I quit infosec and I couldn't be happier

http://paulsec.github.io/posts/i-quitted-infosec/

by PaulSec • 3 years ago

170 161 3 years ago

paulsec.github.io

unixhero3• 3 years ago

This is about developer burnout, and doesn't really point to anything in particular regarding infosec.

jrumbut• 3 years ago

I don't think it was meant to be an "infosec is wrong and I'm right so I'm leaving" type story.

I like that the author wasn't afraid to make a change, not everyone can but it makes for an interesting story!

gtirloni3• 3 years ago

It's a nice story. The author discovered he's passionate about people. Did a lot of thinking and seems happier now.

I don't think it speaks badly about the pentesting part of infosec, even though those in auditing tell me it's extremely boring to be in infosec.

unixhero3• 3 years ago

Sure. But the title insinuated an analysis of how information security causes one unending stress, day after 20 years if working in it one develops a hardened siege mentality etc etc etc. I have read things like that befire, which were interesting perspectives That would be more on point with the title.

Anyways nothing wrong with the text, but my comment stands.

yootyootr• 3 years ago

By default when I click the link I'm directed to a non-secure HTTP version of github, which I found ironic given the page title

cojant• 3 years ago

I was about to comment on the same... my only question to the OP (and other's who don't enforce HTTPS) is "why?!"

mcsniff• 3 years ago

Why does a personal blog page need HTTPS? It's an output page, I read the contents and leave, I'm never submitting any of my information across the wire.

Someone along the way might modify the page? Unless they're using HSTS, it won't matter.

I'm all for encryption, but I'm also all for using tools when necessary, and not complicating things when not.

fmajid• 3 years ago

You'd be surprised how many top websites (e.g. Amazon, eBay) don't even implement HSTS, let alone HSTS Preload. Here's some naming-and-shaming:

https://blog.majid.info/hsts-preload/

hsnewman• 3 years ago

I was a CISO for a Credit Union, and retired early. Couldn't be happier now, I would never go back to infosec. The stress and anxiety was terrible. Infosec is a target for management if there is a breach, fortunately for me I never had an incident, though. After 3 years my mental state is so much better, I highly recommend retiring/switching carreers if your unhappy in your job.

1970-01-01• 3 years ago

CISOs that have experienced a breach are worth more than ones that have not.

https://blog.nacdonline.org/posts/cisos-breach-experience-pr...

adamgordonbell• 3 years ago

Got to be honest, I only clicked on the link because 'quitted' bothered me, but the Take-Aways are interesting.

cuttysnark2• 3 years ago

Stuck out to me as well—author uses it only once apart from the title, and it's in scare quotes. Are they calling attention to the fact that it's not the usual form of the word, but then failing to explain why that's important to the subject of the post?

In any case, TIL that although "quit" is most common for past tense/past participle, "quitted" is sometimes included in dictionaries as an alternative.

Mikushi• 3 years ago

The author is French, the usage of quitted is more likely a mistake outright. As for the quoted version it's explained next to it, he's quitting professionally but likely will continue as a hobby, in French you'd use quotes to highlight the fact it's not to be taken literally.

odiroot• 3 years ago

It's a new fad in SEO world. Gotta respect the hustle!

xeromal• 3 years ago

Same. I figured it's an ESL thing so no biggie.

jihadjihad• 3 years ago

It is valid in English to use quitted in this manner, but it does look and sound odd. Most dictionaries list quitted as an alternative simple past/past participle of to quit, but admittedly it's uncommon to see it in modern English. Usually quitted is used in the sense departed or left (following French usage), which, while perhaps archaic, is perfectly valid in English as well.

eganist3• 3 years ago

I'm probably oversummarizing, but this seems to boil down to burnout caused by (from the post):

But why don’t they just patch? It’s not that complicated after all.

And you kinda see this later on when the author talks about what they worked on post-transition out of infosec as a mainline career:

I finally joined Michelin in December 2016 where I started working in the CERT team where my main mission was to automate scanning and reconnaissance phases [emphasis added] on internet-facing assets and this was my real first experience on the other side of the story - defending infrastructure and where I finally experienced change management (and the complexity behind it), impact evaluation and so on.

It seems like the author burned out not because of the work but because wherever he ended up, there was no strategic initiative to streamline and automate patching to a point where it's largely invisible. It's also a hard problem given the risks of patching bringing reliant services down and the need to automate a slew of testing to validate that said patches won't torpedo production and mission critical systems.

The bit above is important not just because it solves a problem but because (I'm convinced that) people like knowing they actually built something and enacted lasting change. And security may be one of the least likely engineering disciplines where you'll experience building a tangible product as an IC.

At least in software security it's a bit easier with build and deployment pipelines offering an opportunity to block when patches are outstanding, but I can see where the burnout would arise when a strategic effort to invisibly ensure patching isn't in place or well funded. No one gets to build anything, and likewise, nothing gets solved because nothing was built.

---

So if I could add another takeaway:

• if your job involves running around and putting out fires, consider recommending up the chain and across the aisle all the ways to prevent the fires. And if those recommendations don't catch fire (so to speak), may be worth exploring alternative means to address the burnout risk long term with the current role.

PaulSec2• 3 years ago

Thanks for your reply, I liked it!

It seems like the author burned out not because of the work but because wherever he ended up

Don't get me wrong and maybe I was not clear enough (my bad). The infosec part I mostly contributed to was within some consulting companies where I was hopping from one assignment to another one, having different clients every week. I saw some clients with some really strong security posture, I mean it. The "burn out" I experienced was clearly not related to that but pretty much from hacking, writing report, sleep & repeat.

eganist3• 3 years ago

The "burn out" I experienced was clearly not related to that but pretty much from hacking, writing report, sleep & repeat.

Yeah, this tracks. I rescued myself from this by switching to in-house security teams with ownership of security infrastructure.

Similar to what you did.

itsmemattchung3• 3 years ago

The main warning I might just give to people is to keep proper distances between work and personal life

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. As a millennial, I've tied so much my self-worth into my career and recently, started questioning this belief and I think the next generation (i.e. Gen Z) might be on to something around quiet quitting, their generation placing extra emphasis on pursuing things that make them happy and viewing work as .... well, work.

flerchin• 3 years ago

LOL welcome to your thirties. Try to lean more towards the weird new hobby side of things, instead of the 20yo girlfriend side.

swader9993• 3 years ago

Sage advice.

jraph• 3 years ago

Millennial too. Thought for thoughts then!

For me, paid work is a means to achieve what I personally want to achieve. If I can achieve what I want during work hours that's great, stars are aligned. If not, work is just a way of getting the money I need to achieve what I want, and should never drain me.

I don't care about career, I care about being paid enough to do what I want to do of my life. I won't sacrifice personal life for it.

Work is a good chunk of the time so it should also be enjoyable as best as possible.

Of course, advancing your carrier can help get paid even more / enjoy even better, if so it might be good thing to do. It's just that it's a means, not a goal, like it seemed to be for some of our parents or grand parents.

komali26• 3 years ago

Millennial here as well, it's really excited to see our generation and the next generation reject "making money for someone else" as a way of finding meaning in life. I'm chewing on a lot of blog posts about this, regarding for example how the concept of "retirement" is terrifying. I was on a cruise recently and talking with a bunch of old people, and the subject often came up about how people were "finally taking the trips they always wanted to," or "finally exploring xyz hobby they never had time for."

How terrifying is that, busting ass from your 20s to mid to late 50s, and then getting hopefully another 30 years to "enjoy life?" I mean I'm sure many people find enjoyment along the way but damn that just seems so depressing.

Maybe it wasn't bad when that generation was working, I know many had a very nice quality of life for relatively less effort due to higher purchasing power and lower housing costs.

itsmemattchung3• 3 years ago

How terrifying is that, busting ass from your 20s to mid to late 50s

Agreed. I'm all onboard with delayed gratification. I'm onboard with "putting in the work." But waiting (literally) decades before living it up... sounds totally backwards.

itsmemattchung3• 3 years ago

I'm chewing on a lot of blog posts about this

Care to share some of your favorite findings?

moremetadata2• 3 years ago

busting ass from your 20s to mid to late 50s, and then getting hopefully another 30 years to "enjoy life?"

Its just slavery which the older generations thought was appropriate, much like having a large family to look after you was a thing before family sizes came down.

It sounds cliched, but have a bucket list of things you want to do and try to do some of them. Put yourself first and your job second because the days of businesses looking after their staff and a job for life is long gone as every recession demonstrates.

swader9993• 3 years ago

A human life is barely the time it takes at a stop light when you consider we live for eternity. Learn how to love, don't try to gratify the ego.

autokad3• 3 years ago

In their 20s and 30s, my siblings pursued their own interests and desires, but unfortunately, this approach did not lead to success. Now in their late 50s and early 60s, they find themselves lacking the necessary skills and experience to keep up with the rapidly changing job market. As a result, they are limited to unskilled labor, with no significant savings or retirement plans. Despite having pursued their dreams when they were younger, they are not particularly content.

They constantly ask me for money now.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 3 years ago

Millenials still had cause to buy into the Regan-era story of hard work and hyper capitalism leading to a glorious future for the common person. Zoomers have never been able to buy into that lie because they were born into a world where it is so obviously untrue.

DrThunder6• 3 years ago

Zoomers aren't even old enough to determine that yet. They're in their early 20's at most and no one that age has the experience to definitively say anything regarding this.

The alternative to hard work is doing nothing and that certainly will get you no where at all. The idea that a younger generation might have had it slightly better (which I think is pretty subjective anyway, previous generations have all had their fair share of bad shit) so you won't do anything to get ahead is just asinine.

rejectfinite• 3 years ago

around quiet quitting

Please do not use this phrase.

Working 9-5 is called "doing your job"

IT in Europe here and we work 8-5 with 1h lunch...

yamtaddle2• 3 years ago

IT in Europe here and we work 8-5 with 1h lunch...

Similar in the US, I've never actually seen an office that works 9-5, despite that being the phrase. It's always 8:30-5 or 8-5.

It may once have been A Thing here in the US, with a 30-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks coming out of a total of eight hours at work, since there are legally-mandated break periods for ordinary wage or hourly workers—but it seems like everyone's "exempt" now and so has far less legal protection, plus I'm sure enforcement's nearly non-existent. I assume it did actually exist, once, though, for "9-to-5" to have entered the language to begin with.

BrandoElFollito• 3 years ago

9 to 18 in France, mostly. Time for lunch is usually in the 30-45 min but this is by choice.

Quite a lot of people stay after 18, mainly because of historical/ tradition reasons.

Mountain_Skies• 3 years ago

The leading edge of Gen Z has taken to concepts like quiet quitting, but they still seem to have tied their personal lives to their jobs, often having few physical world friends outside of the workplace and still falling for the "we're a family" line, even if now they want to play to part of kid who doesn't take out the trash if their allowance isn't high enough (which it might not be). Doubt that's healthy and seems a lot like the recreation of a dysfunctional family.

autokad3• 3 years ago

The success of this approach hinges on the assumption that no one else is doing it. However, even those who quietly quit still rely on others to provide the goods and services they desire. There is a concern that this could lead to a snowball effect and result in food scarcity and famine, but the timeline for such an outcome is uncertain.

In terms of adding extra items to improve their happiness, it appears that this strategy is generally ineffective. Despite their efforts, the quiet quitters I met do not appear to be any happier

bitexploder8• 3 years ago

I have been an information security consultant for a long time. Software dev background. 2006 start app sec consulting -> senior consultant —> principal consultant -> CTO (of small consulting firm) -> get bought by NCC start my own company 10 yrs ago -> CTO/managing principal -> sell company -> still consulting. Done so many different things but the common theme is app sec. Finding bugs and risks in software via reversing, assessment, threat modeling, and code review.

Do I still love it after 17 years? no. A lot has changed. A lot has not. I still like it most days. By far my favorite thing has been building a team and teaching others what I learned. I hit burn out here and there. I think computers and tech are different and objectively a little less fun now for this field. When I started I could find a bug in a system and write an actual exploit (actual machine code!) for it by hand in a reasonable time scale and that was always really cool. Now teams of people are required to achieve the same exact goal. Just one of many examples.

So anyway, some get off my lawn cause I am older now, some is just me changing what I like and want from life, some is tech changes. It’s still a great field as a consultant. Show up. Hack. Write report. Leave. Never be a CISO, you can’t pay me enough to do it. The end.

toomuchtodo2• 3 years ago

Never be a CISO

Can you share why?

fegu• 3 years ago

I am a CISO, but transitioning away. It is just plain boring. Lots of admin, reports, reviews, very little actual IT.

eganist3• 3 years ago

From what I've heard from other CISOs:

You own a bunch of unsolvable risk and your head is one of the first to get lopped off if you're popped.

Honestly, the CISO role probably needs a golden parachute and a direct report to the CEO for it to be an appealing path for most anyone who's experienced it at least once. The former to incentivize owning that much risk, the latter to enable the role to drive change.

IncRnd• 3 years ago

They shared why in the prior two sentences, when saying what they enjoy when not a CISO. "Show up. Hack. Write report."

bitexploder8• 3 years ago

Average tenure for a CISO is lowest of any C suite. You will likely take the hit in the event of a security incident and be fired. Tedious work. What to do is often obvious. Getting everyone to do it is the hard part and usually devolves into politics. Thankless job, you can only be wrong once. Just not appealing and CISO is becoming legally sketchy, requiring a lot of diligence out of a CISO to not end up in legal trouble. But if this appeals to you, it can be rewarding stuff, but it is not a great tech role IMO. Or a great management role.

OrvalWintermute• 3 years ago

Normally you are juggling a huge amount of security technical debt, massively under-resourced, the CFO under-funding IT and having no budget for innovation in the first place is part of what caused the problem.

The security world and the compliance world are changing daily, don't track each other, and your compliance drives costs, while security drives incidents.

gnfargbl• 3 years ago

Well, they don't call it Chief Incident Scapegoat Officer for nothing.

komali26• 3 years ago

Sounds like folks like you must have been doing a really good job if it's that much harder to exploit vulnerabilities!

bitexploder8• 3 years ago

Yep, memory corruption bugs on a modern OS are really hard, but still possible. That’s why sketchy firms like those that build Pegasus now pay 7 figures for a locked and loaded iOS exploit, which objectively does the same thing mine did a decade or so before. :)

UK-Al05• 3 years ago

I think it's more like software developers have gotten better, leaving less room from cyber security.

When I first started any idiot could back a web application because nearly all of them had a silly exploits like SQL injection.

mr_mitm• 3 years ago

Yeah, ultimately the goal of infosec is to make itself obsolete. On the one hand, it seems to be working because exploiting things has become more difficult/expensive. On the other hand, cyber attacks seem more rampant than ever, because exploiting things has also become more lucrative. So are the effects of the infosec industry real? Or is it just an arms race?

ghostpepper• 3 years ago

As someone with a C/C++ background considering a move in this direction career-wise, would you still recommend it?

j0hnyl2• 3 years ago

I think the trick to staying happy in cyber security is to chase down niche fields in technology. Your work won't be perceived as sexy by the broader community since you're not tracking north korea, but the trade off is that you will have fun and not have to brush shoulders with so many egos. So what's green these days? That's for you to decide, but one area I think is interesting is smart contract security on blockchains. Lots of folks are pouring into that space.

bitexploder8• 3 years ago

It really depends on what you want to do. We hire folks from dev backgrounds all the time and many stick around and enjoy it. If you get pushed into some corporate app sec role where you aren't doing interesting problem solving, I do not recommend it. If you get to really dig into security problems and challenges using engineering and technical skills you have acquired, yes, it is still fun. You get to take apart other people's puzzles (apps/code) and there are tons of opportunities for automation, scripting, writing tools, etc. It is an awesome field to grow in when you have a lot of hard CS and development skills and can apply them meaningfully. That makes things pretty narrow in terms of roles out there that check all of the boxes I mentioned, but, yes, it is still interesting and fun. Look at all the cool things people have done with fuzzing over the last 5-10 years, starting with AFL which really changed the game. Now people do fuzzing with VMs (qemu) etc. Just a ton of really cool stuff that a solid C/C++ dev can really dig into and play with :)

throwawaaarrgh• 3 years ago

This really resonates with me. I'm also passionate, and most corporate gigs I've had over 20 years kill my soul. I wish there was a place I could use my skills where they weren't wasted, where I could perform at the top of my game and really make incredible things happen. The reality is I spend 90% of my time trying to work around some stupid bureaucratic limitation, and it's not uncommon for my work to be literally thrown away after months or years of work.

4RealFreedom4• 3 years ago

I've been in this position a few times throughout my career. Try looking around and see what else is out there. Maybe consider a smaller company that doesn't have the level of politics that you've described. Wish you the best!

Clubber• 3 years ago

I recommend smaller companies were you take an architect type role where you build the systems, or at least have a domain you control and are accountable for. I've been doing exclusively that since about 2005. It has it's own problems, mainly pressure to constantly get things done, which is fine, but it can be unrelenting sometimes.

The soul sucking large corporate entities, I couldn't agree more. Stay away from that if you can. You really only need one big company household name to spice up your resume and you probably have that already. I have mine and never went back.

mxuribe3• 3 years ago

I recommend smaller companies...

Yep, this is the direction i wish to take next. ;-)

mxuribe3• 3 years ago

OMG, its like you're speaking right to me! :-)

I have a multi-decade career, and for like the first decade or decade and a half or so, i tried to stay as long as reasonably possible at whatever big compoany i worked for....being raised to think that loyalty, and working a long number of years at the same employer was a sort of weird badge of honor. I got hit by bureacratic BS/blocks on such a constant basis, and then got hit by my first layoff...then i thought: "oh man, its me, i'm the problem, maybe i'm not as good as i thought, etc." Then I got yet another corporate job....and then another layoff...which by the way both layoffs were to due to re-orgs, and impoacted many people, and not specific to my performance. But, you know, the ego and heart gets hit hard.

So, i tried 1 year (during the middle of the pandemic) to work for a non-profit...thinking that maybe i can use my passion and people and tech skills for some good causes...Nope, never again! The sample size is of course so small (I only worked for a single non-profit), but i encountered the same corporate blocks as in the for-profit world, but with a vastly reduced paycheck. I still love my peers in the non-profiut, and while i was there i actually made a difference in thousands of people's lives, as well as gaining accoloades from IRS for a model and taxpayer experidnc e that i developed foir some web potals that i lead the dev. for. And, i still very much believe in what the non-profit where i worked does...But wow was the org. crazy disfunctional! Anyway, over the last couple of years since then, i keep jumping from one big company to another....and after all these decades i feel i have more passion than ever before for the tech and the problem spaces! ...BUT...now i have less patience for corporate buracratic BS/blocks...so i jump more often nowadays; which i dont like doing. Maybe i will try small, for-profit firms and see how things go....but, man, corporations really do know how to hamper those among us who have the passion, drive, and technical chops to really make a difference. Passion and competency - at least at the big boys/girls where i worked - seem to count for nothing nowadays.

pnutjam• 3 years ago

It's a marathon. When you don't enjoy it, start a new one. There will always be bureaucracy, just deal with it and disconnect at the end of the day so you can do the things you love with the people you love.

icedchai• 3 years ago

The truth is, a lot of this work is drudgery. You either get used to it or find something else to do.

hgsgm2• 3 years ago

s/this//

When you get older you lose the fun of learning new stuff, and you are paid to do what to know.

ceva• 3 years ago

Funny thing is i was mentioning milw0rm this morning to a colleague and remembering the old days when astalavista was a thing :) nice story thanks for sharing!

4RealFreedom4• 3 years ago

I read astalavista and thought you meant AltaVista. After rereading, I'm not sure.

gtirloni3• 3 years ago

astalavista was the security search engine (or portal-like website).

AltaVista was a Google competitor, IIRC.

quacked• 3 years ago

If you're looking to avoid burnout, it helps to think of your profession as something entirely separately from your identity. I'm not an "aerospace engineer" or a "project manager", I am merely a man who plies the trades of engineering and project management during the day. That's the service I provide to society in exchange for food, fuel, land, tools, weapons, medicine, textiles, etc. (I don't think it's a fair trade but that's out of the scope of this discussion.) The parts of life that I actually consider meaningful parts of my identity occur outside of work and mostly revolve around my family, friends, religion, storytelling, and art.

This may kind of seem tautological, but I think adding the extra degree of mental separation (I am a man/woman who practices X profession vs. I am X profession) can help clear your head and open new life avenues to you. If you spend 8 years grinding for a graduate degree and enter into an obscenely competitive job market and find little success, it's easy to feel claustrophobic and like you've failed if you take a job outside your field. However if you think "for 8 years I performed statistics, writing, lecturing, and reading, and now in order to make my fortune I'll try another trade" you feel feel less indebted to your past self and make more clearheaded decisions about what to do in life.

DeathArrow3• 3 years ago

I work to provide food for my children and me. I am not my work. Even if I like development, I do more interesting types of development outside of my job.

pizzaknife• 3 years ago

my friends, consider only working 4days a week, 6hrs a day, and your profession not defining you, your value nor your ego. Its not a simple matter but worth the effort. Full disclosure i struggle w self value statement constantly still

tiffanyh2• 3 years ago

Some general (unsolicited) advice ... for whatever field you're interested in - go work for a company that sells that as a service.

E.g.,

- Don't be an internal company accountant, go work for Big 4 accounting firm to sell your skills

- Don't be in internal company IT Security, go work for a company who sells that skill

It's all about moving up in the value chain. By moving up in the value chain, you're more "valued" / appreciated / sought after.

You're general happiness will be much better as a result, and you'll also make much more money.

DebtDeflation• 3 years ago

Yes. You always want to be part of a profit center, where (directly or indirectly) there is revenue associated with what you do, rather than being part of a cost center where you are just an expense for the company.

dreamcompiler• 3 years ago

Likewise if you work for a company that sells a security product you're in a profit center, which is good. What's bad is that those sales are extremely difficult to make because what your company is selling is avoidance of loss which is much harder to sell than a product that increases revenue.

This is more true if you're a small startup selling a security product. It's less true if you're one of the top 5 companies in the field.

DeathArrow3• 3 years ago

How would that work for a developer?

RugnirViking• 3 years ago

work for a company where you are developing the comapny's main product, and where the product can be substantially improved by further development. For example, working to develop a website for a supermarket chain, or an app for dominoes pizza, will always have a limit and little respect

zaphod12• 3 years ago

I agree that is it more lucrative that way. But I super disagree with the happiness part. I don't know anyone working at an IT security company, but know many many lawyers and a handful of accountants. 90% of them ditched big law firms/Big 4 accounting firms as soon as their resume was sufficient to do so because the quality of life was terrible. Very very long hours, demanding clients and political atmospheres (As you go up) around bringing in business. By and large the folks that stayed are workaholics who highly valued money and status.

1 good friend of mine, was a super driven lawyer at a huge world-class firm in NYC. She got cancer, and had to take a leave. Fortunately she recovered fully and quit basically the first moment she got back. This isn't one of those 'she left to follow her passion in the arts' cases - she LOVES being a lawyer, but she realized she wasn't living a life. Now she's in-house at a multi-national brewing company.

Anyhow, all that to say - you may be more valued, but it's much easier to be the client!

saagarjha4• 3 years ago

This isn’t universally true. Large tech companies have a need for specialists and are willing to pay quite well for it.

tiffanyh2• 3 years ago

They might pay well, but if you're not in a profit center for the company - you won't be as valued as much as those who are.

sasas• 3 years ago

Taking your passion and making it your day work is obviously tempting but also a risky game, as you will keep “working” tirelessly if you’re not putting barrier

Risky game indeed. It’s 1:24am here in Australia and I’ve finally stopped attempting to reverse a network protocol for an embedded device which I’m pentesting. Reading the article is a good reminder of what can happen if you push it too far. The challenge is with this type of work you often have to put in the hours, particularly if it’s a hard target..

If you lack the passion and drive you simply just won’t retain and develop the skills required to deliver. If seasoned pentesters disagree, then I’m all ears.

jordanmorgan10• 3 years ago

Does anyone else wonder what their life might have been if you had never gotten into tech? I sometimes think I may be happier, but certainly less wealthy. My free time would probably be just that, free time - instead of having the relentless drive I have to do another app, blog post, etc.

On the other hand - the "hustle" economy is everywhere now, not just tech. Everyone has a side gig, and the grass isn't always greener. So, who knows.

Great post and best of luck in management.

_2uwr• 3 years ago

I do, knowing the physical and mental harm of being stuck in front of a computer for most of my life, believe it or not but being sat in a chair for extended periods of time is considered a stress position, and not getting the fun exercise to keep you body fit, bugs me a lot as my health declines and the so called experts ie doctors dont know enough and they are risk averse conformists.

swader9993• 3 years ago

Most non technical white collar sit in front of a computer all day too. Trades like electrical, plumbing, mechanic etc wear out their bodies.

Other jobs that emphasize relationships like sales is something I wonder if might have been a better path. In your old age you have a nice rolodex to market yourself with instead of a decaying skill set that gets more difficult to refresh as you age.

DeathArrow3• 3 years ago

When I was 18-20 I was also passionate about infosec. But I liked development more and infosec didn't seem at that time a domain that is very easy to find employment and gain money.

saagarjha4• 3 years ago

You can find a role as a software engineer with a security focus.

justin_oaks3• 3 years ago

I haven't see a lot of job postings for those. It's either a dedicated security professional, or a software engineer.

I once worked for company making a security product. The other software engineers knew almost nothing about security or secure coding practices. It was never a requirement for the company to hire people with security skills, nor did security skills even get taught! I tend to think that's the norm in the industry, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

bayesian_horse3• 3 years ago

I had watched a few courses on information security and noticed that those working in the more management / corporate related infosec roles seemed to be massively overweight, almost all of them (I am too, btw). Not saying that to shame anyone, just: Does the job make you miserable or stressed out?

I have been forced to do the infosec role as a "side thing" in a couple of jobs now, mainly because nobody else was around that even had the basic skills. One of the things that discouraged me from going further in that field is that it doesn't seem to make people all that happy and fulfilled. Again, I may be wrong on that, as an outsider looking in.

conorcleary• 3 years ago

You're always, always going to be playing catch-up with criminals. It's a defense-only game. It's also like the scenario that caused the development of police radar detector-detectors, etc.

debacle• 3 years ago

Security is always a cost. It's never a benefit until after someone has already been hacked, and you're the cleanup crew/IT oncologist.

I decided 10 years ago to never work in a role/company where my job didn't contribute to the bottom line. It's much more satisfying.

mango72833• 3 years ago

I was a lot happier when I was working for a security tool vendor than I am now working in itsec on the customer side...

bell-cot• 3 years ago

Oh, yes. Infosec has all the downsides of being an ER/ICU nurse at a miserably understaffed hospital, with ~none of the upsides of saving people or genuine patient/family gratitude.

mango72833• 3 years ago

Haha you said it...

bayesian_horse3• 3 years ago

The pay is better though.

nekitamo• 3 years ago

In infosec the hours are long, morale is fatalist, but at least the pay is good and jobs are plentiful.

You have to make sure you manage your relationship with your job carefully, or you will burn out as the author did.

mango72833• 3 years ago

I manage a monitoring and ir team and am obese. I tend to stress eat and there is a lot of stress playing defense all the time.

justin_oaks3• 3 years ago

If you prevent all the security threats, nobody notices, and the bosses wonder why they even pay you. If a security issue gets through, the bosses wonder why they even pay you.

bayesian_horse3• 3 years ago

Meditation could be helpful. Maybe the "Muse" EEG headset might be something for you.

Medication shouldn't be out of the question to stop the stress from killing you. I don't need to know any specifics but just when you say "stress" and "overweight" I can tell you to get checked for at the very least sleep apnea and diabetes. Both can and will ruin your day if you don't catch them early enough, and most people don't.

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

* high or higher stress role

* can be demanding or irregular in terms of hours

* real, genuine infosec requires deeper knowledge of OS's, protocols, tools, programming & scripting, etc. Gotta be a little more experience to get that, and even more experienced to move away from it into mgmt or higher level roles. In other words, older office worker, and that means more gut.

justin_oaks3• 3 years ago

I'm very interested in security vulnerabilities and clever hacks. Because of that I thought I'd be good in a security role. Then I discovered that defending against security problems is awful.

The biggest security weaknesses are people. Employee get socially engineered or phished. Management doesn't take security seriously so they put only a tiny budget toward security. Lazy sysadmins don't keep their systems patched. Software developers can't be bothered to learn how to write secure software, and this is mostly because their bosses don't incentivize them to. Security vendors often hype up their snake oil products. Good security protocols and technologies aren't adopted because people don't want to change.

Dealing with these human problems is awful, demoralizing, and generally unsolvable.

SadWebDeveloper2• 3 years ago

I have said it before and still say... InfoSec is a glorified policy writer.

You spent more time 90% of the time "writing documentation" rather than on finding the security problem and suggesting the fix. That's why i choose development rather than InfoSec (despite having a knack for it), because its more technical and i don't need to explain "why" everytime.

_tk_5• 3 years ago

I think you are mistaken. Obviously InfoSec is a rather generalising term, while you are abstractly describing the work of someone that works in Application Security.

SadWebDeveloper2• 3 years ago

I would rephrase the question... what InfoSec jobs doesn't involve spending writing documentation?

pentesting? 20% finding the low hanging fruit, 80% writing and explaining your findings.

forensics? 10% finding how they did it, 90% writing and explaining your findings.

malware/policy/security/cloud security analyst? 100% writing and explaining your findings.

the list goes on and on... you are basically and a slave for word processing software, thats why totally understand OP quitting infosec.

supertrope• 3 years ago

The best security tools and practices won't protect the business if they're not used consistently. Policy is how things get done. It's an expression of the business' values and priorities. Even if it's just "all employees must install the authenticator app or request a Yubikey otherwise the cyberinsurance will drop us."

mellosouls• 3 years ago

For anybody tempted to skim or not read the article, the title [ps. "quit" is a bit less awkward - imo, natch :) ] is a bit misleading; the main takeaway at the end is the rather more positive:

Looking back, working in infosec was such a great experience and I recommend it to anyone who wants to jump in!

The reflections generally about knowing when to move on are more field-agnostic.

_tk_5• 3 years ago

I have been working in infosec for 10 years now. I know this author doesn't want to convince anyone, and I am happy that they are happy. :)

But I am kinda wondering why this brings so much attention? To me this reads like a long trip down memory lane. Is your takeaway: "if your job and your hobby are too similar, then this will lead to burnout?" Or is it "a job in infosec will lead to burnout, because infosec has certain inherent problems?"

recrudesce• 3 years ago

I think it's mostly that the echo chamber that is the Infosec world gets tiring after a while.

Let's just shout "ffs, just patch yo' shit" rather than actually trying to educate people.

Let's all go to a hacking convention, and act like children and hack everything within arms reach at all times.

Let's all belittle people who don't have the same level of technical skill as us.

Let's all be arseholes to women in the field.

etc etc. that's why I took a step back, because for all the "we want to help you fix things to make the world a more secure place", the infosec industry seems to not want to help make it happen.

PeterStuer• 3 years ago

"Quitted", srsly?

Yeah, blow my karma idk

owlglass• 3 years ago

Even if English is the lingua franca of the world, people master it to varying degrees. Also, it seems like 'quitted' was the more common form up until the ~late 1930s [1], so it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that, if this person learned with some vintage material or they read classics, they've seen 'quitted' more often.

[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=had+quitted%2C...

badrabbit• 3 years ago

@PaulSec, Why didn't you move to blue team side of things? It may have been more enjoyable catching actual threat actors and learning the latesr tech/platform/attack sp you can defend against it. Glad it worked out for you though.

I almost can't imagine not working in infosec, it might feel like losing a limb I think. It's not the assembly, exploits,etc... that does it for me but how I am never bored and always learning something new. The feeling when you find a compromise by sophisticated actor or even stop a compromise in progress, even if no one ever hears about it is amazing. I did networking and other types of jobs that were great too but eventually you master those more or less and start to get bored. I suspect pentesting is similar in that you learn new techniques all the time but the vulns you find are still the same stuff more or less? I have no idea, just guessing. I guess what I am trying to say is how rare it is to find someone with passion for infosec that applies themselves and how broad the industry is (maybe you might enjoy being an instructor or manager?) and how any job in infosec would love to have you because of your background.

I quit infosec and I couldn't be happier

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