Career & Wrap-up & Next Steps

um some of the problems that come in our careers in our personal lives as well as X altruism and I kind of wanted to play off of that and then move into you know a more detailed session on how can we make it better specifically in the area of finding a career choice that works better for you than one that causes you to burn out one that maybe matches your ex altruism better assuming that you are an exile truest but even if you're not how do you find one that matches what you're happy with and I was really really happy to hear the earlier speakers puller and I don't remember his friends named Lance I think who went

through some of the the same things discovering first that the career that they were in the visible place they were in was not suited to them their personality types their interests etc and then taking positive action to change that to make their lives better and to make their careers better so I'll start by telling it just a short story about my career trajectory career art I shared some of this earlier which was my second day on the job I kind of hit a high point in my professional career we're actually influenced and affected lives and after that you know it's been saving credit card numbers from having to be reissued like not really meaningful and purposeful as andrea was

talking about and and so pretty quickly I had a nice life changing event I traveled the world for three months took a leave of absence from my job and did that and fortunately my boss held my job actually she she threatened to come and find me and drag me back if I didn't come back on my own and after I got back I realized that I kind of didn't like my job I kind of didn't like what I was doing so I did some soul-searching and and kind of had to find what matched my personality better as well as my skill better so I spent a few months thinking about it pondering on it you know

understanding what I would it was I liked about what I did and what I didn't like and then I tried to match my my career arc to what I thought was going to make me me happy so I was very very new to the security industry at this point and I put in place I called it a five-year plan although my timeline I really didn't know and I understood that at the end I wanted to travel the world and do infosec stuff it seems like a pretty cool job even now so i realized that i would have to build a network of connections I would have to improve my skill set and I have to get some

experience doing the types of things that I wanted to do and so I set out doing that I pretty quickly was able to get into a career role where I could grow into that and five years later I was able to achieve it that was my way of going about solving that problem but that's not everybody's way so I'm interested to get some more feedback to hear what other people are doing one of the things that can really help and make a career meaningful to you and something that you enjoy doing is something that dan pink calls looking at three things says its autonomy mastery and purpose and if you if you go out there and

googled and pink motivation you'll find that he's got a book and he's also got a short TED talk as well as a couple of other talks if you go through the 15-minute 20-minute presentation that he does it's very very good it provides a ton of support for it I'll quickly summarize it and then hopefully bring it in and apply it to more of an infosec field where you can then potentially look at it in the context of your own stuff so autonomy mastering purpose autonomy is to some degree calling your own shots being in charge of the direction of what you do day to day tasks and having that ability to make decisions on your own mastery is being

good at something and getting better so having a skill set that you use that your well fall ified to do and that you're learning all the time challenging yourself pushing yourself forward purpose is something bigger than ourselves so when we go out and protect people's financial information that's something that is bigger than ourselves and that ties into X altruism right we tend to seek those things that have a purpose that have a meaning nonprofit work you know the stuff that we're talking about 4i on the cavalry looking at security devices that have the or devices that have the potential to impact human life and public safety those three things if you can align those three things you will be happy in

your career Josh often adds the fourth thing which is understanding to feel like you are understood and appreciated in what you do that your work is valued and having that feedback given to you so I think back on the times in my life that I've spent and when I've been sad in my career the frowny face I've been missing at least one of those things when I found that other thing I pretty quickly became much more happy much more satisfied my work improved because of it and i'll tell you kind of another quick story as well that ties into that at a certain point i was fairly burned out I wasn't you know too depressed or

suicidal but I just couldn't manage to pull myself out of bed and go to work happily I was late I just zoned out sometimes and I didn't handle it very well so going through the process of figuring out what I wanted to do I asked myself a question okay if I quit my job tomorrow and went and just traveled the world what's the worst-case scenario what's the worst that happens and we're very fortunate our industry that my answer was the worst case is that I borrow money to come back home live with friends get another job in the industry probably making more money than I was before and being in a new company where I have the chance to learn experience

and bring that experience from traveling the world back into into play so I realized that literally my worst case scenario was better than the path I was on and that was very free all of a sudden I wasn't afraid of losing my job so to the burnout talk you know that that stress and that pressure was absolutely relieved that allowed me to then seek autonomy mastery purpose and understanding and preciation even though I didn't have a definition for it I sought that out and I found that I was incredibly happy almost so happy that I didn't want to quit my job in travel the world but that made me happier than staying there so I'll open it up now for

some QA I'm really interested to hear what other folks have worked on have done and we heard from from polar and Lance earlier on what they did that was really productive but throw it out there maybe Andrew will put you on the spot I know you recently had a career change I this is about career professional development yeah

you

good I like that you mentioned creativity getting creative as well as exploring different areas as a short term solution one of the techniques that I know some friends use is they do gardening it's a chance for them to build a garden to plant things to see the through their labors number one at the end of the day because you have tilled earth or whatever and number two over the course of six months you get almost double rewarded that way and it's the feeling of creation like you're building something new and beautiful in the world yeah it's very tangible and I think you had a question yeah please

[Music] okay

you

[Music]

hmm

yeah whether or not you get punched tells you how well you're doing in martial arts yeah and there's a lot of a lot of people who do martial arts too I know that I think crawl McGraw is is one of the current favorites and the way i understand i don't know if that's the one that you do but the way I understand it it's always full speed and you always get that feedback quickly like I failed to block that fist I need to get that [Music]

ah okay

you

[Music]

yeah so I like the not so much the violence aspect of that but the the art form the artfulness that you mentioned and I think that that's true in a lot of martial arts and you're probably right that's Krav Maga is probably just an aggression release or a stress release or more so than creativity art form kind of thing Josh are you going to say something for I

any other questions points tips techniques anybody else change jobs this year Josh did you went from protecting the internet to protecting code repositories yeah yeah I think so and building those muscles in different areas you know that's what today has been all about I don't want to steal the thunder from the wrap-up session today but being able to I mean for me this side of it is really really fun the technical side doesn't interest me anymore I've already figured out that if it's doable i can probably do it i won't be the first person to do it because it takes smart people to do that but then i can copy them and i can make the

technology do anything I want to it's how do I look at other systems break them down understand them analyze the critical factors and then take vantage them right how do i exploit the legal system how do i exploit you know through social engineering to get my point across to somebody who I wouldn't normally talk to there's a certain analysis phase and understanding and I think we're a lot of times we can find ourselves to just looking at technology for technology's sake if we broaden the scope of what we're trying to do things would become fun again we would also see that there's more value levers that we can pull to get the point across and

there's a lot of other things we can do I mean that's probably for me why social engineering is so fun in theory is because I don't have to learn how to hack your system I can call you on the phone and say hey I'm from the IT department can you run this malicious software real quick and you do right I mean the people in this room probably don't but it's amazing how much you can get without having to know anything but just knowing the right process to go through so yeah I like these non technical problems i said i'd say stop thinking as a hacker and start thinking like a hacker right start looking at the

problem as a firewall and understand that if you do expand the scope if you include well if you include you know business processes that you could potentially affect if you include policy that you can affect you know then you're thinking like a hacker not as a hacker and I think that politicians I forget which one of the panelists our discussion people said it earlier today but politicians are some of the best social engineers I mean they have hacked the political system of the world's biggest economy and bent it to their will I mean that's cool that's a cool hat I would love to see one of those guys walk in the door and give a presentation at

black hat you know how I how I pwned to the government yeah you do the austin powers but it really is that's that for me is what keeps it interesting and so when I look at potential career choices potential for me an independent consultant contractor so I look at Project sound like well this one seems interesting this one's just technical already know how to do it you know I can do it in my sleep you don't need me to work on that one this one over here is really interesting it challenges my first of all it takes advantage of my skills second off it builds those skills it also gives me the ability to go and

discover a new place to make decisions on my own and generally I like to think that there's a purpose to what I'm doing even if at the end I drop the report and they never look at it you know that's depressing but it happens so anything else before we turn it over to the last session maybe we'll do the last session a little bit quickly so that everybody can go stand in what I'm sure is a giant line for the keynote speaker okay yes yeah

get the voices out of your head first yeah

yeah I think a couple of people offered suggestions earlier which I'll repeat because you weren't here to hear them but get together with other people who have common problems talk to them this is a good venue for it it's a good forum for it I think that we don't take full advantage of these types of events are the chance to be with each other because a lot of times we just spend the whole time drinking and solving on each other's stories or like hey you know these guys suck I hate all the users I've got these problems you've got those product got those problems too man we're we're so sad like we get to that that

point where we break each other down or like empathetic with each other but then we don't quite get to the point by the end of the weekend where we're building each other up again right where we're saying oh you know what come to think of it I actually have solved that problem that you're working on here's how I did it getting together with people and getting past that kind of commiseration I think is one of the techniques so the the proposal earlier from a few folks was get together regularly with people in your community even if it's virtual you know I have a weekly standing phone call with my best friends we're in diverse disparate industries and we just

talked about you know here are the problems I'm having life problems or professional problems here's how I've kind of overcome those hey I've got this idea for something what do you think about this give me feedback and it's really helpful even if we don't always strictly stick to what we want to get accomplished in those calls we have a good time just catching up you know and it's it's kind of a support group it's and a way for you to get away from the drudgery of the task and did thing go back to it and and be a little bit more energized especially if you know you know if somebody says to you you know I

hated that but it's like eighth grade math I hated eighth grade math but it laid the foundation for everything I do now and so if I didn't have that I would not have learned it and that can re-energize you to go through the boring stuff and just see the bigger picture at the end see that light at the end of the tunnel and even if it's not physically larger it at least looks larger in perspective

good thank you very much and we will start up the final session now kind of wrap up the day next steps what comes next and Josh I'll invite you up here I've been standing here for about an hour almost an hour and a half and I gotta pee yes alright so quite a bit of content quite a long day hopefully your brain hurts in a good way and for those who have been watching this on video you can watch it at your own pace in your own chunks the point here is we tried one year ago we said let's try an experiment will fail fast will iterate but we want to break the cycle of doing

the same thing over and over and expecting different results and I'm okay with failing as long as we fail in new and interesting ways right it's getting a little tedious and if you look to your left your right this used to be about firewalls and use of you about you know protecting corporate assets and now it's about protecting your safety your personal safety your community your way of life your family and to BOS point the last session about professional development if you care about autonomy mastery and purpose we've really found quite a bit of purpose in this year of experimentation it's been a real attitude change we focus more on soft skills than hard skills we focused more

on outside the echo chamber than within it we focus more on experimentation and iteration than monotony and defeat and with most things in life attitude is everything and you can bring the attitude of cynicism defeat which is playing way too many of our friends leading sometimes the stress and burnout or you can bring an attitude of hope and not empty hope but hope with action and that leads down a different path and for those of us who have tried we'd spend a fulfilling at thus far so the question I've had from for the last 365 days is should we keep going and my answer is hell yes it's a long road it's long view it's going to take a lot of different

things but I am highly encouraged not discouraged by what we're doing and I think hopefully you've seen today we type the policy people type the legal people who talk to people in industry talked about professional soft skill development about the changes in attitude to disclosure when human life and Public Safety's on the line and this is a very different type of conversation than we're used to at these and if you're looking for a change in variety you will find it here it's an uncharted territory but worth doing the exploring and with that for now I think the the path for it is stop waiting for someone to fix the problem and figure out a way

to be a part of that fix if attitude is everything choose wisely thank you

[Applause]

you