weird third party, that's going to be HR. And they said, "Listen, we're very sorry." Well, no, they didn't even say they're very sorry. Uh they're like, "Some decisions had to be made and blah

blah blah. You don't have a job anymore." Process that for a second. You can think of something that you've wanted so badly in your entire lives and less than a year later it gets taken away from you. Holy sh How do you even prepare for something like that? You kind of can't, right? But I'm going to try to prepare you for it. It's um I did that the wrong way. I ended up I I I I hit the bottom of a McDonald's bag like the fist of an angry god for like six months straight. Uh I think I gained like 100 pounds. Um but I did not yet have a routine in place. And this is

going to become important later in this talk. Routine, right? Planning for the worst. People say like, "Oh, it's naysaying and it's negative." It's not. It is disaster preparedness. We preach disaster preparedness as part of our craft. You should also be applying it to your own career. And it's still going to suck, right? And I'm going to get to the actual good routine, but I wanted to level set with yay. All the way up top and all the way down. Um, and don't ever take sudden meeting advice for people cuz it's a [ __ ] trap. My turn, Jeff. So, shifting gears a little bit. Um, I wanted to talk about, you know, when it has been my fault that I got

fired. Young when I was younger in my career, um, I've always had the tendency if I see something, I say something. If somebody asks me a question, I'll I'll tell them an answer. I'll have an opinion and I'll tell them that. I haven't always been good at being tactful in doing that. Um I Listen, [ __ ] I'm learning now years later that I might be neurodeiverse and and maybe there's a reason why I am abrupt in my responses. And I'm not saying that that's an excuse because, you know, I have been capable enough at hopefully learning to be a little bit gentler and kindler and giving uh not not so good news to clients, you know, telling them

that they're insecure in some egregious way type of thing. But uh when I left NSA, I bopped around a little bit. Ended up working for a company building a a consulting practice doing pentesting, ethical hacking. Back in those days, the recommendations for security were pretty easy. It's like you're plugged into the internet, you need a firewall. That's pretty much the only tool that there was back then, the only solution. Um but we were building a team. We had we had a really good team of pent testers, really smart guys, and um I was abrasive. I was uh rough with them and I was rough with customers apparently. You know, I thought that I was giving them the answers that they

needed, the what they wanted to hear. I didn't get fired. My team fired me. I I woke up one morning beginning early in the year to a call from the guy that was my boss, our overall supervisor, and he said, "We've all left. We're we're going to start our own company." And kind of left me with a couple other guys like, "Whoa, that that was that was a gut punch. It's like people moving away and leaving their cats in the house and the cat's like, "What the [ __ ] just happened?" Yeah, it was kind of like that. Um that uh impacted me in in a way. I I I kept working at this struggling company for a little while

and I then shifted jobs and I started working doing what I do now still which is PCI consulting. I went to work for this other company and I did that for a couple years. It was it was at the very beginning of PCI. PCI is 20 years old now. But I still hadn't learned the lessons of being gentle and and and sort of uh having good bedside manners with clients. And I was working with a client uh that was struggling with stuff and their solution was to hire a bunch of third-party PMPs. Anybody a PMP? It stands for project management professional. The back is like I know. So, some of you might have an opinion on

PMPs. I had an opinion on PMPs because they were coming in and basically, this is my paraphrase, they were wanting to push paper around and produce a lot of documents and not really address what I was seeing as the problems. And at some point, I sent an email to a colleague saying, "God, these new PMPs, they're they're like the three stooges." And I and I said other things and Jeff man's bography the a bridge version and some other I sent it to this guy and he immediately emailed me back and he says you do realize you CCD the very guys that you were talking about autofill is a [ __ ] um so shortly after

that I was let the reply all button that was written by the devil now I didn't necessarily learn my lesson because I got fired on a on a Thursday the the the general counsel for the company gave me a call. Jeff, I'm g we're gonna have to let you go. Why? Well, talk to your supervisor. And nobody ever did, you know. So, I had an exit interview. I'm like, why did why are you firing me? I wanted them to just say because you pissed off a client. Uh, and all he said, well, you know, what do you think it was? And he gave me a damn I got pulled over by a cop. You know why

I pulled you over? Yeah. They want you to admit the guilt. Um the the funny part of the story and probably didn't help me learn the valuable life lesson as soon as I should was the following Monday uh my supervisor called me up and said, "Hey, the client you were working on refuses to have somebody else do the job. Can you come back and finish the job?" This is your lesson in leverage. This was a lesson in leverage. And the first thing I said to him was like, "Wow, this has to be a really tough call for you to be making right now." So, he has empathy in this, too. I know this is hard for you. We'll get through it

together. Well, uh, the funny thing was I'd already been talking to this particular client about maybe working for them independently because they really liked, you know, we worked together well and we were doing good stuff and we'd all already been kind of talking about, hey, can we just pull you in full-time? At the time there was a rule that you couldn't be a qualified security assessor which uh in lay terms is the auditor in the PCI ecosystem. You had to work for a company. So I I was in I I finished the work for this company and talking to the manager that was my client trying to figure stuff out and he said would you be willing to talk for

another c you know work for another company? Sure. I got a call from him couple weeks later. He had a sales guy for some other company sitting across his desk and he said they do PCI talk to them. So they like he handed the phone across the desk to some sales guy. I end up going to work for that company. Two months into that job I was on a an assignment where I was sort of undercover doing a PCI assessment for one of the actual card brands. And of course, they didn't want to admit that they weren't eating their own dog food, following the the security requirements that the card brands were putting on all

the merchants. So, I was there undercover to be sort of quietly doing a PCI assessment, but on paper, I was staff augmentation working for the IT group. So, but I'm looking at all the shared drives, finding all sorts of information. Uh, I found a manual that was an installation manual for a Linux or Unix operating system that said when you first install it, put this hash in as the root password. And I'm like, I haven't cracked a password in a while. So, I'm down trying to download uh crack or I'm trying to download John the Ripper and I'm getting blocked because apparently antivirus at some point started blocking that stuff because I used to have it.

Um anyway, uh I I a day later I come back from lunch and I'm not able to log into any of the systems that I've been logging on on logging into. And I shortly after that get walked into a conference room. There's all sorts of managers there. My boss was there. He'd flown in from somewhere and I'm walked out the door. They're treating me as, you know, violating all their security policies and rules and they thought I was there stealing credit card information. And so that they walked me out the door. I met in the parking lot. My boss says, "It's political. Don't worry about it." Cuz what I was was finding all sorts of problems and

they're like, "How do we get rid of this guy?" But uh after being fired from one job and getting a new job in my very first assignment, I'm getting walked out the door. I was like, "Oh geez, I'm going to go through this thing all over again." Fortunately, it was a political situation. I stayed there. And over time, I've learned to hopefully my wife might disagree. She's in the audience that to be kindler and and ease into the bad news. And but I still sort of stick to the I I've had success overall in helping customers deal with their insecurities and find a way to be secure. I'm hopefully learning a way to get it

better. But that's what what reinforces for me the if you see something, say something. Uh but I'm concerned about saying that nowadays because of the current hiring situation. Yeah. Um, and and I hear from what you're saying, this is another lesson that I've learned as well. Um, you know, everybody likes like social engineering, awesome, sexy, whatever. But like the best principle of that stuff is learning how, and you can tell me if you agree with this as like an overarching thing of like how people give and receive information. Uh, we are all very smart people, very opinionated. Uh, spectrums, you know, run the gamut. So, it's easy to get lost in I have this thing I'm passionate about. I have to

let these people know these things. But there's a way to say it because how you give it might be received an entirely different way. So, you have to think about that and because that'll right bite you in the ass if you give your information the wrong way and it's taken the wrong way. Absolutely. Um, it's the hardest question and I have no right answer for it and it's not in a job context, but it's if one of the members of my family says, "Does this dress make me look fat?" What do you think it makes you look like? I cannot answer that one either. I cannot answer that question because uh if you are neurodeiverse, you know that

there's a lot more in that question than what the question actually is. and what are they what are they really asking me and you you know there's a literal answer and then there's the answer that you should give there's the answer that's the loving answer and I get all spun up in my head but I do that also that's an an example but I do that in a business context as well where if I see something I can't unsee it and so I have to like know we have to deal with this we have to it's not a big deal you know we've accepted the risk no this is a problem this is a problem

And I've tried to learn techniques and I've tried to learn ways to get people to see it for themselves. And I for me it's it's helping them to have that light bulb eye opening moment is almost as if they came upon it themselves. Yeah. I call it the art of the Jedi mind trick. Inception. Yeah. Um well this leads into God you're you're great at giving me segways. It's like we planned this. We It's like we almost planned it. I I [ __ ] you not. Like Jeff had his bullet points in before I did. I put them in yesterday. Like it's we just came up top of our heads. Um but we had also

qualified this is like this wasn't a talk how to get into the industry. It's just a general like here's some lessons learned. So here's lessons learned for managers too. Some of the best managers I've ever had have known that it's not just how you give and receive information and speak to power, but how you manage below you and being empathetic to that. We've lost a lot of our empathy. Uh whether it's just from general, like listen, there's a lot of [ __ ] going on. We all got a lot on our collective minds, but the art of empathy and the art of like how do I get my people to perform to the best of their

capability so they're feeling fulfilled and but I have to speak differently to people. So that's a lesson all of us can learn. But I'm speaking specifically to managers right now. Um, so that'll take me into I have a couple different stories, but here's the one that I really want to get into because this was really the impetus for me getting with Jeff and doing this talk because we were at Schmukon talking about it. I was fresh off the layoff line and but this time it was a little different. Um, any fans of the West Wing in here? Has anybody watched the West Wing? All right, those of you who have it should watch the whole thing. It's amazing. I

watched it 12 times. Uh there's a scene in the West Wing where one of the president's adviserss and president are sitting in the Oval Office and his adviser says, "Hey, your favorite movie came on last night. Um and it's it's this line from this movie called The Lion in Winter." And it stuck with me like so few things have ever stuck with me. Um the scene for anybody who's never seen it is these these three uh brothers are in a prison and they're about to get executed and and one is freaking the [ __ ] out like we're we're dying and this is it. We're over. Uh and just one friend basically says like hey would you

calm down for a hot second? He was like why would I calm down? We're about to be executed. He goes you fool. As if it matters how a f how a man falls down. And his brother says, "When the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal." And I want you to stew on that for a second and let that hit. When the fall is when that is the last thing and you can't help it and is beyond your control, how you do it, and how you approach it, that's what matters. It matters a great like And then I went to watch the movie and it's great. You should watch it again. Lion in the winter. So,

um, yeah. Woo. Um, oh, he was just coughing. I'm sorry. I thought I was getting shared. I have such an ego. Um, uh, so my most recent story from when we cooked this up was I was in leadership at my last company. And again, I mentioned I've been laid off a bunch of times. and I finally got to see it from the inside which gave me strangely enough even though I was caught up in it a lot more I I used to there's talks you can find of me just raging at these people I name names and like there's a whole bunch ask me later at the bar but like just really raging because I had that

that dog in me but like this time I was in the room where you see the whiteboard and if you've never been in this position you can't imagine where you see the whiteboard and you see the job titles and you see the salaries next to them and [ __ ] is dire and now you have to make those decisions that are going to affect other people's lives and holy [ __ ] there was a period of time where we all just sat there for a good minute or two minutes where the gravity just [ __ ] hit and I saw the human moment in it. Um there's details later but it's not for this talk but like it

is some of the heaviest [ __ ] and I knew right away like I was going to be one of the first ones even though I was in the room I knew it and I was kind of happy to do it cuz that meant one other person and it sounds very magnanimous or whatever this is not meant to be that it's I knew if I could go and take PTO or whatever like one other person might be okay. Uh here comes the routine part that I was talking about. I'd mentioned I'd been laid off so many other times and done it all the wrong ways. My routine was the thing that saved me. So, think about this. Think

about like plan ahead for this. My routine for the past few years has been I get up. I go to the gym. Um I I take care of myself. I take care of my family. I make sure to have family time when they come home. Um and these are the things that are important to me, right? You find yours. But start building. Here's the important part. Start building your routine before you need it. Cuz when you try, like it's great when that axe hits and now you got to like get that routine and go and look for jobs or whatever. The cheat is to have it already there for you. Have have been doing it for a couple of years,

three years, six months or whatever. If you have that, you can shake that rust off. And I said, "Godamn it, I'm going to get up like none of this ever happened. I'm going to go whether I like it or not." I posted a few things on LinkedIn about this and I I journaled one day and I don't journal. It's not my thing. But like I that day I did for the purpose of this and I would sit and just stare into space and I I was like you're going to walk now. You're going to walk to the gym for a mile and you're going to go. And my body was just not [ __ ]

moving. Eventually I got it to go. But if I didn't have that routine that would have never happened and that day would have been wasted. The day after that would have been wasted. The day after that would have been wasted. Make no mistake, everything stacks. Bad decisions, good decisions, middle-of the road decisions, it all stacks up. And you have to decide how that's going to stack. And know that you are going to have horrible days where you're like, "This is all of my fault. Uh, none of your routine is working. You don't want to get out of bed, but you have to move." Um, and then you also now I have to worry about my people getting laid off.

Uh, I know that that's going to happen. And now I have to have dinner. I have to be present with my family. I have to My son's nine and a half years old. He don't know this from anything. But daddy's still got to have his, you know, we're we're going to toss the football and we're going to play games together. And how do you process that? This is all about self-care, right? I need to stress how many time five minutes. Holy [ __ ] It means it's my turn. That is your turn. Okay, we have so many more stories, but anyway, routine routine routine and empathy across all of that because it's it's all very nuanced, but

I want to make sure people take care of themselves. So, I want to try to tie this together together a little bit to give practical advice. You know, what can you do now to prevent for the uh coming layoff or a circumstance where you find yourself no longer employed? Um, several years ago, I went to work. I got my dream job going to work for a vendor, getting paid vendor money rather than consulting money and worked really hard at this company for several years. They went through executive leadership change and they sort of systematically were removing people that had been hired by the original administration, let's say. Yeah, irony there. I didn't mean that. Um, but I it got to the point

where I got laid off and uh my position was dissolved for months afterwards. I was still getting calls and emails from people that worked at the company. A, they didn't know I wasn't working there anymore, but they knew I was a resource and they had questions and I was happy to answer them. And looking back on that, I'm realizing, and this is something you can guys can do as a practical matter now, wherever you are, is, you know, try to do your best at what you do. Try to be knowledgeable. Try to be engaging and a nice person and and if somebody has, you know, a problem, help them out. Look for people that have problems, help them out. And,

you know, the give and take, the balance, as you're saying. Um, but if you're if you're seen as somebody that's willing to answer and willing to help out and somebody that can go that is a go-to person, that will carry you through. And all the times I've been laid off and and and had to look for another job, and it sounds like this might be the case for you. Um, very often the next job comes from a relationship, a contact, somebody that knew you already, knew what you were capable of and had you in mind. And sometimes, don't want to steal your thunder, might make a position for you, might find a spot for you, or at

least just be aware of this is a person that really cares. They have they have some experience. They have some skill. That's important. but they're also open and reachable and approachable and a good person to work with. That's probably the best that any of us can do because there's no way to avoid this stuff sometimes. You know, I've done it sort of shot myself in the foot. I've had times where it just happened. Um, my longest period of unemployment was 20 months. You you got on the on your feet relatively quickly. Good for you. I went through 20 months of looking for that right next job, but I ended up going back to work for people that I had

previously worked for, and it's the job where I am now. And I've been at the job where I am now for uh seven years, which is the longest stretch I've had at any company in my entire 40 some odd year career. So, we got like one minute left, two minutes left. Um I I want to The last thing that I'll say is Mr. Rogers had it right. Look for the helpers. We exist. I'd be nowhere without Mick. I know that whether he wants to admit it or not. But I'm also a goon at Defcon. That's my family. And those are the helpers. Look for the helpers. Learn from the helpers. Become one of the helpers. We sustain

ourselves. Hackers were here before the industry was and we'll be here long after. So this is how we sustain ourselves. lean on people. I would add, well, the lean on me mean don't be afraid to be helped either. Don't be afraid. I I still suffered from that too. Don't be afraid to be helped. Reach out. If I hadn't had that one

convers we really are all that we have and I think that's I think that's probably our time. Jeeoff, you good? The end. the end. Oh, any Oh, we have time for questions. Five minutes for questions. Oh, look at you budgeting you right there. Okay, this is a how do we address mental health? This is a great question because I you mind if I It's new to me. Yeah, he's he he just figured out he has feelings. So So, uh, by the way, shout out to mental health hackers. They got a village here. Amanda Berlin uh is does a wonderful job. Um, do not be afraid. If I had one wish for everybody to have a

free piece of health care is to see a therapist. I see a therapist. I take a pill. I have anxiety and depression. And that pill helps, but I talk about it publicly because I don't give a [ __ ] because it helps more people than it hurts. I ended up It's a very small pill. Don't clap that loudly. Um, red or blue? It's pink. It's Yeah, we all know the colors. But seriously, real talk, and I'm going to look right at you when I say this. Um, encourage others to have help. Do not be afraid. It there's no room for stigma on this [ __ ] anymore. I went back to my therapist. She said an interesting

thing. She said, and I told her all of what I just told you, this routine, and I'm going to go and I'm going to go build my routine, stack, stack, stack. And she was like, I still got burned out during all this. And she was like, have you tried I should you not? She goes, have you tried not? And I was like, "Fucking what?" And she was like, "Have you tried?" Cuz she was like, "You're here with me right now and you have a great routine. I applaud you for it, but there are times to just sit still and let the river flow past you." And god damn it, I was like, "All right, you earned your

money. That was a 15-minute session. I'm done." So, that's how I address that. Um, look for therapists, look for tellaalth. Um, don't be afraid to talk about it. There shouldn't be and the more of us that talk about it, the less there is available to have a stigma on it. Any other questions? Oh, do you have any part of that? No, I'll leave it at that. All right. Very good. I'm new to this whole emotions thing, feelings. Yeah.

oil.

Sure.

Yeah,

it's awesome being a robot. Okay. Yeah. So, here's my thing with that also personal experience. um you are you are putting yourself deeper into a deficit and the only person doing it is you. Okay, I'm not a therapist. Okay, let's just qualify that. Like personal experience. The more that you blame yourself. First of all, when you got laid off, it wasn't your fault. It was somebody with a pen and a paper somewhere didn't know you, never never knew about you, decided you were a variable that that they could no longer sustain, right? it. I guarant I almost guarantee you it wasn't personal unless you like slapped somebody in the face before you went. Um, but it's done now.

Here's we dwell a lot in the past. And you're only when I do things now, I do it for future Danny. Like future Danny is really going to love those dishes were done later, you know, or future D is really going to love if he worked out all week this week and now I'm going to feel stronger next week. So think about I'm sorry, what was your name? Rob. Rob. Talk do this for future Rob, bro. Like it it sucks and it's hard. But just if you remember nothing about what I said today, everything stacks. You dwelling and being in the [ __ ] pit, which is completely understandable, that stacks. But doing the good [ __ ] and saying, "Oh,

you know what? That [ __ ] happened. I can't do anything to change it. There's nothing I can do. The only thing that you can affect now is your mood today and potentially what's going to happen later." And say it like a mantra, bro. like [ __ ] grab onto it like a like a stuffy at a carnival, right? Like grab its neck and just say I am going to hang on to this. I know it's not my fault intellectually. I think you know that too. And then slowly and it's going to happen in if I may interject. Yes. Uh I'm going to steal something that a friend of mine said earlier today. We were talking about this talk coming up

and uh he said you are responsible for telling your story. You need to control your narrative. Yeah, because right now what got happened to you is still controlling your narrative. Shit's done, bro. And lean on us. Find me on Find me on Twitter. F Like I'm I am more than happy to speak to anybody at length about this stuff because if I can't talk about it, if we can't do these talks, the [ __ ] meant nothing and I suffered for nothing. And I refuse to let that happen. As a practical matter, how quick can you pick up cobalt?

Did I say zero time left? You're right underneath a very bright light. Yeah. And we're both very old even though we both wear glasses. Anyway, uh again, thank you very very much for uh coming to this talk. Um thank you. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Uh if it moves you, I'll have my badge on. We can help we can help our friends out and uh do this for somebody else one day. Thank you. The end.