IATC - A&Q - Burnout

from a recovery perspective it's interesting as well because it requires a lot of change to to remove yourself from a situation that's causing that burnout and that mental fatigue personally I changed everything about my life except for my friends and my family to to improve that search okay where where I live how I live my health is is improved more exercise more sleep I changed my job considerably so I was in security operations manager and so I was constantly working 80 + hour weeks constant interruptions in the middle of the night to deal with the the latest critical issue you know three in the morning infrastructure outages things of that nature that really detract from

kind of the things that that make our lifestyle healthy naturally right so a natural sleep cycle waking cycle eight hours of sleep continuously brimsley you know all of those things become right just at a basic health level on changing changing job roles right so I work in a much less stressful job role you know it's it's there is I had to give up on some of the personal me me me reward that I enjoyed about that but you know ultimately I'm much more personally happy for having made that trade off and you know I think that we are typically a lot more valued by our organizations than we think we are and we have a lot

more leverage to negotiate those things than we think we do you know and a lot of times until you start pushing back on some of those expectations what do they be internal created by you externally created by your organization that you work for you don't realize how much power you have in constantly and aggressively renegotiating your employment agreement right so you know those things are very important from a personal health perspective I also changed my physical location I found that the culture that i was living in i was in arkansas at the time and my political and kind of world outlook was completely different than the vast majority of people who live there so i live in

colorado now i find that it is much easier for me to integrate into society there and there's already made and no not really but yeah hop you've heard that joke before yeah so it's you know there's a lot of you know and i found that i'm much better off for having made all those changes like all the things that I was afraid of of changing in my life you know when you face those fears and you overcome them it's very empowering and you'll find that like I found that a lot of people were very very jealous that I put forth the effort to do that but I made the decision that I you know that there were commitments

that that they felt that they were bound to that they bound themselves to that they weren't willing to give up that I called the crabs you need to kind of get with like-minded people that are such a broad industry along the same lines you could also yeah so we're down to three people in the audience here you guys I mean you have any thoughts questions I mean issues that you have dealt with that you want to talk about I mean out we we can be very interactive here right this is not just me just feeling do you guys do you you know have any any thoughts any contribution Yeah Yeah right and how unhealthy is that right

temporarily yes yeah

sigh of chefs I think he's a Greek head walk about this I think that's his delivery story based on mine for placement where you can just tell by his mindset in order to get happiness and contentment

so so what are some of the tactics you guys used to deal with this long term

yeah that's shooting

ah

yeah nice what's that ninja networks yeah so that's a that's a that's a very good so I am part of 303 now since my move to Denver so another just massive family that are my people right and its end then you know yeah get involved in those groups right right exactly yeah

you

I don't realize how I'm driving off well the reality of it too is you know you bring up a good point because one of the things i found is that it is much easier for me to get a job in an organization than it is for organizations to find people like me right so really when you start building that social network and you start looking at the employment opportunities that are out there you realize that you don't need that job as bad as that job needs you right and then having those that social network that massive social and professor professional network to get the inside track to make sure that you never have to want for an opportunity in an

organization that's incredibly empowering right to know that you can walk in and if they walk you out the door that day it's their loss they can't afford to replace you at the same money they were paying you they're going to have to up the ante right that's an incredibly powerful thing tonight you know I tell people all the time if you're not happy in your job you know you have to be renegotiating your your employment agreement constantly and they're not going to come to you and say we think you would be good in this role you have to go to them and say this is where I'm going how are you going to help me get there and if they don't have

a plan for you and they're not milling willing to make one you need to find somebody who is that's that's right yeah yes yeah it's hard well do that for you right right so the other side of that is you know typically they're not going to stick their necks out for people who aren't delivering right so I'm talking about people who are truly passionate about what they do who are digging in you are doing amazing things right I consider this group especially at bsides to be people who are are part of that community they would not be here talking about things of relevance to the community if they didn't care about the community right so you know I look

around I see a lot of ninjas that the 949 2303 the long time you know inner circle family of the hacking community right these and these are really the people who should not worry about jobs right they're not the people who have to work they've got the acumen they've got the skills there or they're building those they're building your professional network right we can help those people along we can help them not only in their career but also in their personal happiness right so at the same time you've got that person that you're helping to introduce you know you need to also kind of give them some of this wisdom about I've been there right the

1984 long stare across the table with your vodka like we've both been there I sold you you sold me we don't want to talk about that and I don't want you to ever get in that situation right so I'm going to tell you some things you may not understand right now but in the long term they're going to be important to you and you know we're going to help you try to avoid that right like I'm going to tell you you're going you're taking a left turn when you should be taking a ride and you may not agree with me and that's fine but you know know that when when you get down that path and you need

to turn around to go the other way I'll help you with that right so I you know that I think that's important to you like Lance said earlier the mentorship that's critical right we need to be those people for the younger crowd that are coming up in the industry as well so right so I think we're winding down on time so thank you guys appreciate you hanging out and thanks for the participation and have a good conference [Music]