Adam Compton - To Burnout and Back again, A Hillbilly's Journey

to burn out and back again at hillbilly's journey adam compton the only speaker that has spoken at every single b-sides including the virtual ones and this one twice so for those of you who saw me talk earlier welcome back to those who weren't here earlier well welcome now um so yeah i'm gonna be talking about burnout today not what causes it necessarily what you can do about it it's my experience with it me going through my career building up to it getting burnt out recovering from it and moving on so if that's what you're interested in if you want to hear me stand up here and talk for the next 30 40 minutes by all means please set in here um i

won't be offended so if you want to move on but i do appreciate it thank you so short version who am i the obligatory side slide um father son all the obligatory stuff i've been a pen tester a programmer a researcher a little bit of everything over my career a career that now goes a little over in pen testing and infosec directly about 22 to 23 years if i go back to the beginning of my professional career as info computer related it goes back better part of 28 29 years so i've been in doing this for a little while yes i am a hillbilly by born and bred back in eastern kentucky pike county kentucky

so not eastern tennessee i apologize but it was eastern kentucky close enough and currently i do work for a company called trusted sec um i'm a principal security consultant there they're a wonderful company they let me come out do these talks i do appreciate it so i feel a little bit of oblige to include them in here at least on one side so so before i really get started here it's yet another obligatory slide to include in here i am going to be talking about a serious issue of burnout with various other topics in there and posture syndrome and a number of other things i am not a doctor i try not to even go to a doctor but

that's a different issue altogether if you do need help or want help please go find somebody that can help you if you're looking for somebody just to talk to or listen to you i can help with that but if you're wanting professional help please go find someone else

give everybody a little quick chance to read over this but it's basically i just copy the sound from webmd seemed fairly accurate what is this hotel going to be about it's going to be about burnout in some form or the progression through it um it boils down to exhaustion um constantly feeling swamp not wanting to get up and go to your work this can be caused by a number of different issues can be coming from your place of employment can be coming from some issue at home or just society in general a lot of different things can cause this that is the technical version of it or at least from webmd as much as you want

to consider that technical but the rest of this is just going to be a pure experience from myself i didn't really know what burnout was for the longest time i never had heard of it maybe in passing i might have heard somebody the first time i actually heard about burnout was a little over a decade ago at besides las vegas where among other people jack daniel and a few others caught up and they were doing a talk on i forget whether it was called burnout and information security something of that nature i want to make it abundantly clear that this is my journey through it um no one's no two people's journey through something like this is going to

be the same you might have some similarities but it's going to be slightly different if you can take something from this that is going to help you or at least make you laugh or consider or whatever the case is by all means please do so so where do we start i might as well start at the beginning a little bit of this is going to be a little history nothing too much there but i started out in my career as a computer science major this was back in 94 pre-2000 i am one of the old ones i apologize but at the time there was no infosec curriculum there wasn't anything like that so i went through cs mathematics

all that and i was eager to get started in the world super chipper really happy to go i got an internship with the government was out there doing my work loving it got into doing a little bit of unix administration got into some unix penetration testing a lot of stories from that if you saw my other talk or heard any of my other talks in the past about contest fails a lot of them come from that just saying um definitely a learning experience a lot of great opportunities there got some great people i'm learning from i came into this as a complete novice not knowing much about it i had some background and unique some programming

but that was about it so i was all eager to learn starting out my career nothing's going to stop me making my way through there this went on for a number of years um it was a wonderful time i love my time at the government um loved the people i worked with loved the work i was doing but i was a little pigeon holed into the unix environment that was fine i was happy there not a big problem wife and i started talking we decided that we wanted to do a little bit of moving uh we didn't want i was living in the dc area at the time we didn't want to start a family there so we decided to

pack up and move and we moved to east tennessee knoxville many of you i've worked with or some of you i've worked with many of you i've met before had a great time here we lived here for a good six plus years um i had a great time out here well while i was here i actually got to experience a few other items in my past as i said before i was a unix admin i was a unix pin tester dove heavy into the eunuchs world sort of got a little resting on my laurels there not too much but now there's this new world for me the company i was working for said oh you're gonna be

doing a little bit of everything now you're gonna be getting out there and windows you're gonna be doing sort of a jack of all trades not a problem again eager to learn but i was feeling a little bit of um overwhelming right here why what it was something new to learn and a new experience to undertake i was already well into what six depending on the way you counted anywhere from six to ten years into my career and i felt very comfortable in my skin i knew what i was doing but now it's thrust into a new world and i was expected to know it expected to ramp up to it understand it so very well that

was the windows world and during that time i'm standing back and i'm seeing the people around me doing some amazing things some learning great things from them and i'm going okay they see me as sort of a senior-ish person because i have the experience and the time and where i used to work unfortunately i don't know as much as them or at least i thought i didn't maybe i didn't so i had to i always had this sensation that i needed to learn more learn quickly and understand all this stuff to get up to their speed well as it turns out i did learn relatively quickly through trial by fire lots of other stories there from mistakes but i got up to the

point where i felt comfortable in my skin again it was still a little unnerving because i i don't know how about everybody else out there but i had got very comfortable in knowing my niche i was a unix person i tested unix environments i did this but now i had to expand out and then i had to spend out more into social engineering into physical pin testing into a number of other things and it kept feeling like i was getting more and more stretched thin granted looking back at it now wasn't as bad right then as i was thinking it was but it was the beginning of the process i was looking around feeling is this really what i want to do

but i was happy with it i'm doing my job and going along with it and to the point where um if you go look at my linkedin profile you go talk to me in the past or in the future you'll learn who i used to work for yes a book for you to give away it was this one i had one up here you already have well now you got two okay that's also uh no all right i apologize for the interruption there but yeah so i'm going through there probably part of everybody's career you've been in there a while you're getting comfortable with it i know again got to that point where i'm feeling

comfortable doing my job it's a little bit outside of my comfort area but i've got comfortable with it and then it stayed there i'm doing the exact same thing day in and day out i tried uh making it more entertaining by trying different attacks or trying different information or doing something different but it boiled down to i don't want to use the term puppy mill as such but that's what it felt like to me it was a grinder i'm doing the same thing in and out every day sometimes i had multiple engagements in a week sometimes it was the exact same engagement just on different locations all in the same time nothing was growing i wasn't learning i wasn't getting

training i wasn't expanding my horizons so i was doing the same thing over and over and it wasn't really helping me that much wasn't helping anyone that much honestly but i was making money for someone they kept me employed i was writing good reports i was putting on a good face of it but i would get up in the morning i would go to work i would do my job end of the day came along i wasn't thinking oh wow what can i do tomorrow in this engagement i was like i'm going home wake up in the morning not wanting to come to work same sort of thing at the time i had no idea what this was

this was right around that time period that i went to besides las vegas saw jack daniel out there and his crew talking and i'm like you know that sounds sort of familiar i'm not enjoying work anymore i'm not wanting to get up and go to work yeah it's okay i'm reasonably good at it i think no one's complaining but is this really the career i want to spend the rest of my life doing it maybe something else is going on maybe i'm not made out for this career maybe something else i don't know i was just floundering a little bit just going and doing the motions doing my standard work thing and that's when it really hit me after

thinking about it going through the whole process not really knowing what to do kept thinking about it kept thinking about it talking with my wife about it and ultimately it came down to she said if you don't want to be doing this anymore you don't like where you're working by all means find something else to do and she was all supportive of me and i was happy with that well that's great and all but what do i do this is what i've done since i've even before i was graduated college i was doing this sort of work as an intern as a co-op i've been doing it ever since i don't know anything else to do

so i still stuck i was still stuck doing the job i knew even though i wasn't enjoying it anymore it was just grinding you down i was not enjoying it you might talk to some of the people i was working with at the time maybe they weren't enjoying being around me i don't know i didn't really talk to them that much about stuff like that but it just kept grinding on me and going on until finally i was out at las vegas again doing defcon black hat all that nine yards why i don't know if i was out there presenting or i was out there just to be out there to try to get a fresh

view on things a fresh look on things but that was fine so i was out there and i ran into someone i knew from years ago happened to be the owner of tenable or one of the leaders of 10 of the time rongola we had a quick talk we were discussing some things and a potential opening or an offer came up not quite an offer but a suggestion like hey how about you come and work on xyz team i'm like that's sort of within my wheelhouse it involves some programming and pro involves some security research it involves no pin testing maybe that'll work maybe that's what i'm needing i don't know i sat back and i

thought about it while still going through the motions a little bit and then at work something triggered this i'm sitting back and um one day at work i found out that one of my co-workers i actually enjoyed working with being around was moving on to someone to some other company like if somebody else can do that maybe i can maybe they're burned out like i am i don't know but it gave me that spark to make a move by myself i'd thought about it my wife had thought about it i had a potential offer and um or i knew they were thinking about moving on so i went and interviewed with uh angola and his team i got an offer

had to think about it then i finally decided to accept and that is when my co-worker decided to quit as well the one who'd been thinking about it equip i'm like well might as well now be as good as any time so within about a week or so i put in my resignation here comes in the one funny part in this whole scenario when i put in my resignation i walked back to my desk sit down one of my other co-workers walked up to me and said hey i don't want to tell anybody yet but i'm quitting today we had a good laugh about it he went out and bought a bottle of uh alcohol of something for our current

team a team lead so that the ease it over that within a week three of his senior pentesters were leaving but that's fine that was the one humorous thing in this whole thing for right now but he went out there he did that and we all quit within about a week of each other the three of us company went on to do other things better things a lot more people in there but it has since moved on as well so that is where all of that led up to yes i glossed over a lot in there why because inadvertently i've blocked a lot of it out just to maintain my own sanity through there like i said it i was felt

like i was doing the exact same thing over and over and over one week bled into the next i didn't think that one pen test was any different than the next one nothing was really challenging me whether that was because i was good at what i was doing or because the customers were targeting were pretty much cookie cutter from one to the next i really don't know maybe it's just my mentality that's the way i viewed it but whatever the case was i didn't feel like i was advancing anything and maybe this was the fresh start i needed which was great so i took the offer and i moved on i started doing my programming and i

started doing my research well that was okay for a while because the grass being greener on the other side sort of is always true it looked good that felt like what i wanted to do i jumped over there and at first it was great until i learned that my current boss at that location his personality and mine and his personality and most uh same people might not match um to the point where on one company meeting he told us that if he could fire every one of us and start over he would so i went from a very boring ish to me a very um repetitive a very uninnovative position to a hostile work environment

things didn't really get that much better at least i wasn't doing pin testing anymore so i was there for a while going through the grind again trying to meet expectations trying working extra hours here because i'm like i made this change i'm going to make it work and i kept going extra hours and i kept doing extra work trying to make someone happy which i'm later found out is never happy about anything so that was a negative return investment there my wife saw that i was getting even more frustrated any even more asleep deprived even more unhappy with my job wasn't a lot going on that any of us was really happy with at the time

i didn't know what i was going to do so i started reaching out a little bit i'm like maybe a little bit of pen testing isn't that bad i reached out to some previous companies i'd known and some other people and i started doing what i what it's called 1099 work it's contract work i offered my services out there for like an engagement here maybe an engagement over there something like that nothing permanent nothing repetitive just to get my feet wet to get back out there so i did that it was sort of okay i enjoyed it a little bit it wasn't as mundane as or repetitive as i thought it would be that i remembered i'm like okay

maybe it's not that bad but i don't feel like i'm ready to go back so i kept going through the motions until finally i basically broke down because my boss was an insane person or at least i felt he was or maybe i was the one who was insane because i couldn't keep up with what he was doing or what his requirements were i don't know i just came to my wit's end and i'm like i'm done i don't know what to do so i started looking around at other companies yet again during this time i was actually considering going to a complete different industry going back to college trying to find something else because apparently pin testing didn't

really make me happy it had its draw but i don't know um research and development didn't really have its draw anymore yeah i sort of enjoyed it but do i want to quit one research and development team and go straight to another one is that what i want to be you want to be that person i don't know so i just kept thinking about it and i started reaching out to companies i knew i reached back out to my former company do you have an opening maybe i want to come back there i don't know i'm just checking out luckily for me they didn't have a particular opening for me because uh hindsight i know i would have

been absolutely miserable there again not that i don't like the people who work there it's just some of the bureaucracy some of the politics all that i just knew it wouldn't be me i had time to think about it so i kept looking around and finally i came across a company that sort of made me a little bit happy okay i talked to them they seemed okay they seemed to have a good atmosphere about them so i jumped ship i jumped over into them and i skipped a page there sorry that was the programming fantastic talks let's jump back over to here so i moved on into something else so i didn't know what to do so i started

inventing like i said i found that one company i was sort of happy with them i interviewed with them and i was getting ready just to quit all together and my wife's like no take the offer take the offer so it took somebody outside to force my hand on this so i took the offer i went back to pen testing at this one small company it was a small company that no longer exists because it got bought out by another company and all kinds of things but while i was there it was a good time i enjoyed it every place has its own ups and downs so that's fine but i was around a group of

amazing people yes i'd taken better part of two years off right there pen testing plus the fact that i'd spent the previous six years at a company that didn't really provide training or improvement so i want to talk about imposter syndrome or talk about filling a duck out of water or whatever you want to i definitely felt that i felt like while i had a strong base anything that had happened during that time to advance pen testing i was didn't know about so i effectively had to go from where i was a senior whatever you want to refer to it down to a new person in pen testing that had a basic understanding however that's not what they hired me as

they hired me as a senior with all the responsibilities of a senior so dealing with uh the whole psychological aspect of not knowing if i'm right for this position if they made the right choice if i'm going to be demoted i'm going to be asked to leave all that i stuck with it why because i love the people i was working with it wasn't necessarily that i felt i was the perfect match for that position but i enjoyed it to some degree and really enjoyed the people i was working with and the work wasn't that bad it wasn't what i remembered there was a light at the tunnel a little bit and i was okay there i was working

through it and it built up over time i started getting better i started learning more i started getting my feet under me again we were doing okay and then a series of internal politics issues happened and i got stuck with a boss which when i told them my wife is having a child next month i'm going to need to take a month off he understood oh your wife is having a child next month you want to travel for the next two months so that ended up with a huge conflict between me and my employer and my boss and all kind of issues there stress went out of the roof we knew something else was going on at

the company well or did we know that the company was being sold piling issues on and horrible draconian issues with the transition there it came down to guess what for the person who is trying to find a new home trying to find a good company to work for i'm out of a job i'm almost out of a job again because i don't want to work for this new company who is imposing imposing their horrible rules on us so i found a i had a couple co-workers or colleagues that i knew at another company jumped ship to there and that was probably one of the best choices i had in my career up to that point great

company great bonuses great benefits great everything great group of people some of the great people i worked with at my previous company moved over there we're happy everything was doing great and eventually as always happens in my life for some reason something happens internal bureaucracy and i end up getting a little bit of a question is this the place i want to spend i've been doing this line of work for better part of two decades at this point i've had ends and outs i've had ups and downs i've quit i went to do other things it was just one of those things it just felt like it was never going to end all these scenarios until finally

toward the end of my time at this new company well first i was sort of indirectly told that i probably wouldn't ever get the promotion i'm wanting so i'm like okay that's fine that kind of helped seal the deal for me so i started looking around a little bit that's when i saw somebody at trustedsec post out on twitter if anybody's looking for a change of career hit me up i happen to know this person from previous interactions previous conversations so i hit them up shortly thereafter i moved over to my new home of trusted set had an amazing time so far yes i absolutely feel like i am the least knowledgeable person in the room

and that's because i probably am now they have an amazing group of people there i'm just trying to keep up with them yeah i bring my own experiences with me but i don't feel bad about not being up to their level at times now they are some amazing people i knew that going into it everybody seems to recognize it i'm fine with that and we're moving forward and so far i've been there for going on four years now i love my job there not saying that that's gonna be the perfect fit for everybody or for anybody but myself i don't know but the goal here is that you're find that place that you feel comfortable you feel respected you feel

important and you make that your home i know i kind of went through this a little fast i do apologize um i kind of glossed over some areas this is the first time i'm giving this talk and i apologize if there's any flow issues to it but i'm just trying to get this out there a little bit tell my story maybe you're new and you haven't experienced this maybe you've been doing this for a while and it's the first time you've heard of this i don't know i just like sharing stories with people if you can get any insight out of this that's great as i said this is my experience your experience is going to be unique to you

there might be some overlap there might be some similarities but it's not going to be a one-to-one maybe you don't get the same sensations i do maybe you it's not your job that's causing the issue maybe it's society maybe it's home issues maybe it's neighbors i don't know whatever it is any number of um situations can cause this sort of just dread repetition feeling that you don't want to do this anymore you're done with it even though deep down you probably really want to it's just that right now you feel like i'm done with this i want to move on i want to do something else or i just want to quit i just want to stop

don't get me wrong if i had the option just quit and move it up into like the rockies and just live out the rest of my life up there i'd absolutely do that but that's not an option i don't have that kind of retirement set aside but the goal is to also identify what works for you this might be funding a balance in your work uh life equation there maybe you taking vacations when i say taking vacations i don't mean like all right uh we're wanting to take a vacation i'm getting tired i want to take a vacation no no you schedule like a year in advance next june i'm taking a vacation next september i'm taking a

vacation why because you're making yourself do it then you don't wait until you get completely burned out you're scheduling an advance you're scheduling your personal time there um if it's something that your employer is making you has unrealistic expectations of you maybe you sit down and talk to your employer maybe you sit down talk to your project lead whatever and say look i understand that you sewed this for 80 hours in two weeks that's fine i want you to know i mean you're doing this on a regular basis but i want you to know that this project really takes like a month to do and you want me to do it in two weeks this is

unrealistic i know i'm on salary but i'm not going to get this done you can't expect this to get done it's causing me to stay up late at night work weekends all that that's on my own time try to set boundaries try to set reasonable responses with your employer same for yourself try to set reasonable expectations for yourself if you're saying that okay i'm going to learn xyz this month and i'm going to get this certification next month is that really something you think you can do fine just say that start out slow like i want to try to get this certification this year and just work from there whatever it is that takes for you

to find that balance in your life maybe in you schedule like one o'clock every day after lunch you go out and walk outside or you sit in the sun whatever it is to each their own whatever works for you

and as i didn't do maybe you should watch for some of the early warning signs of this if you're starting to get aggravated at your customers your co-workers or your customers you're starting to feel overwhelmed or um you're not seeing any uh acknowledgement or you feel that you're under appreciated just you're a cog in the wheel or a cog in the machine doing your repetition over and over whatever it is that um you're feeling there it may not be burnt out it may not be anything of that it may just be that you have a bad boss i don't know but it is something that you should be aware of and something that you should look into

more maybe you should really consider this maybe even if it isn't burnout maybe it is something that you want to bring up or maybe look for a different position inside your own company or move on somewhere else whatever the case is that's just something that is between you and your family or lack of family or whatever the case may be it's up to you to make that decision for yourself so that you can be happy and not feel like you're in a dead-end position somewhere i went through that in about a little over 40 minutes i apologize if it was a little quick we will go ahead and give everybody a little bit of a break here at the end

because i'm done with the actual presentation if anybody has any questions comments concerns please feel free to reach out to me you have my contact information here i do have i will open it up right now if anybody has any questions if they want me to elaborate on something if they want to hear my insight on something whatever the case is i'm here for you if you want to talk to me later i'm fine with that thank you very much [Applause] anyone adrian

somebody just came and told me what are you doing ending this early you didn't give these away yet no all right i was talking i need to i'm going back outside give these away all right so i'm fine with that pick a number between one and seven and i'm kidding no honestly um if anybody has any questions comments wants to talk about something i'll be happy to do so um

is there a way to tell the difference between being in a hard place and being burned out i can honestly i don't know the answer i'm not a doctor but my personal experience would be timing if you're in a bad place long enough you'll have burnout so that's my honest opinion there i'm like honestly if you're in a place that you're not happy you don't feel appreciated you don't see any accomplishments you feel that you feel a sense of dread whatever the case may be honestly i would try to start looking for not necessarily a solution but things that can assist whether it's changing your current work life balance changing what you're doing at for work

talking to your boss or talking to your spouse talking to your family whatever the case may be looking for something there and if it is something that is more of a serious nature seek actual help on that and if it does become where you really just don't want to get up and do anything you want to stay at home you want to sit there and watch tv you don't like there's a difference between like oh i don't want to go to work on monday and like i'm actually dreading to go to work there's a difference there if it's where you actually dread doing something you might want to start actually looking into it a little more

here let me get you a book you're the first one to talk that's my first criteria

anyone else anyone else yeah he does right there right behind you there adrian

that's a great talk thank you i will say as somebody who deals with depression there is a big difference in depression and burnout yes it is and the thing that opened my eyes was my wife came to me one day and said you don't talk about the things you do at work anymore that made you excited before so that was the big the big idea i cannot understand that and i can appreciate that absolutely there's a number of people in my life who deal with depression i see that on a daily basis but yes i do understand that i do also believe that burnout can possibly lead to depression so that is definitely something to be happy super gradually

right what's that it can happen absolutely right as it's visible in hindsight not necessarily as you're going through it i think he has a question over there so this is something you might actually need to listen to those around you to understand that look your personality is changing your attitude is changing something is going on yes are human responses to be defensive about it things of that nature but ultimately it's going to be you're going to have to internalize some of that thought that maybe there is something and i need to take steps toward this all righty uh been kind of looking at it too from my perspective as well like kind of taking a very keen on how i'm feeling with work

and everything and i've noticed that oddly enough the longer i look at a screen like the more like groggy and like brain that i feel so i like your your suggestion to like maybe like schedule like a time for a walk or something oddly enough yard work really helps me out but ironically we are all in the position where we kind of have to be looking at a computer screen and just analyze and do whatever it is that we're doing like how would you recommend breaking that up like we're a position you're kind of expected to be at your desk probably a little bit easier with working from right remote one thing you can always do is

you're all expected to take a lunch adrian i think somebody back there has a question in that is next but i would say that i don't know if your company schedules you a lunch or you're expected to do it yourself either way every company should be providing you lunch time during that lunch time if nothing else take that lunch and go outside and sit don't eat it at your desk don't eat while you're working that isn't relaxing in the least i've done that for a number of years it doesn't relax you if you're at home go outside and sit with your pets or go outside and sit in your flower bed or something like that

and just eat with sun with outside or if nothing else just get up and move away from your computer to eat your lunch don't eat it there you need to have some sort of separation there and any level of break from that activity is going to assist in some level um yard work is a great one going out for a hike i try to do that during lunch i eat lunch and may not be the best order of operations there but i eat lunch and then i go out for a hike around my property there it's a couple acres so that helps out it gets me some exercise and it gets me some fresh air when possible or what have you

any little thing like that they can help even if it's if you have indoor pets walk away from the computer sit down and pet your pets that has a proven um state of increasing serotonin and things like that and your body helps you relax and feel more comfortable anything you can do that helps break your mindset from staring at the computer it's going to hurt your eyes and all that we all have to do it but you need to take that break in there if you can't schedule a separate break during the day use your lunch break today so definitely still eat as you're doing this but you if nothing else you can use that

time to do it so does that answer your question all right thank you great talk yeah because after burning out a previous job and quitting and now starting a new one i actually enjoy work again i'm sorry i have horrible hearing is that better yeah there we go so yeah after getting bought previously and then hating work after that and then recently quitting in the past month and starting a new job great job on this but yeah for for that i started using just like a little physical timer it's like a little hexagon guy for like 15 bucks from amazon and you just flip it over set it for five to minutes to an hour so then i'll work for like 30

minutes like really intently on the screen and then it'll beep and i'll go okay and then i'll set a five minute one and then i'll just walk around my house or home office or go pick up a kettlebell or go out and get the mail or go downstairs and get my water or my coffee and then come back up and then set the same timer for like 30 minutes to 40 however long it takes that way i'm not like right yeah like staring at the computer monitor for hours and my eyes and my headache just just growing but no i absolutely if i am sitting there i'll catch myself even now working through lunch just

staring at the screen trying to solve this problem i'm like i'm that close to getting this i don't want to take a break but i have a calendar uh scheduled on my phone and on my alexa and on a number of other things that like at 12 like 11 55 says it is now time for lunch routine so i have to get up and i it makes me remember that all right uh testing all right uh i did i do have uh if i gave my my personal experience here i'm sorry i i'm having a hard time hearing him i have holly what would it be okay if i gave my personal experience here oh yeah yeah absolutely share your

experience so i just all right so i just now got got my role as a security analyst just this year however prior to that i've been kind of working as a workaholic just trying to get my foot in the door and i've spent like a whole lot of time just trying to get like study materials proof that i knew how to do the thing as well as other certs and like more and more of my life became like more and more centered around my career and i started i sort of distanced myself from my friends as well as sort of neglect my own health and i and i kind of neglected to take like pto

while i was a helldesk technician excuse me help desk technician and i got a lot of money out of skipping the pto but in the end of the day i kind of learned that what it wasn't all that worth it and as a consequence of my workaholism like i ended up having to get like two two like root canals and a whole host of other like health problems right there that that comes with just simply not going to the doctor so like if like at all like please go to the doctor get get checked out and everything anyone thank you for sharing i mean yeah we uh it can definitely manifest as physical symptoms a number

of other things as well as you're going through this so yeah i mean and your body is telling your somehow your mind subconscious all that is telling you you need to do something you're you're stuck and all that so like i said i'm not a doctor this is just my own personal opinions my own experience things of that nature but yeah i agree in general yeah anyone else thank you for sharing your story here you go send that to him thank you for sharing the story anyone else yeah one thing that helped me is uh back kyle and i were starting savage sec we were working 12-hour days every day of the week and at some point i was like i've got to do

something that gets me out from in front of the computer that forces me to so i started volunteering with a local horse rescue working with abused horses and taking care of them and uh boy was that a good reset like wait when you're working with a thousand pound animal that's been abused you're not thinking about computers no and doing a friday morning like i never had meetings on friday morning and like everybody at the rescue does the weekend because they they have nine to fives throughout the week so it was perfect for me to just take monday or friday mornings off and go go deal with horses and mules and donkeys awesome awesome yeah very rewarding

one thing i also try to do is due to the nature of being in pintesting for a while and like corporate environment i'm currently in around about four o'clock every day yeah i typically work till five but around four o'clock i try to stop testing whatever i'm doing i try to wind down starting around that four o'clock and then for the rest of the time i don't think about the actual exploitation i don't think about the actual technical aspect i start documenting what i'm doing it helps change your focus a little bit you're not thinking okay how do i do this how do i focus on this and i'm like okay how did i do that and you go back

and start thinking it changes your mentality a little bit and it has a side effect that you get the report written much quicker but that's a different issue altogether but that is one thing i do on a daily basis at the end of the day and that also helps limit the amount of time and sets a time limit for when i need to stop doing xyz testing also i have kids and all that at home that come five o'clock either way i'm done and i have to go do that take them soccer practice take them to baseball practice uh help outside in the garden whatever the case is i will say that my formative years in infosec was at the

federal government in a classified facility it did instill in me something that i feel is missing from a lot of people starting in the industry right now is that when i was at work i was at work when i came home from work i was not allowed to take work home with me because it was classified i had to only work with that at work when i left work work was done until eight o'clock the next morning so if i wanted to talk with my friend about it technically we should go into work to talk about it so like we don't talk about work we don't think about work when we're at home that was

done so we had a hard cut line there i did that for six plus years eight years nine years whatever the case is and um that helped form format my brain to a mentality that once i was done doing all of this uh doing that moved on to other industries and all that i see my coworkers still working that until midnight doing this like at 2 am i see them posting stuff i'm like i'm done with work i don't know about you but i'm done with work sure i might go a little over here and there if i'm right in the middle or something but it's still in that back of my head that okay work is done for the day it's me

time now family time and i go and do that and i take it i step away and i don't look at it i don't think that is something that is common among infosec i don't know but it's not been my experience to see that among others but it's something that was ingrained in me due to where i worked early in my career and i have to appreciate that to a certain degree so yeah one of the things i learned um it took me a long time to learn it but like i always want to blow everybody away when i start a new job but that pace that you set up like it's got to be something you can do

long term like yes you know if you're trying to blow them away and you're just that's your output is insane and everybody's impressed and stuff like that like what happens when that goes down to a normal volume right like so you know don't don't uh don't set the bar so high for yourself you're setting your baseline pretty high there yeah so i've i've i've really hurt myself that way in in the past because then people like why aren't you turning around oh because i'm not working 80 hours a week right yeah so it's it's hard to say that when they get used to that that level of production i do feel bad for the people who are in

the whole startup mentality like every single minute of your life has to be going to starting up that company people who are starting a company stuff like that i understand at a certain point but at my age i don't know if i can do that anymore but any other questions if not i appreciate everyone thank you very much thank you for coming out besides knoxville here love to see everybody here again next year for doing it again so thank you thank you adam you