SwiftOnSecurityNov 10, 2022

This is my story. It's a fluke. A mistake. I should be dead.

I was born to an aerospace engineer turned IT engineer dad, and a childhood speech pathologist mother. (You can stop here it explains everything)

I was both great and terrible at school. A perfect archetype of, "If they just applied themselves they would be great."

As a side-job, my father in the early 2000s ran a webhosting firm out of our 1800sqft home. So I grew up with a T1 line. Which is both insane and completely fucked. I had my own website built with Microsoft Frontpage – in elementary school. It was pages of high-resolution pictures of animals I found. Because bandwidth meant nothing to me.

In middle school, was was recruited to redesign the school's website, pulled out of class weekly to use the Vice-Principal's MacBook to use Dreamweaver. I cleanly reimplemented and honed the existing design, and made my own additions. I used Photoshop healing brush to remove concrete gum stains on all the photos to make it look more appealing. This took a very long time. The site is still on Internet Archive.

In high school I was allowed the "elective" class period to simply be the IT Guy's assistant. I helped administer a fleet of the first generation of OSX eMacs, with files hosted on a Windows server.

This was when I first discovered plugging an Ethernet hub into itself would bring the whole network down. (Sorry Adrian)

Part 1

Show threadSwiftOnSecurityNov 10, 2022

Due to my problems but promise I dropped out of high-school and enrolled into an HS/College program on a local Community College campus. I took some HS classes, some college classes. It was great. But I was a broken dumbass and ruined it by purposely getting 0 (zero) on a standardized test.

This was flagged by the district office staff, and I had to apologize and volunteer time. In retrospect I was being a little shit throwing their generous life raft in the pyre. I deeply regret it. I was a fucking idiot without perspective on what was being thrown my way.

Eliding other stuff, I was kidnapped and enrolled in a residential treatment program. I had it pretty good compared to other kids since I didn't get sent to Wilderness which is where they put mentally disturbed children into the forest and even if you break your own arm you don't get sent to the hospital.

But I completely my GED there (99th percentile gang - wooooo) and got discharged before my 18th birthday. It wasn't all bad I learned how to snowboard. But I was a teen and this felt like forever and I cried every single night for a year. This part could be a whole series.

Part 2

Show threadSwiftOnSecurityNov 10, 2022

<skipping personal stuff> I got a job at a firm through a temp agency, helping setup and support other temps computers on a converted indoor volleyball court. This was due to a surge in phone-based support demand for business reasons.

The contract started a few days before my 18th birthday so the agency just lied. I was a 17-year-old with a GED and working in IT. At least in America that's pretty weird.

Anyway, due to my IT support forum knowledge and other nerd hobbies, I quickly distinguished myself amongst the hired staff. I was Very Fucking Good at everything asked of me to perform.

Part 3

Show threadkrisz

@SwiftOnSecurity Younger folks have asked me how I got into tech (so they can emulate it), and while my story isn't quite as colorful the response is similar:

"You won't be able to follow the same path I took".

Nov 10, 2022 at 12:50amWeb
Show threadJos Nov 10, 2022
@kriszentner @SwiftOnSecurity Yeah, I tell people, “I don’t think ‘get a music degree while falling sideways into computers by hanging out in the labs with people at 3 AM’ is quite the viable path to tech employment that it was in the late 90s…”
Show threadJason BraatzNov 10, 2022
@castillar @kriszentner @SwiftOnSecurity you too, huh?
Show threadJos Nov 10, 2022
@jasonbraatz @kriszentner @SwiftOnSecurity Hah! We need a club for this.
Show threadMatt EricksonNov 10, 2022

@SwiftOnSecurity @kriszentner Big same here. Thank you so much for sharing. I left, avoided, or fired from some good jobs, then spent too long making below minimum wage on 1099s. Now I’m doing well and figuring out high-level data architecture and orbital simulation for some upcoming space missions.

It’s been a fantastic ride but I *cannot* recommend it to anyone; I spent way too much time where any one thing going wrong could have brought it all down.

Show threadSam Hetchler (Kg6hxm)Nov 10, 2022
@kriszentner My story is "Well, I stumbled around and got really lucky. Some parts really sucked. I wouldn't suggest following that path."
Show threadsilarsisNov 10, 2022

@kriszentner @SwiftOnSecurity same - "fail uni then drop out of tech college to work at an ISP" doesn't work the same way these days...

I'd say "grow up with the tech at the bleeding edge" but I'm also really really aware I was very lucky my chosen tech turned out to be the one that took off.

Show threadAphrodite (recharging)Nov 10, 2022
@kriszentner @SwiftOnSecurity this is the rare time I wish I could QRB because it’s not just in IT that this idea is true, as I’ve found out the hard way recently.
Show threadJoel WilbanksNov 10, 2022

@kriszentner @SwiftOnSecurity Same, seems that the paths took in the 90s involved luck, a small amount of drive, and willingness to mess with “the new thing”. Wait, that’s still a valid recipe… but I think the difference is that “luck” and “drive” are in short supply… or just get mismatched.

When someone asks about taking my path, I try to boll it down to a set of perspectives and strategies rather than exact steps. Happy to share if anyone is interested.

Show threadJessica FergusonNov 10, 2022
@kriszentner @SwiftOnSecurity Same - I often have folks ask me how to get into security, and my answer is - not the way I did....
Show threadStuBanhammer 🐀 mouse validatedNov 10, 2022
@kriszentner @SwiftOnSecurity It took me 45 years to get to where I am today...the path took that long to create.