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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

#81

Post by EnderMB »

I don't explicitly work in security, but I've had a handful of arguments in the past where I've discovered a serious vulnerability, and been told either by my managers or by a client that it is low-priority.

Sometimes, the vulnerability was then exploited, and what shocked me was that people were okay with this. I won't name names, but one marketing department I worked with was happier to suffer a customer data leak over having to spend budget during the end of the year to fix the issue. I later learned that the IT department got in trouble for allowing the error to happen, when the system was entirely managed by us and our sole point of contact was with someone in marketing that left their position because they didn't get on with IT.

If there's one thing I learned, it's that the ultimate currency in business is risk, and that the software/IT industry lacks the power to really do anything when a company is found to be negligent. For many, the risk of "being caught" is worth not spending money on preventative issues, and ultimately there's absolutely nothing we can do about it outside of covering our asses when the finger is pointed our way.

You only need to look at the Panera Bread security breach to see that all the badmouthing on Twitter did nothing to stop the company from painting its own narrative. Hell, the WordPress theme/plugin company Pipdig was caught ddosing its rivals with their software, and all they had to do was lay low on social media for a month and lie in a blog post. The worst part was that their non-techie customers were all too happy to back them up, meaning that the WordPress security community had zero clout to really do anything.

I have the utmost respect for anyone that works in security, because you're fighting a battle that no one wants to win, and is often a battle where it feels your partners are silently rooting for the other side.

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

#82

Post by varjag »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #78
eitland wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As well as cutting 98% of your workforce as no office employee knows how to work on anything different. Techies repeating this should take a lot of the blame for why Windows still sell as well as it does. A 50 year old electrician convinced me to start using Ubuntu 13 years ago after someone at his kids elementary school or something had told him. UX wise Linux passed Windows in many areas around the time Ubuntu wa…

> UX wise Linux passed Windows in many areas around the time Ubuntu was introduced. Is this something you decided on your own was a fact? If I disagree, would I be wrong, stubborn and/or incompetent?

Probably under stubbornness. Whatever good things Windows has going, it's not the UI.

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

#83

Post by varjag »

formercoder wrote: post #77
shifto wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well as cutting 98% of your workforce as no office employee knows how to work on anything different.

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

https://products.office.com/en-us/mac/microsoft-office-for-m...

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

#84

Post by CathedralBorrow »

varjag wrote: post #82
CathedralBorrow wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UX wise Linux passed Windows in many areas around the time Ubuntu was introduced. Is this something you decided on your own was a fact? If I disagree, would I be wrong, stubborn and/or incompetent?

Probably under stubbornness. Whatever good things Windows has going, it's not the UI.

I didn't say that. I disagreed with the statement of fact that Linux had passed Windows UX-wise in many ways around 2004.

Also, I wouldn't conflate UI and UX.

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

raducu wrote: post #64
trymas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm tempted to just credit myself 1 monetary unit in production and just show them the statement. I would be tempted too, though I could bet that this will be a termination of an employment, instead of the problem being fixed. I would like to be proven wrong on this speculation..

Yes, that's what I thought as well.I'll just have to suck it up until the test environments are up again and provide a proof of concept exploit. I'm just impatient because it's a really clever and somewhat complex hack that challenges some multi-threading and transactionability assumptions some people mande and I can't really talk about it(which I'd love to share with my peers).

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by gorgoiler »

Thanks for the essay. I’ve often seen, and myself felt the frustration of the productivity mismatch of having to work with other teams, vendors, and third party products that drag their heels, are rigid, or inflexible.

When your day-to-day involves writing code — putting together hundreds of moving parts in a code editor and shipping levels of complexity orders of magnitude greater than any previous era of the Industrial Age — it can be a real drag to get slowed down by things that aren’t code.

We have to work as teams of course, and it’s enriching when you’re all on the same page. People scoff at mission and statements and company values, but once you start working with an external vendor you realize the importance of the literal meaning of company. When you’re forced to work with something inflexible it’s ok to hack around it. It’s our bread and butter to do so.

But having to hack around things will build a sense of resentment especially when it happens over and over again, and in particular if you ever find yourself doing that to an internal product it can be a serious enough red flag to require some major org changes.

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

#87

Post by dredmorbius »

pif wrote: post #37

You are not pissed off, you are burned out. When all the people around you are fine and you can't cope with the environment, it's time to look for professional help, for your sake.

Por que no los dos?

Burnout is complex and seems to have multiple causes. But chief elements are 1) being overwhelmed and 2) having no sense of agency or effectiveness.

Being in a situation in which:

1) You have clear view of the problems.

2) Others around you deny they exist, and/or

3) Actively prevent you from addressing them, and/or

4) Fail to provide you the tools, time, staff, authority, or other resources to address the problem(s), and/or

5) Act, operate, or produce / deliver products in ways that are completely insufficient to the problem domain

6) Or other forms of denial, frustration, sabotage, etc., of an effective response ...

... I think that someone in such a situation would become both angry and burnt out.

In fact, I could empathise quite strongly with such feelings.

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

#88

Post by CathedralBorrow »

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…

> many people don't want to put in the effort to learn stuff that would benefit them immediately

I take it you're not counting yourself in that group? Have you already learned everything that would benefit you immediately?

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

#89

Post by dredmorbius »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #31

Basically everyone wants security, but nobody wants to pay for it. Maybe the market equilibrium means people don't get hurt enough yet.

Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder. But ain't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight.

https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=4UlgXIL0-3g

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

#90

Post by teekert »

EnderMB wrote: post #81

I don't explicitly work in security, but I've had a handful of arguments in the past where I've discovered a serious vulnerability, and been told either by my managers or by a client that it is low-priority. Sometimes, the vulnerability was then exploited, and what shocked me was that people were okay with this. I won't name names, but one marketing department I worked with was happier to suffer a customer data leak…

That's why EU laws to punish such negligence are a good thing. They increase the risk for companies, to something very specific.
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