Is a Job in Cybersecurity Right for You? A Day in the Life of a Cybersecurity Expert

Welcome to another episode of the Petronella Technology Group podcast. I am here by myself, except for Blake is here to

Yeah. We're one in the same.

nobody in place.

Yeah.

If you're with Blake, you still feel all alone, but he hasn't happened. yeah, so today is a really cool podcast that we're gonna be discussing and it might be relevant to some people that are listening right now. Blake, do you want to share what the podcast is?

The honor. Yeah. how did decide if your career in cybersecurity is right for you or pretty much what we do every day, however you want to call it,

Whatever it is that we do. So,

whatever we do.

so Blake Blake, you have a really, really interesting history that seems like it was tailor made for a job at a company such as this. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your past work history? Just pretend that you're in a job interview, but more fun..

I can tell you how I landed here. I don't want to talk about some of my past employers kind of embarrassing, but, I think I mentioned this in another podcast. Maybe either watch podcasts, but I was taking apart my mom's camera. And it was a video camera and then she found me taking it apart and I got in super trouble, but I really always had a fascination for putting things back together. So obviously that leads right into technology. Understanding how things work is really important to me, because that's how you improve the world if you understand how something works, you can better it.

Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective.

Yeah. even my relation to. but no, that's just the way the world works. Right. You have these masters of technology or science or whatever that have such a huge understanding of the complexities of a problem. And they dedicate their life to solving it or mastering it or improving it. And for the most part, every piece of technology exists for that reason.

It's almost like what you're talking about is you're going inward in order to go outward, you're trying to understand the fundamentals so that you can then expand on it is what it sounds like to me.

it's never really been broken down to me like that, but that seems the right consensus. So in technology and cybersecurity, right? More leading into what we're talking about here. I hate to say, but it attracts complicated minds. Minds that are always moving, that are always overly active. We all have add every single one of us at the company,

No, huh? Oh my God. It's so pretty outside. Blake, did you look outside yet today?

maybe undiagnosed, but we all have add.

Oh, no, I'm definitely diagnosed.

I don't know, I'm probably diagnosed. I just maybe forgot. there's another thing. it just attracts a unique complex mind. I think cyber secure.

I think when you say complex, what I think of, especially in the realm of cybersecurity, It's not even necessarily an analytical mind, but a curious mind.

For sure.

We all know I am not a technical person. I'm not a complete Luddite when it comes to technology, but don't have a technical mind. I'm more of a feeler, you know what I mean? again, in Myers-Briggs an NFP, F is feeling so it's feeling versus thinking I'm not a think Kerr in that way. So I kind of make decisions with how I feel about things. So I'm not interested in necessarily technical aspects of cybersecurity, but I am absolutely fascinated by. The virus is how they work. What did they do? What can people do to protect themselves? Things like that more on that scale,

Also, it seems like the psychological side of it is really interesting to you. Understanding the chemistry between people and technology. I feel like that's pretty interesting and attractive to you

it is a hundred percent,

We have different reasons for being here, but a part of every company there's the building blocks of a company. And then there's the glue that glues, the building blocks together for the bricks and mortar, however you want to reference it. I feel like I'm a break and I feel like you're a mortar.

I could see that to you. Yeah, I would say, um, the glue.

Yeah. You're the cybersecurity

I feel like I encompass all of you guys and try to keep us all together, and keep everything moving forward and into a certain direction. Yeah.

to do your job adequately, you have to understand all of us. Right.

Yeah, I would say so.

that's, my thing. That's how I ended up here. That's how my mind works as well. I just want to understand everything so I can push it and better it in progress. It, I guess a good reference is garden. The plants when you're gardening, tell you everything. Okay. Well, flowers are wilting is droopy, starting to die. I started to wither, starting to wilt, obviously it may need water or if has black spots on it or something, they could be sunburn. There's so many different things they have to look at. Cause everything telling you something.

we all look at life almost like it's a puzzle. Right.

it is,

And I think that that's kind of how we look at cybersecurity.

it is, it's a complex puzzle and that's why so hard and we've been working so effortlessly to systematize everything as a cyber security provider. But when a business comes in contact with us makes contact with us and hits us up, everybody has a different problem. There's never the same problem. So having a system for that is super challenging. It's like you're chasing something as moving, it's hard to catch something as moving. So having a system for that is incredibly challenging and it's not for the faint of heart, I guess is the right word, because it's always frustrating. But the people that come into this path and this career field, they're definitely not, from my opinion, they're not the procrastinators, they don't last very long in this industry. They get excited about something and move on. The root of every problem is the exact same. Everybody needs to be more secure. Death is the root of every problem, but securing businesses is never the same process.

No, it's not.

we try and systematize there where we assess a business first and understand how we can improve on the structure of their it division or their cybersecurity, or if it's compliance, we usually start with that assessment deep diving the company.

Madison.

In my opinion, this career year just attracts the die hard, never give up, overthinkers with add

Yeah. That's, a really good point. I think that it also attracts people that are not attracted to rigidity, not attracted to doing the same thing every day. If I had to do the same thing everyday, I, couldn't do it. It would not work out for me. And I think that we're adrenaline junkies in a way, not necessarily during the Linde junkies, like jumping out of an airplane, adrenaline, but solving a problem. Thinking quickly on your feet, I think is another thing that all of us seem to have in common, because it's important to be able to try to identify problems that people are having. And obviously my experience working in cybersecurity is different than your experience working in cyber security. I do more project management. we all do everything because a small company, so, I might be the project manager, but I don't even know what your title, what is your title? Do you have a title here? I don't know.

I like to call myself the marketer,

Yeah.

I like to consider myself in the marketing department because a lot of my job is content creation, content curation. Obviously I work in the cyber security and compliance as well helping businesses get compliant. I've done some audits, some cybersecurity audits for some of our clients, technical support if I needed, if I have to be wearing that hat. But yeah, mostly content creation and curation for sure.

we're all, Jack and Jill's of all trades. I feel like maybe not all trades, but multiple trades. I've done marketing to you. I'm doing project management. It's different every day. Just how I like it.

what, I really like about working at a small to medium-sized company? I think we're a small team. We're a small, tight, nimble team, but I think we're probably closer in than maybe a medium-sized business, I don't know, it could be wrong. I dunno what defines those, categories, but I used to work at fortune 50. Tech companies and the way that things operate there are so different, is very rare. And here's a real world example that happened to me. I was working at more largest tech companies in the world. I'm not going to say their name, but we all use them every day. And. We had some broken processes that were really frustrating to me, going back to my personality, I saw how broke they were and of course, what did I want to do? I want to fix them. So literally spent my nights and weekends developing a strategy and a process to fix this broken processes, broken system. There was a team leader and that was responsible for what we called the portal. The portal was kind of like the master hub of everything living and breathing that this company, all the assets, all the solutions, all the resources, all the contacts, it was like a master membranes. For the inter workings of the company and everything could be done from there. You can solve any problem. The company had from that portal sounds pretty epic, I had the solution to fix that. I had the ability to fix that and I had the path to fix that. So I pulled the team leader aside and said, Hey, look, here's what needs to happen? I live and breathe this portal every day. Here's the shortcomings. And this was like a three hour meeting with an executive at a huge company. It started off with like, Hey, let me get 30 minutes of your time. Ended up being three hours. People were looking for me in the office, like where's Blake, why doesn't he work in? But no, no. So I came out of his office and as I was walking, he was like, oh yeah, Let me think about this, or let me get back to you or something. And then I walked out of the door and as soon as I would get down the hallway, he opened his door again, sick Blake, Blake, Blake, come back, come back. I've already thought about it. I've already thought about it. 30 seconds. And then he's like have a seat. So I sat down and he said, all your ideas are amazing. I love all the thought and creativity that you've put into this. I love that you've given me a strategy to present, to roll this out and to make this happen, in a real world, because most people just come to these executives have problems. They never come with solutions, Hey, here's how you do this. And he said to me, I love this. I want to do this, but I can't do this. I don't have authority. To execute this plan. And I said, well, if you don't have the authority to execute this and who does, and he's like, I don't know.

How frustrating is that, and that is the problem with working in a big company. Yeah, that's a really good point, Blake, because in a big company it's a lot harder to make changes than in a small company. you know, like I got to say, it is so refreshing working for Craig sometimes because if you come to him and you tell him the problem and you have a solution and it's a logical rational solution, that's going to help the business. He'll listen. I would say, I don't know if he's ever really told me, no, don't do that. He's very open to solutions. He's just like us he's at add, he's a solution oriented results driven person. And it's funny Blake, because something I've noticed about myself, I like efficiency. I like to fix problems too. So I notice a problem and my brain works overtime to figure it out, What can I do to fix this? This is a problem. How can I make this more efficient? my brain just goes at it fall angle. Until it comes up with a solution and in certain companies that I've worked for, I think that people actually find out a little bit, not just overwhelming, but also intimidating oddly, because I came up with the solution, they think that they're the problem when they're not the problem, it's just like, no, this is just what I've my brain's been focusing on. So a lot of people get offended by things like that when it's not. At all to be offensive. But a problem solving efficiency, motivated mind. I think you're the same way too. It's really helpful also in this industry

it isn't the efficiency that bothered. Obviously I wanted to improve something, so maybe that weighs into it. But at the end of the day, if I did something great or did something amazing, nobody would recognize it. maybe, the leadership team. Or my direct reports would take credit for my work.

Oh, yeah.

And that drove me up the walls. and the training process. I told people that I worked at this company, they were like, oh my gosh, how was it? I've heard great things. And the hype is so, uh,

Overhyped?

definitely over-hyped and people have no idea what really goes on at the company and during the training process first of all, when I applied, I'd never expected to hear back from them. Of course you always apply for those dream jobs and you hope that someone's going to call you and you just think, you put your application, you said, Hey, I just wasted all my time doing this. I'm sure nobody's gonna ever call me. And then when you get that call, you're like, Hey, what the hell? What happens? Is this even real? Anyway, So once I got the call and they said, Hey, we want to put you through our training program. We think you'd be a good fit for the company. Of course, I go to the training program and this all paid training, of course, but teaching you how things were you, what life is like at the company, how you can be impactful at the company? I use that word a lot, and there was like 50 or 60 people there. Yeah. And I was like, oh, this is a big class. They were doing trainings like this, every other week here. So 60 people come in and they would train them. And every single day people would just not show up for the training. And started becoming friends with the person that was training these people and people just wouldn't show up or he would just tell them to not come the next day. Cause he's like, look, your vibe is wrong. The questions you asked in class, I can just tell you're not going to be a good fit for this job. And for the class of 60 people they were making two offers. You had to shine to get that job, went through the training, every single day, I was still there. I was still there. I was still there. next thing there's like four or five of us Almost musical chairs who's going to get the chairs. I felt like I was on one of those TV shows,

sounds really stressful, actually like, survivor.

it is, for sure. but then the last five of us, they, literally we're like, Hey, we appreciate all of you for coming in. The two that we don't select, we're going to give you, like a lump song. For making it this far, I think they were handing out checks for 5,000, $6,000 at the end of it, just for people. I didn't make it, to help them because they may have left jobs or other things to come interview and consider this as an opportunity. I think they were writing checks for five or 6,000 to help them kind of find something and roll into something else.

that sounds like a bad business model. To be honest with you.

It is for sure.

That's just not very efficient. I like efficiency.

Yeah, no. It was garbage and obviously me and one of my other friends who I lost contact with, we both got the jobs. we sat next to each other and then they would assign your team. And you would work with that team. It was a huge facility. And yeah, they would cater food every day because there was never enough employees. Any time you would come in to work, shit was always hitting the fan. You never got out of stress when you're at that job. Everything was stressful. Everything was performance-based, everything was timed. Going to spend a lot of time on the phone, dealing with vendors and customers, and everything was timed. And if you weren't troubleshooting things the right way, you would get a strike against you. They're like, oh, here's what you're supposed to do. You have to submit a report of the call and you had your team leader, which was picking apart your reports. They're like, oh, well, if you submit a report, that's inaccurate, then they're going to have a strike against you. And if you have a certain number of strikes against you, you're not going to work here anymore. Cause we need accurate employees that are top-notch, detail oriented. And if you're not detail or like you have no place here,

That's a real good way to squash innovation. If you're just completely. Performance-based or results driven or not even that, but you have to be right the first time. No, well, somebody already made a mistake. They made a mistake. Let them learn from the mistake. That just seems crazy.

According to them, that was what the team leaders are therefore to say, Hey, look, we're here to catch you. We're here to catch your mistakes. And you should be lucky that we're your team use because we're catching all your mistakes. And if we let these mistakes past through, then, you may not be employed here anymore. Yada yada yada type of stuff. So anyways worked there for maybe three years, surprisingly three years, and every single day, I felt like I wasn't performing. I wasn't doing my job. I felt like I was on the chopping block every single day, every single week. Your team leaders would do weekly evaluations with you to see, your day to day. And they print out a report of your metrics and stuff like that. And then you do monthly one-on-ones. So you'd have daily performance. Check-ins. Weekly meetings with your team leader and then monthly meetings with the floor leaders. and so you had monthly as with those and my team leader. Made me feel so bad. I was like, I'm gonna lose my job. I'm gonna lose my health. I was having some health problems at the time. I was like, I'm gonna lose my job and lose my health insurance. I don't know what I'm going to do. I had a lot of bills piling up. If I lose this job, I don't really know what I'm going to do. And every single weekly meeting, they would just crush me flattened. Flattened me like, Hey, you need some improvement. They would give you a score card and, oh, here's the, where you're at with your scorecard. Like grade me on my performance.

This is gross. This is like grossing me out.

It gets worse.

Oh God.

It gets worse. They did that to me for like three years and I never had a single. Good mark. I was subpar in every single category, according to them every week.

were you aware of what other people were getting?

Mike other people's marks.

yeah.

Yeah, I was, and everybody was quite similar.

Okay. That's what I was wondering.

was a pretty average employee for the most part. I wasn't a shining star. What I wasn't underperforming in the monthly calls or the monthly meetings with the floor leader, I would go into this same thing and I was going to lose my job. They're going to fire me

it sounds abusive almost honestly.

I'm going to lead into this and I understand this, this is what you learn at fortune 500 companies or fortune 50 or whatever. they all have different tactics, but I would go into the monthly meetings with the team leader and the team leader would be, yeah. I looked at your reports for the week and there's some improvements to be done, but overall you're on a good path. And I was like, that's a 180 from what I've been hearing, every week every day. I did that for three years. And then eventually the psychology of it just started like grinding away at my self worth. At the end of it, I didn't feel complete. I felt gross, even going home and taking a shower, did make me feel clean, and then. I thought about this. I thought about why, they did, let me take a lot of vacations, a lot of paid vacations, which was cool. I went to Sweden for like a month

Oh, nice.

yeah, I was a paid vacation. I didn't have to worry about anything. I didn't even bring a laptop to Sweden that. Cool. Sweden and Ukraine. But I thought about this, after, when I was on the way out, I knew I was like, look, this is not for me. Been here three years. I thought it would get better. It didn't get better. I need to find something else. I literally thought about this. And I understand why. They run like that because when you're in fear, fear is motivation. They, wanted a group of overachievers. If you were going through these reports saying, Hey, you're a great employee that dah, you're the best. You're a superstar, then everybody will become complacent.

And their mind and they're twisted little minds. That's what they think. But that's not the truth.

it's true. it's true. for sure.

know I'm telling you, if you want me to work for you and you want me to work hard for you, you'll treat me with kindness and respect and you'll get kindness and respect. If you treat me like crap, I'm going to treat you like crap. I don't care who you are. I don't care for my manager. I don't care. I don't care. You're going to treat me well, like you want to be treated so no, that kind of environment does not work well for me,

Yeah.

it does not.

to be fair into dispute that, we come from in the different generations for the most part. and not only that too, this was probably maybe six or eight years ago. And. The way that the workplaces operated then at that time is a lot different than the way workplaces operate. Now. Now it's more about personal happiness produces happy employees and happy employees produce great work. That's the advanced that's happened in the workplace within the past. three years. For years, and especially with COVID now, employers realize people at home are productive, they're not slacking off.

I will tell you, I will tell you I've been working since 1995. So when I got my first job and I have been fired more than once, have I ever been fired for. Performance issues? No, not even close. But I get into trouble, quote unquote, when I feel like I'm being mistreated. It doesn't work out well. for me personally, I couldn't work for a place like. For very long. It wouldn't, work out.

I hear you. I agree. And now I look back and I feel the exact same way as you. If you have no choice, then you have no choice for the most part. And whenever all this went down, actually ended up quitting or I put it in two week notice and then they confiscated my laptop within four days. Four days into my two week notice, they confiscated my laptop and said, Hey, just go.

Okay.

Yeah. And it was like,

Thanks.

sure. Yeah, no problem. But obviously that was a huge experience for me. Because it was such a reflection of internally. And I was like, okay, I'm never working at a fortune 50 fortune 500 company ever again. I want to work in a workplace where I'm appreciated, where have direct contact with the leadership team and I can be influential. That was. My intuition at the time, like, Hey, here's what I needed to do. And that didn't happen. I worked at two other huge companies after that. One of them was best buy. I worked at best buy, It was interesting and cool at the same time. But what I think about best buy as a company, as I have zero respect for that. entity just entirely, because the way they treat their employees is the exact same thing. you had to have sales metrics that were nearly unrealistic for the most part, I guess it just depends in my opinion, you had to get so many. Credit card signups a day, they expected you to sign up somebody for a credit card a day. So you'd have to have 30 credit card applications by the end of the month, which is hard, it's pretty hard. Imagined just getting pitched on a credit card every day, it happens at every. Every business, every fortune 500, every huge business you go into or there's like bath and body works, or Hey, you want to join our credit card program or whatever.

I just tell people you wouldn't give me one anyway. So it makes everybody feel better.

Even in that instance, the application was what they counted.

gotcha. But the application hurts your credit score. So

right.

even more.

So it was like, oh, well, we can still give it a shot, let's give it a shot, that was the training. Right. And then eventually they rolled out a leasing program. They rolled out this leasing program and the leasing program was like this company, progressive leasing. And let's just say you wanted to buy a $5,000 laptop or something by the end of the lease, you would pay $10,000 for that lab.

Yeah. Yep. A lot of people don't really understand interest rates. And how they work it is sad. It's horrible. And it's also horrible, the way that corporations take advantage of things like that, or push their employees to do things that they know might not necessarily be right for the client. I've definitely worked at companies like, and it's just like no, I'm not transferring them to that program because I don't want to mess, them up. I don't care. How many times you want me to do this a month? it's not happening.

That's how I felt.

Yeah. I bet.

You know, what's really funny. And the whole bigger picture here. I was there for. Probably another two or three years think best buy does a great job at training employees, especially if their sales training program is insane. I actually was top 1% in the company. I went to Savannah, Georgia on a photography journey. Cause I worked in the camera department on a photography journey with the top 1% of the company, it was maybe like 50 people out of who knows how many employees best buy has hundreds, thousands. I don't know.

That's impressive.

It was pretty cool. And not only that too, but my performance got my leader there. They had a team leader in my performance, got him there.

Nice.

So he was, yeah, it was pretty cool. We went there together. It was cool. We were hanging out just doing guys shit. At the end of it, they would separate you into different groups and depending on the camera company you represented, there was separate. And I was with Canon. At the end of the time they had Canon photography coaches and, at the end of the day, you do photography missions. Oh, what the mission was this day, at that day, whatever. And at the end of the whole. training event, they put everybody together in the room and they would literally select the best photos from the event. had five photos that represented different assignments and out of the five photos that were selected at the end of it. Three of them are mine.

Shut up

Joe.

That's awesome.

I couldn't even believe everybody was just looking at me like they on this stab me. cause they were giving away gift cards. They were giving away $500 gift cards

my God. So you got $1,500.

1500 bucks in best buy gift cards, just like that. And I'm I was like, dude, you are such a Dick. At the end of the day, like I said something to the coach, I was like, dude, why'd you guys choose me out there? We had no idea that it was you every single time. If we would've known it was you, we would have chosen other candidates because, we just,

We don't want people to hate you.

At the end of the day, it's more about being fair, I don't care, the fact that I won 500 bucks,

What are the chances to

it's unreal. And then they published my photos and best buy corporate magazines,

oh wow. that's really cool. That is. It's always fun to learn more about you. I didn't know all of that, so maybe other people find it boring. I don't know, but I definitely have a hearing work tails myself. Like I said, I've been, fired before.

That's my fired me.

Oh really? Well, I think that my brother got fired too, they fire good people.

they fired me a week after that a week after I got top

Yeah.

and came back from Savannah, they fired me a week after that for using my cell phone.

Okay. I have no words.

I went to court against them too. And lost in court.

you lost.

Yep. Yep.

Zach, my older brother who also works with us by the way. He had a pretty bad experience there, obviously that's his story to tell, but.

Got to get him on the podcast.

I've been trying. Let's try you try.

He's not going to keep from me.

Yes. He will well, thanks a lot. So you want a job in cyber security, you don't necessarily have to be the brightest and the best, but you do have to be the most curious and you have to like problems.

Yeah, you'll know if everything else seems uninteresting to you and everything else doesn't fulfill you in your life and your, career, then you'll automatically know. And if you're interested in tech you're an analytical person, welcome to cybersecurity. We need you.

Yeah. We do. We do need you. And there's also other roles besides just being a technician. I would be a horrible technician, but well, maybe if I got training, I could learn it,

There's a shortage. There's not enough people to employ. every cybersecurity specialist can leave one company and go right into a career to another one. And the pay is awesome. The pay is insane. The benefits are insane. I just took a huge, epic dump on fortune 500. But at a lot of those companies you get stock options and epic health benefits. And it's definitely a good place to cut your teeth and then maybe decide if it's right for you. But if you're an analytical person and you never feel satisfied by the way, things are. And you love technology and you love and evergreen evolving environment, and you never want to do the same thing every single day, then welcome and come to our side.

Do you have add,

I do. I do.

if you have add, is come apply.

yeah, if you were diagnosed with add, come on.

welcome you. We welcome you.

here. we're here.

Yeah. Cause I feel like I have an interesting pathway that I got here too, but that's for another time.

a lot of times, you'll end up here

I did not plan on ending up here,

I didn't either. I wanted to be an airplane pilot, but here I am.

I have no idea what I wanted to do. I want it to be a cybersecurity specialist.

Yeah. But when you think about this as a kid and we'll leave it here, but as a child, and we've talked about this before, you always want to be those very serious. Typical exciting. Oh, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a firefighter. Oh, I want to be a police officer. I want to be an airplane pilot, yada, yada, who ever said. They want to be in cybersecurity or in technology, or. I remember this so vividly, my grandpa was sick and he was in the hospital and all the family was coming to see him. And this was like distant family relative that I'd never seen because we had a huge family and my grandpa said something to him like, Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he's like, oh, I want to be an app developer. And I was like, mind blown.

That's adorable.

that didn't exist When I was a kid.

Definitely didn't exist when I was a kid.

I'm super optimistic hopefully for the energy generation. And there's plenty of opportunity here in tech. I do marketing and technology. So if it's the best of both worlds.

It is well, Blake, thanks a lot. I'm sure I'll talk to you. Scene five, like.