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I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

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Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#231

Post by authoritarian »

dogman144 wrote: post #202

1) Increasingly, if you want to be in infosec, you have to learn how to code on the level of a SWE. This is how to not lose your mind when constantly addressing sec issues that others (devs) are entirely responsible for fixing. 2) Department of No doesn't have to be a thing, it just takes some emotional intelligence and pragmatism. 'Always saying no' is as much the fault of the sec eng as it is the system. If you hav…

>Increasingly, if you want to be in infosec, you have to learn how to code on the level of a SWE

I think this depends on what kind of infosec work you plan to be doing. I have been a security engineer for the past 4ish years, and while I do have some programming/scripting skills it certainly isn't at the level of a SWE. Most of the projects I work on I end up doing pentesting, risk assessments, remediation for compliance, assisting with policies/procedures, and/or security focused devops work. It would definitely be useful if I could program at the level of an SWE, and I do plan to continue to develop my skills, but I wouldn't say that to be in infosec you have to learn to code at the level of an SWE. I agree with all your other points

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#232

Post by masonhensley »

Aeolun wrote: post #214
BlueTemplar wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any counter-example in mind ?

The best architectures, requirements and designs come from a team with a fantastic lead/architect/product manager?

Yes. If you think of it, the industry has been growing faster than fantastic leads/architects/ project managers can be developed. Those roles take time & experience to nurture, develop battle scars & grow.

As a backfill, many orgs are forcing people to pinch hit that are in over their head (not their fault, often times they are also stepping up to help which is great!) The problem is that these people & teams get to the point where they are just trying to survive until the next sprint.

Wash & repeat sprint to sprint, deploy something to check the box but it’s building a house of cards.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#233

Post by loco5niner »

czechdeveloper wrote: post #98
Iv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, it took me a long time to accept that people not caring was ok. Now I realize that my dad is frustrated I never learned something as simple as changing the oil on my car. My mom does not understand how I can't name more than two flowers and can't bake a pie. My legal-minded friends are astounded I do not take a day to work on my legal status to pay less taxes. Hell, my wife does the paperwork I am not even…

This I don't understand. You are interested in economy and politics, yet you don't know how to file taxes. Is that not connected? If you understand mechanics, yet can't do maintenance on your car, not even talking about fixing anything. This level of theoretical knowledge that can't overreach to reality to do basic tasks seems just irrelevant to me. What is it good for apart of talking about it?

You are reading this wrong.

Never said he couldn't change the oil on his car, just that he never bothered to. Didn't say he couldn't do his taxes, just that his wife takes care of it.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#234

Post by loco5niner »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #45
Iv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, it took me a long time to accept that people not caring was ok. Now I realize that my dad is frustrated I never learned something as simple as changing the oil on my car. My mom does not understand how I can't name more than two flowers and can't bake a pie. My legal-minded friends are astounded I do not take a day to work on my legal status to pay less taxes. Hell, my wife does the paperwork I am not even…

I can't accept that not caring is ok. The small "I don't care" extends into "I don't care about anything outside my immediate environment" and that has political and eventually global consequences. If their bank account is drained they will care, and get angry, and then maybe do something (but preferably the bank will recompense them in which case they feel better and go back to not caring). Some stuff you just can't…

> I really do not understand people.

If you cared to, you could learn how.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#235

Post by pm90 »

dogman144 wrote: post #202

1) Increasingly, if you want to be in infosec, you have to learn how to code on the level of a SWE. This is how to not lose your mind when constantly addressing sec issues that others (devs) are entirely responsible for fixing. 2) Department of No doesn't have to be a thing, it just takes some emotional intelligence and pragmatism. 'Always saying no' is as much the fault of the sec eng as it is the system. If you hav…

I think you make some excellent points. One side effect of working with Agile instead of waterfall systems is that changes are being pushed out to production at a staggering pace, the job of the Infosec person today requires some understanding of the fundamentals of SWE. Hilariously, I see this in my own organization, which has a Security department staffed by old-school "security" folks who have very very little idea about what our systems actually do, what kind of crypto methods they use to secure etc... and there is one person who does and she is the only person who gets anything done.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#236

Post by umvi »

sekh60 wrote: post #206
umvi wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't trust security people to do sane things Seriously. Security decisions that demolish UX can tank entire products. Recent-ish example: Oracle VirtualBox. Used to love that software and I would recommend it to friends needing VMs. They added a new hardening feature that makes it unusable on my setup for whatever reason (VMs fail to start with "hardening failures"). There is no option to disable the hardening f…

Just curious if you have considered migrating from VirtualBox to Hyper-V given you are doing your work on a Windows laptop.

No, actually I had somehow never heard of Hyper-V before today (or maybe I had but for some reason it didn't click it was software I could make VMs with). Great suggestion, I'll look into it.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#237

Post by lidHanteyk »

finnthehuman wrote: post #185

I'm a recovering security guy. When I listen to security people rant, I can see their points and it's a bit of fun, I like a good rant. But I get the impression that they're continuously discovering new and exciting ways that individual facets of individual pieces of software (and the processes around them) suck. All without ever accepting that the entirety of the software ecosystem sucks (and that they're rarely mov…

There is a paper on "balls of mud" that I feel is essential reading for our discipline. http://www.laputan.org/mud/

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#238

Post by nathanvanfleet »

I think it's kind of funny how burn out was previously described and how it really is. I think that if I had challenging interesting work, and my work reviews also matched my efforts, I could come into work every day and work really hard. But if either of those things are out of balance, it gets really hard to keep motivated and wake up in the morning.

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#239

Post by rymohr »

finnthehuman wrote: post #185

I'm a recovering security guy. When I listen to security people rant, I can see their points and it's a bit of fun, I like a good rant. But I get the impression that they're continuously discovering new and exciting ways that individual facets of individual pieces of software (and the processes around them) suck. All without ever accepting that the entirety of the software ecosystem sucks (and that they're rarely mov…

I hate when I see people throwing in the towel like this.

As a two developer company with four separate products doing nearly $500k in ARR collectively, Kumu [1] is a living example that it doesn’t have to be this way.

We rely heavily on bash, docker and cloudformation.

We only use Ubuntu LTS and we lag a release behind so there are plenty of tutorials available when it comes time to upgrade.

After experimenting with backbone, coffee script, flow, vue and multiple redux libraries we’ve settled on rewriting everything in typescript and developing our own thin redux abstraction.

Embrace new tech that makes developers’ lives easier while hopefully making things more secure too.

I get it if that’s not possible in large enterprise companies, but please don’t throw all software under the bus. Software is and will always be fun and there are still fun companies to work for if you’re willing to take a little risk.

[1]: https://kumu.io

Re: I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off

#240

Post by formercoder »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #125
formercoder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of your productivity for those tied to excel, word, and powerpoint

this. I think most office workers couldn't care less if they run Windows. But they know those Excel hotkeys as well as any Vim hacker knows the escape key.

As a vim to excel user I’ve always wanted to create an addon that maps vim hotkeys to excel. My only fear is that I’d get too used to it and not be able to use any machine that I sit down at.
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