Focus on Security in IT

Speaker 1 0:16

This is the Art of Network Engineering podcast . Welcome back to another episode of the Art of Network Engineering . I am AJ Murray at no Blinky Blinky on Twitter , and tonight I am joined by Tim Bertino at Tim Bertino . Tim , how are you ?

Speaker 2 0:50

Doing good , AJ . So good to see you , my friend .

Speaker 1 0:53

Likewise , sir , hope you're doing well .

Speaker 2 0:55

You know we've been having a fair amount of episodes around security and cybersecurity lately and I've found that that's kind of where I've been drawn lately . I mean , you know me , I've tried to lean into being more broad in skill sets and more rounded versus digging deep into one specific thing . But this past year I've been digging more into security . I did the security plus . I've been doing the Cisco Rev up to research that's around cybersecurity right now . And I'll tell you what recent guest we had .

Speaker 2 1:27

John Breth talked about how , even if you're not specializing in cybersecurity as an IT professional I like how we put it . He said really anybody in IT , and not even just IT and the entire organization you can see them as being part of the blue team Because you know cybersecurity is really part of it's everybody's job in one fastener or another , even if you're not specializing it . So it's , it's been fun . I've really been leaning into it . I mean anything that , anything that I do . I try to think from the and look at from a lens of cybersecurity . So it's , it's been fun . What's up with you lately ?

Speaker 1 2:04

Well , I agree with you . We've been doing a lot of cybersecurity stuff lately . Securities should be front of mind as we record this episode . There is a huge breach in Cisco iOS XE . If you are running the web page that's hosted on the router for management . There is a CVE out there that an attacker and it has been found to be used in the wild already . So somebody can can take over , create a privileged 15 account through that web authentication portal and then log into the router and do all sorts of crazy stuff to it . So that was just announced yesterday . So go , go disable HTTP and HTTPS if you haven't already .

Speaker 2 2:48

Yeah , CVSS of 10.0 .

Speaker 1 2:50

Yeah , yeah , that's , it's very , very severe . So , yeah , I mean , you're right like we might not all have the title of cybersecurity architects or security engineer or anything like that , but you know everything we do . We got to be security minded , right Like . You know the thing that I do for all my customers we have basic best practices as far as security goes , you know , because we don't want to leave the obvious stuff out there , right Like we don't . We don't need a switch that we put into service for a customer to get obviously pwned for silly reasons . So , yeah , no , these are fun conversations and you know , I definitely learned a lot from from John , and I think we're going to learn a lot from our guests this evening . Outside of that , it's it's mid October as we record this episode . I'm sure it'll hit maybe in December , maybe January , and we'll be freezing our boots off . But no , it's been good . You know , I like the season changing it's .

Speaker 2 3:50

It's really nice up here and I was going to say , you're probably in one of the best places on the planet at this time of the year , so and you only know that because you were here because I was there . Pictures do not do it justice . No , you got to . You got to experience the Vermont in October .

Speaker 1 4:07

And you know what's frustrating is , as a photographer , I look online . I see some of these , these photos that people are posting of the area and some of them look absolutely nothing like what's going on here , because they're just like completely grabbing that saturation slider and cranking it all the way up and like everything that's green in the photo turns orange and it's like that's not at all what it looks like , but I'm glad you got 10,000 views or likes or whatever , but I digress .

Speaker 1 4:33

So yeah , as Tim said , we have another security focus guest this evening . I'm very excited to welcome Brian to the show . He is an enterprise architect for a very large company here in the US and he also posts a lot on crypto , on TikTok under Kryptonite , and I saw a lot of his TikToks around management and how he's handled certain situations and he posts , of course , very heavy tech content stuff as well and I just felt like it was a great match . So , brian , welcome to the show . Thanks for joining us .

Speaker 4 5:02

Yeah , thanks for having me . This is , this could be fun .

Speaker 1 5:05

Absolutely . So , to kick things off , I would love to get like a Cliff Notes version of your career . How'd you get started ? What drew you into tech and IT ? And you know , work our way to where you are today .

Speaker 4 5:17

Sure , For context , I'm in my mid 50s , so you know kind of getting back to that slope I've been . I started in technology working for a small publishing company in Boulder , colorado , for a long time and I was just always , you know , no internet to help us out . And , but I had some fantastic mentors all throughout my journey and I just was piling on learning things as I came through . I was focused on I was an OBD base for database guy for a while .

Speaker 4 5:48

But I had the owner of a small company , hand me Novel Network 3 .

Speaker 4 5:51

I forgot which one was 3.2 , I think and say install this because he didn't want to pay the $50 an hour for a Novel CNE to do it In 1989 , you don't install network from the documentation . I mean it's designed to be done by a CNE but I modeled through it , got the small office setup and fell in love with technology at that point in time . So from there I worked for some small vars doing fantastic , doing Novel . And then I ended up landing a job for the government at the CU School of Medicine , did networking and Novel there for a while and then really progressed and just kept on chugging away doing the .

Speaker 4 6:26

You know what it now feels commonplace back then wasn't , which is changing jobs every two or three years . And then in 99 , I ended up going full time security for the first time it had been a part of my job . But you know we're talking last century , so security wasn't a thing on in and of its own . But I got an opportunity to go work for level three communications , so big in internet provider that was starting to come online backbone provider . We hadn't built our network yet . I was a fairly early employee since they started in 98 .

Speaker 4 6:53

And I was there at the very beginning of 99 and work my way through up engineering and eventually was the manager of a security engineering working for people . I guess I won't name any other people there because they might not appreciate it . My boss there was very big about not ever getting his picture taken , but he's the guy that would be mentioned in frack in 2600 , generally not in a positive way because he tended to get people in trouble . He was the ultimate white hat .

Speaker 3 7:18

And then after that .

Speaker 4 7:19

I got kind of tired of managing . I wasn't a good manager , I don't think . And then , so I just went and did consulting for a while . I had been at level three for seven years and decided I needed to see you get used to how your company does business right .

Speaker 3 7:32

And I'm like , you know when I'm talking to these other companies .

Speaker 4 7:35

When we're making , these companies give us their security stuff .

Speaker 3 7:38

Are they doing ?

Speaker 4 7:39

what they say they're doing . So I went and worked for a consulting company and went and found out that other companies , by and large , are lying through their teeth about their security as well , and that gave me comfort , unfortunately . And then , from there , my career took off . I took a contracting job at Denver International Airport . They had just had a data breach . Someone drove away with 30 some odd thousand credit card numbers , and I was part of the 11th hour team to get him online . I was just a documentation done managing just just let me write policies .

Speaker 4 8:11

But then someone created a problem and I , for better or for worse , demonstrated my technical prowess at that time .

Speaker 4 8:17

And the CIO is like why are you a contractor and why are you writing documentation ? So he brought me on board full time and then within a year he made with the chief IT security officer because he realized how much experience I actually had . He didn't rise , I was just hiding from the world at that point in time . And then , I think two years later , he made me the C . I was the first chief information security officer for Denver International Airport which is a division of the city and county of Denver .

Speaker 4 8:39

So the first one for the city at the city and county of Denver , not for the city and county of Denver . And then after that , I was recruited into us into an internet startup that eventually was bought by Oracle . I was the head of security for that organization and for that arm of Oracle . And then I we hired my replacement because I was having some issues with my boss , you know , say it kind of like that we had different visions for security and so eventually , you know , basically gave me years notice and then so , a year later , I'm like I'm going to take nine months off . I'm just again back to the . I'm done with all of this .

Speaker 4 9:14

I'd had a team of like 22 people at Oracle and then after about two weeks I got a call from a recruiter . Different story , but I got a call from recruiter and he said do you want to take a job at this energy company ? I'm like what is it ? He said , well , they're looking for an architect , but this is just an engineering position . I'm like no , I'm going to take nine months off . He's like that's a good thing . You don't want to do it , it's a shit show anyway . And I'm like okay tell me more .

Speaker 4 9:39

So what this energy company had done is their base was in Houston , okay , and they made the conscious choice to move their base from Houston to Denver because , in their mind , if they stayed in Houston , they were going to continue to get the same old school energy people working for them , and they viewed Denver as an innovation hub , although at the end of the day , I think we decided to CEO just like Denver . So this whole story I'm saying , I think , really falls down to CEO just prefer Denver . But they moved it to Denver and myself and most of my teammates and my boss and other people did not come from this industry . We were coming from all kinds of other ones . You know software development , you know stuff like that , and that ended up being really good for us because we're innovating the crap out of this place when it's , you know , it's probably a 100 year old company you know , and now we're innovating because we're not stuck into the idea of oil and gas .

Speaker 4 10:30

And like , as I told you guys before the show I was , they hired me eventually as the architect . I'm engineering for a month and he's like , why the hell you're an engineer , do you want to apply for the architect position ? I'm like that's the only reason I showed up . Yes , actually was to apply for the architect position . Oh , so my point from see this is how I work , my apologies .

Speaker 4 10:48

When they moved from Houston to Denver , they lost all their team , all the security people quit , most of the tech people quit , and that was kind of by design . But the shit show the contractor talked about was the fact yeah , you're walking in there . There's like two people there where there used to be a much bigger team , so you're walking into a shit show . And that got me excited because what I did at the internet startup and what I did at DIA was that gave me opportunities to build my own team and that's my happy place , so managed to build my own team . I've got a fantastic team here . And then , after a couple years here , they asked me if I would take a leadership position because we had some other teams that they felt could benefit from my leadership style . So I started doing that a year ago . So now I own what we call digital security . I own network network engineering and architecture and cloud engineering and architecture .

Speaker 3 11:32

And we have separate .

Speaker 4 11:34

I also own operations , but we also have a separate application operations team that I don't own . So I don't own the whole wall of apps . But my team is called infrastructure , All right .

Speaker 1 11:43

So I love the story here because I've also worked at a place that was an absolute shit show and then helped it recover , restore , build the right team , get the right people in and get things going in the right direction again , and there's something just really , really fun about that , and so I will be looking for another one of those opportunities later on in my career , for sure .

Airport Breach, Building a Team

Speaker 1 12:03

But I want to just go back to the Denver International Airport incident that you were talking about To get some clarification . So you said you were working there as a contractor , but you it sounds like you were there as a contractor Before the incident happened . You weren't brought on .

Speaker 4 12:20

No , I was brought on at the 11th hour , so incident has happened at the beginning of 2006 .

Speaker 1 12:25

Okay .

Speaker 4 12:25

The super short story of that is someone was fired and one of their jobs was to take the tapes to Iron Mountain .

Speaker 3 12:32

Gotcha .

Speaker 4 12:32

And they said fuck that they went home .

Speaker 1 12:34

I mean .

Speaker 4 12:36

Okay . But visa said that's a breach and , of interesting note , the person who was fired was the brother , or something like that , of One of the managers , and that manager was a technology manager . So he had to step back and say I can't have anything to do with this , because there's a perception of a constant agreement , so they just brought me in .

Speaker 4 12:55

So I think the incident happened in March . I came in in August and at that point they had already gone through their audit and we were working with a remediation crew and the person who was doing the policies and documentation and stuff she had gotten another job and they were trying to replace her . So I'm like I can do that . You're paying a lot of money as a contractor . So I just stepped in to do that , just just to take an easy , fun job , and then one of the critical assets there .

Speaker 4 13:20

People was supposed to have something done by a December 15th date , that was . That was a closing date for audit evidence and that particular thing was he was supposed to have a snort box up and running on on a switchboard on a span port .

Speaker 4 13:33

He said he had had it done . He disappeared 15 throws around and it's not done or we can't figure out how to get into it , and so everyone's having a fit . The guy who left was one of the primary network people and also probably the only Linux person there . You know , I actually know this stuff fairly well . So I went in , booted , you know , in a single user mode , overwrote the password , booted the Linux box up , found out he had actually not done anything . There was no , none of the . The fiber interfaces were configured , it basically nothing was done .

Speaker 4 14:01

So I set it up , you know , and it is a fun little challenge , right , it's just like it's not not a big deal . I've been doing that kind of stuff for a while at this point , but there was a lady there . Despite how I present , I'm a very introverted person . Okay , I don't like being around people . You suck my energy .

Speaker 3 14:16

Okay , that's why I like tick-tock .

Speaker 4 14:17

It's just me . Well , there's a lady who became a great friend of mine . Her name was Jen and she found out what happened . She was actually running the audit and she went and told the sea , the sea , I over CTO . Do you realize that this guy just pulled our balls out of a sling by solving this problem ? So he called me up a while later and just asked me to tell what happened . I'm not one to throw somebody under the bus , but kind of happened anyway , because people could figure out what happened . But she advocated for me . In fact I did a recent tick-tock one of my friends . It said you need to learn how to network and I came back and I said that's not possible for some of us . So my advice is find a person to network who networks .

Speaker 4 14:55

Okay , get out of your comfort zone a little bit . And for me that was Jen . And Jen became my biggest cheerleader and , like I didn't even do anything right , she just was the one who said they're saying you need to check this guy out . She would be Ryan , come meet with the CIO with me , come meet with the manager of aviation , that the CEO of the airport . And she did all that and she literally built that part of my career all by herself . So ever since then it's been me returning the favor . You know I've got some people who work for me . I hate the . Must be a good communicator , must know how to talk to executives . Must you know ? I hate those requirements in job descriptions . No , I'll take care of that for you . Give me someone who ain't talking to people , does their job well , and I'll be the interface . And if you can talk well to people , bonus , but not required .

Speaker 4 15:38

So I get insanely good people working for me because I have reasonable requirements . I give me the autistic person who's gonna hyper focus and solve seven problems in one day that takes someone else two weeks to do . I'll take that person , even if they're a little bit clumsy about talking , and it served me well . I didn't know what I was doing for a long time . I didn't know that's the path I was taking , but that's kind of where it ended up being . So the breach happens . I help get them . See , I committed , I helped get them out of that breach at that time and then that led to , with Jen's help , promoting me Eventually become the CIO . But yeah , the breach actually predated me by Four , five , six months interesting , all right so .

Speaker 1 16:17

So I really like something that you touched on here , because in the past , well , when we talk about some of the important skills that you should have , you know clearly communicating , articulating your point , being able to Address a water audience , be it , you know , technical , non-technical leadership , or whatever . We , you know we've kind of espoused that , but but you , you brought up a really good point . Like , you know , don't , don't go do those things , find someone that can , that can do it for you , like like subcontract that part out , right , absolutely .

Speaker 1 16:44

That's a really cool approach .

Speaker 2 16:46

I think it goes back to something that we've talked about multiple times and had multiple guests talk about it too , and it's rather than spending your entire life trying to shore up weaknesses , lean into what your strengths are in bring build a team around people , or bring a build a team of people around you based on strengths that you need In in play to people's strengths , versus trying to get them to constantly shore up weak weaknesses

Importance of Technical Skills for Managers

Speaker 2 17:10

.

Speaker 4 17:10

Right , we had a we had one person when I was at Oracle God , I hope she doesn't see this , but I think she's heard me tell this story we needed , we needed someone to kind of kickstart our operations team , okay , and we interviewed this person , who is actually the daughter of another employee , okay .

Speaker 3 17:30

so I admit .

Speaker 4 17:32

I had a slight bias . You know , it's not what you know , but who you know sometimes okay . But , I also am not gonna hire someone just to hire them , but maybe that means I'm finding a reason . So we interviewed her and there's a guy that I work with . He helped me interview her , along with some others I'm gonna call him Dave , because that's his name and We've interviewed her and afterwards we're like that was the worst interview .

Speaker 3 17:54

This is a young lady , very introverted , you know just not a communicator .

Speaker 4 17:59

And we're sitting there thinking but man , how important is that role ? How important is that communication side ? It's not . Well , it's the security operations person , possibly a manager . How important is that ? I'm like you know , I'm willing to take a chance and and that opened up the world for us .

Speaker 4 18:13

Because she's nervous in an interview . She was , I don't know , 25 , 27 years old . Okay , so so now she's . She was nervous in the interview . She comes out . She's got the greatest personality . She's a very , not bubbly person , but a very positive person . She's good person to be around and she ended up managing some people and she ended up being an absolute win . And that was because I took that people people side of it off the table . Okay , I'm gonna give her the fact that she interviewed like crap and , oh my gosh , what a game changer . Now you can still interview like crap and not get the job , because Obviously , someone demonstrates those people skills that can be a tiebreaker , but that's not the requirement unless your job requires it , and there are some of those , but not a whole lot of ones that I have are gonna require that .

Speaker 2 19:55

Yeah , I , I think . I think we've got a very large onion we need to peel back here . So , and that is the onion , that is IT management . I think a lot of us see I obviously don't know numbers or anything like that I think a lot of us see that many IT professionals See that the natural part of progression of their careers . If they're technical for a while and they want to move up or they want more money , whatever is that they need to jump into management . You have been somebody who was highly technical for a long period of time and then I don't want to say shifted into management , because it seems like in multiple roles that you've had where you've led teams , you've also kept your hands on the keyboard . You've stayed technical . So how , first off , how important do you think it is for a manager , an IT manager , who maybe was technical , to remain technical , and how hard is it to do that ? How do you find that balance of management and keeping technical skill sets ? That's a huge onion .

Speaker 4 20:59

So so I'm gonna talk to a couple parts of that . So the first one it is important not to be technical .

Speaker 4 21:05

And the context of that is and this is something that I have to work with my current leaders and the previous leaders that I've had . Often the leaders we get in technology are the best at what they do . This guy is your cloud , god , and he becomes a manager because he's the resource . This lady over here she is the ops specialist . She understands our seem to a better than anyone else and she becomes the team lead and probably a manager .

Speaker 3 21:28

They .

Speaker 4 21:28

This is something I learned from Denver international airport and from the city and County of Denver's manager training , which was the best training I've ever got . It just blows me away that it was that good . But they said that your obligation is to grow your people in a step out of their way .

Speaker 4 21:43

So basically , sure I might have once , as a manager , been the fastest person to solve this job , to solve this problem , but very rarely do we need the fastest person to solve it . We need to show someone else the skills up so they can do it . But I have to stay current enough that no one's gonna blow don't want to mix metaphors no one's gonna blow smoke up my snow over my eyes . See , whatever it is . I need to understand the conversation . So I am constantly studying , but I'm now one step away from the keyboard and that is mostly for my team . Okay , I do my technical stuff . Oh , my , just bought another computer off of Amazon because I wanted a physical lab that's under my desk to actually to do some threat management stuff . But it is important to step away from the keyboard for your team Because I've had leaders who say I can just do it , let just just let me do this . Let me do this right now , especially in a remote working environment .

Speaker 4 22:35

Where you're not they're not looking over your shoulder and you probably haven't set up a camera on your freaking keyboard .

Speaker 4 22:40

You owe it to them to get out of the way now one interesting thing at At DIA , when they were picking the CISO , they had two people that they could choose from . One was myself , who was just . I was the chief IT security officer , one of the managers , and we were combining IT security and network security into one under the New CISO . Okay , so I owned this group and then there was another group where their boss had left and became the CISO at the State of Colorado . So when they combine them , it's like , well , do we give that to Brian or do we give it to the other runner up candidate ?

Speaker 4 23:10

This guy was a peer manager . His skill was managing people . Um , knowing what I know now , I wouldn't have had a problem with that . I now concede that management is a skill because I've had not good managers . Okay , but at that point in time the argument that I gave that actually won is that the team does not respect an Unskilled manager , and that has actually been my experience . When you're talking the security , the network , the infrastructure guys , the Hypertactical people , the developers , they tend not to respect a manager who hasn't been where they've been , and ultimately that was my selling point to DIA management and could interestingly , they weren't worried about elevating me above the other teammates , because that's a normal worry , right .

Speaker 4 23:49

For some reason they'd . I don't recall that being an issue , but it was simply why would you be the best ? I'm not because I , because I've been there and I know when to step back , and Thankfully that was the right argument and I think that helps . So it is again about stepping back from them a little bit , giving them the technical lead . That's also the best way to show them appreciation . You got a bomb network gal working for you . You're not gonna take her away from that keyboard . You want her to feel the appreciation and the accomplishment right . Why would I steal that from someone ?

Speaker 2 24:17

and how . How difficult do you think that was for you that you remember to Realize that and put that into practice , to hit those situations where something comes up and and you jump right to it and say , oh , I really could just knock this out really quick . But then you realize the greater good of I really need to empower and enable my team to take care of this . To learn this , to own it , to take that responsibility was that hard initially .

Speaker 4 24:47

No , it wasn't . I think it could be and I think it should be . But for me , having had Mentor privilege , I've always had good mentors . They made it easy for me to have that mindset , as I've seen almost every leader who works for me struggle with that to some point . So I'm gentle with them on that right , um , but for me it generally wasn't hard .

Speaker 4 25:06

But I still make that mistake nowadays I make that mistake more when we're doing , you know , threat modeling or something . It's easier for me . It's like I can move these freaking icons around faster than you I can , I can enumerate the threats in this tool faster than you , but even then it's like I'll step back . It is nice , though , and the thing that I think the team appreciates is where I can step in when the shit hits the fan . I can speed the team up by participating , but I don't do it by ownership , you know , sitting on their shoulder . I do it more by what is our list ? What do you need me to do out of this ? And then I can take that .

Speaker 2 25:38

Yeah , that's cool , and I do want to call something out from Daniel and chat is that for people , for technical minded people that want to remain technical , people management isn't the only path that ? I think that's a stigma that we kind of need to break is that you can find those roles , those senior technical , those Architecture roles that exist for you to be able to move your way up the ladder but but also stay technical .

Speaker 4 26:05

Yeah , Oracle actually had a great path for this . Say what you want about Oracle and their sales tactics , etc . But there's some really cool things about the company that I enjoyed while I was working there .

Speaker 4 26:15

They had two distinct paths . I see individual contributor and the manager path and the IC path . Keep in mind that Larry Ellison I mean he's an architect , okay . He had the utmost respect for people who were architects and engineers , so he wanted to ensure that you had that parallel path . So I think it was an IC . Five is was an architect and that was the equivalent of a director , okay , and a senior architect was the equivalent of a senior director , etc . So , you could go the architect path .

Speaker 4 26:44

You're in the same pay everything else is pretty much the same . You don't have any director course , okay . So maybe the manager gets screwed out of this because they have to deal with the team . But the manager is dealing with the soft side of it and the architect gets a parallel path , paying everything , and gets to be technical .

Speaker 2 26:58

It gets to remain technical and in the weeks and I think it's important to also highlight that there there is a difference between management and leadership . You can be a leader in an organization by even if you are just an individual contributor .

Speaker 1 27:14

Yeah , absolutely , tim . I agree with that . A lot of people think that you know leadership is part of the title . I mean , you can be a manager and you can be a horrible leader and you can be an engineer . You could be entry level and you could still be a leader . Right , it's just you know , if you have the ability to communicate with the team , rally people , help get them going all in the same direction , you can be a leader . Brian , you've brought up mentors quite a bit throughout the conversation and I'm wondering are these mentors people that Just found you and invested in you ? Did you find them and asked them to be your mentor ? How did that mentorship relationship start ?

Speaker 4 27:50

So that's an interesting one . I've had a couple of key mentors and it's it's run the gamut . So Jen found me okay and she was a peer of mine . Okay , she was the project manager for their remediation efforts For PCI and I was the documentation person . So we're both brought in on the contract pretty much at the same time .

Speaker 4 28:12

The first real tech job that I had , a publishing company and voter the owner chose to mentor me and he's a guy

Mentorship, Conflict Management, and Personality Types

Speaker 4 28:19

that when you have a conversation with him I realized in retrospect he was always looking for someone that he could take to the next level . He asked these questions . I remember he asked me one time keep in mind , this is 1988 , 1989 . He's like Brian , how much money do you want to make ? Okay , so now , keep in mind , I was making nine dollars and fifty cents an hour and happy about it at that point in time , okay , and I said I want to make forty thousand dollars a year and that man was so disappointed . You know he's like set your sights a little bit higher , okay . And then he got me to think bigger on things . A million stories there follow me on tiktok and I'll share . But but he got me to think and to realize that by . You know , I don't want to make it sound like raw wrong , so by vocalizing something so low I was really limiting myself . So you know he's like , do you ?

Speaker 4 29:06

want to make a hundred grand a year and I'm you know so out loud I'm saying no , but in my head I'm like , dude , a hundred thousand dollars a month . I mean I'm just like you know , what can I do to make you know some serious bucks ? So he was my first one . He found me , jen found me , then another one that I had . I actually had to go find . I'm like you've been in this industry for a while , can you help me ? And he was a peer of mine and he started walking me through things . He was a reluctant mentor and I've had a few of those as well . You know people who are like you know I'm asking them questions . I'm being the pan and the but , which is not easy for me , okay , because I hate to interrupt and disturb people . But this particular guy his name is Chris . He and I worked at the CU School of Medicine together . He's the guy who introduced me to Linux . That fool .

Speaker 4 29:49

I mean , he's like you he's like you need to try this . This is slack were like dot zero , one , three or I don't know , it's something horrible against . Okay , so this is 1989 . I'd have to look up and see which slack were maybe one dot , one , two . But he's like doing this and then I'm bugging him . How do I compile the kernel ? He's like I'm working , no , you're not , you're compiling the kernel . How do I compile the kernel ? You know , but he and I were very much of the same mindset . We were both fairly shy but he drew me out because he had so much information of his fantastic .

Speaker 4 30:18

So my mentors generally is been a 50-50 me picking them and them picking me . I get literally five requests a week for someone to mentor me on in my tiktok DMs . I'm full , okay , I just , you know , you know , follow me . I recommend other people these . These guys need to follow to get a lot of the same Information . But man , every now and then tells someone , tells me a story . I'm like , okay , do I have room for a show ? The person ? I can't . So I have a couple of people where once a month We'll talk , they'll ask me questions on LinkedIn and I'll give them a little bit of time there . But that's fairly key , but it's not necessary your whole life . It's when you need to pivot is one of the biggest things . Pivot up , pivot sideways . Or if you're not getting the results , you expect someone who's gonna give you honest feedback . Having your boss as a mentor is rough . I'm kind of mentoring to the people who work for me that they were some of the people that were brought underneath me to resolve .

Speaker 4 31:12

So and I kind of had to slow down the mentoring , because now I can't be as brutally honest with them . When we were peers it was easy , you know . I could say you want to be a director and that's your attitude . That doesn't work . Well , now , as a boss , it's like I got to walk a little bit of a different line with them , right , but they're both asking me to continue to be brutally honest with them . So as long as they do .

Speaker 3 31:30

They , and then there's anti mentors .

Speaker 4 31:32

There have been a number of people in my career where I will learn at someone else's expense and say I do not like how this person Manages , this person makes commitments or and breaks them . This person does not like doing certain things , and I even have to shine that at myself . I hate employee events . Hey , we're going for dreams after . Would you want to go ? No , I have a beautiful wife at home in an Xbox . Why the hell would I want to hang out with you ?

Speaker 1 31:54

I .

Speaker 4 31:56

Have to tell myself okay , you know . And . And when I get home , my wife's like so how'd your work go ? Ah , good , everyone's over it , you know , at Rocky Mountain , whatever she'll be like , why aren't you with ? Him . I'm like I don't do that and so she's made me promise to socialize . It's showing my face , you know , but now that I , now that I have like nine direct reports and 50 or people who work for me , it's like okay and I tell them if you , if you end up not showing up to the party , I'm fine with that , I'm fine because , they're all kind of like me , they'll show up .

Speaker 4 32:25

Hey , I made an appearance here . All right , how you guys doing All right , that's great .

Speaker 1 32:35

Oh man , this is such a fun conversation . I'm trying to figure out where I want to go next with it . You've talked a lot about , like conflict management , and I think that that's something that isn't like taught in school , and I think it's something that younger people have a harder time wrapping their head around . You're going to work with people that just Completely rub you the wrong way , that work differently than you do . What are some tactics , recommendations ? Can can people educate themselves on how to deal with these kinds of things ? Let's , let's dive into that a little bit .

Speaker 4 33:06

Okay , first I'm gonna talk to the leaders out there . Okay , so first , much as I like working with people , etc . Etc . Every quarter I have a meeting with my teams . I haven't done at this quarter . Every other quarter I have a meeting with my teams where I talk about team norms , things , that things I expect . Okay , I don't care if you work eight to five , the company does , but I don't . Okay , get your job done . But if you're not here by nine o'clock and you're leaving before four .

Speaker 4 33:30

I at least need to know you know , and mean knowing , means block it off in your calendar . The worst thing is for me to check and say , oh hey , steve should be here , and , and his calendar says he's not busy , and I have nowhere to find him . Okay , so communicating with me ? That's number one . The biggest thing I say , though , is none of us get paid enough to have a bad day or to deal with shitty coworkers , so my promises to my team are if there is someone who's consistently rubbing everyone the wrong way , I will punt them so fast It'll make your head spin . I absolutely will get rid of someone , no matter how good they are , if I think that they aren't Benefiting the team and so that's .

Speaker 4 34:04

That's my leadership conversation . But that doesn't do you any good . If you're one of the people who has been rubbed poorly by One of your peers , okay , that doesn't help you get through that . So I want to talk about the leadership side of that . First . Um , I have been a big proponent , ever since I discovered it existed , about the personality type stuff . You know anything from the Myers-Briggs type indicator to disk Personality tree . There are a number of these . I've always loved them . Mbti , myers-briggs type indicator , um has been shown to be kind of an element of BS . The lady who did it , it was pseudoscience behind it and yet it's true . Okay , and yet whatever that came up with I find incredibly value . I like disk DIC . Don't know anything else about it , but I know where I am on the wheel , um , and I love the idea of when you understand Personality things and you're in a half-game meeting . That explains a lot of the conversations that you have and More often than not , the person who rubbed you the wrong way .

Speaker 4 35:02

It's . It's how they are , it's not what they're thinking , it's , it's not on you , and for 20 years I was a true believer in these things , you know . Oh well , this person is . This person is on the sea side of things . Okay , they are the technical person who just wants to be logical and focus on things , whereas the other person might be an influencer who's happy , go lucky , going around , hey , trying to be buddy this and buddy that , and doesn't understand why this person right here isn't giving them any positive feedback and they think it's negative .

Speaker 4 35:33

The person who is on the sea side of things is like this person's always bugging me , I can't get my job done . I asked him a question . They don't give me a straight answer . Well , when you sit him down in a room and start explaining this , you see the ah-ha's of okay . So that person is that way to everyone , not just me , and that's a function of their personality , and you're told how to work with it . I upped that game by bringing neurodivergence into it , and that was what I was doing with these people . Oh hell , I did that in my marriage . Okay . I'm severe ADHD , if you can tell , with some autism . My wife is autism , with anxiety and depression , okay , and we would have weird fights , okay and we love each other .

Speaker 4 36:06

We've been married for 34 years or something like that . But our conversations completely changed a couple years ago when she realized , oh my god , that's just how he is . It has he doesn't . Didn't be prioritized these things , so , focusing on that , it also changes your . We have not gotten along . We disconnected from my mother-in-law a long time ago , okay , but now I'm reevaluating it's like , oh my god , she's autistic .

Speaker 4 36:28

She's why my wife is the way she is . It's not that she was a bad mother . Mother , she was genetically unfit to be a mother , okay , but that's not her problem . All right . She can't communicate . She has so many of the trappings of autism that we thought she was just a medieval bitch . No , she's just socially in awkward like crazy . That doesn't solve everything . Still not gonna build a bridge there .

Speaker 4 36:50

But when you have that understanding of people so I , when I got this additional responsibility , I've been leaning into understanding personalities , so that gives me a little bit of grace that helps these people get grace . I'm really good about reading some of these people , especially for someone who's autistic , who doesn't see these things . Okay , I can take an analytic approach and help kind of explain people , get people in a room . I can also wash my hands . At the end of the day I can also say that was fun . It's a game getting two people to talk to each other . That's a game to me . Yeah , you know , um , but then when that doesn't work , I'm willing to make a change in the department . Punch them out of the department . Punch them out of the company .

Speaker 4 37:24

Because if one person truly is that problem ? We don't get paid enough to have a shady day .

Speaker 1 37:28

Tim , I'm curious have you ever done any of the personality type stuff ?

Speaker 2 37:31

Um , not any of the Myers-Briggs . I did the emergenetics one recently which I thought was really interesting , and there's what's cool about it is is once everybody understands the different , the different parts of different . It's a color based system as well , is you ? Can you know it work ? If you have like a picture avatar on your chat and email and all that , you can put the ring around your face to show where you are on those different things . And it's helpful because , especially if you're going to go into meetings with different people , and it helps you understand how to approach that and all of that's just out in the open . So , yeah , I do , I do take some , some stock into those things .

Speaker 2 38:18

Brian , you mentioned a minute ago the importance of communication and I agree with you 100% in that we need to be able to talk and work together as a team . Now what I want to ask you is your advice on how to handle that . What are , what are expectations from your team ? If they're remote , they don't see each other very often , because what I've seen as a challenge is that when , when you're all in a room together or in a cube farm , it's so easy for your phone rings or an incident comes in and you get done and you just look over your shoulder and you just naturally talk to your team about it . And now , when you're remote or distributed and you just get hammering on your day and those certain things don't flash in your head that hey , I should tell somebody just because there's nobody around you . So how do you , how do you set expectations for team communication and how do you grow that ?

Speaker 4 39:16

I don't know if either of you are aware of any neuro divergences you may or may not have . Maybe you're a couple

Remote Work, Benefits of Asynchronous Communication

Speaker 4 39:23

of normies . If you're in technology , you're not . I'm sorry , just odds are against you being a normal human being at this point .

Speaker 4 39:30

I am a huge advocate for remote work . Okay , in fact , the very scenario you described is why I hate being okay , even when I wasn't in a leadership position . Okay , if you are an SME in any manner , shape or form , you cannot go half an hour , 10 minutes without someone bugging you . Okay , I love teams , I love zoom , I love slack , I love asynchronous communication . For people like me who , when I was at the top of my game , I was hyper focused on something and everything else can wait . The constant barrage of things slowed me down to about 20% of my pace because , with my ADHD , for me to get back to where I was was damn near impossible . Okay , so quick story , because that's what I do . I was , I was applying for a job . I'd given Oracle my years knows , basically saying I'm , I'm leaving , find a replacement .

Speaker 3 40:18

And I went to apply for a company called Zapier .

Speaker 4 40:20

ZAP I ERcom , if you're not familiar with them .

Speaker 3 40:23

It's a great idea .

Speaker 4 40:25

You give them all your credentials to various sites and services and they will do automation and connect things . When I get this Facebook message , go ahead and forward this tick tock over to this Snapchat . Okay , I mean just whatever . Okay , you basically are giving them to kiss your kingdom . Being the CISO that company would have been fun . Okay , I was the runner up and the guy who got it . That was four years ago now . The guy who got it was still there . So I'll say , hey , they chose well . Okay , he looks like he can do the job really well and I didn't mind losing to him .

Speaker 4 40:55

But in applying for that job , I read all the documentation to hack his dairy 100% remote company . They don't have an office . They will get together once every six months and throw a party . Okay , I don't remember how big there , but I was reading about the things they do for remote work and it just completely open . My , this is pre pandemic . This is nine months before the pandemic hit , and one of the things I read changed how I worked at Oracle . So half of my team was in Denver , half of my team was remote . Okay , and what I started ? You realize that here's a typical meeting . Okay , we come in and we come into thing . Hey , someone brought in donuts . We're chit chatting , you know . We go ahead and dial in , we bring everyone and then we get quiet . Okay , these people , these people , they all missed half the conversation and they missed some of the benefits of what you're talking about . So what is that ? Beer's model was treat everyone as remote .

Speaker 4 41:46

So I started and , plus , at Oracle , is impossible to find a conference room anyway . So every meeting I had , we made a remote . You're going to sit at your desk and if you and I are at desk next to each other , one of us is going to go to a huddle room . Okay , and none of us are going to be in proximity for these meetings . And by setting everyone at the same baseline , oh my gosh , that increased everything for us in increased communication . There were no more side conversations . Everything was in these asynchronous means like teams and slack .

Speaker 4 42:13

I think we yeah , we were a slack shop at that point in time , okay , and things started to get so much better . No one felt isolated , okay . And what we also found is because I was enforcing that , people started sharing their screens and doing a little bit of teaming a little bit better . Hey , I haven't done this , can we go ahead and share a screen ? Okay , put the headset on working together . So that was a game changer , learning how this company managed to do an entire remote work thing for everybody . And this is bar , for I had any idea how much I needed it . It wasn't until I was forced to home that I realized , oh my God , I'm much more productive than I could be .

Speaker 4 42:45

So I literally zap yours the best job that I never got .

Speaker 2 42:48

Yeah , I really like that .

Speaker 2 42:50

The whole , the whole concept of leveling the playing field , making a conscious effort to level the playing field makes makes a ton of sense and I totally understand where you're coming from .

Speaker 2 43:01

On the remote work side , when I you know , pandemic started and everybody went home , one thing , one of the first things I noticed was that when you were in the office and people would would just see you or know you were there and there would be stop and chat after stop and chat , when everybody got distributed and was working from home , the communications via texting and instant message and phone calls , I noticed that those conversations , those methods were a lot more direct and there wasn't a lot of just fluff and extra and people got to the point and I think there's a lot to be said for that , especially people , like you said , that are those subject matter experts that need that deep work time , where what's great about that asynchronous communication is that and that's , I think , something that at the management and the leadership level needs to be , I don't want to say enforced , but at least highly encouraged that yes , it's called instant message , but that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be answered instantly .

Speaker 2 44:36

It is usually my case . Now , like you said , there's balance to everything . You don't want to have somebody that you know it's 10 o'clock in the morning and you're getting zero response and you have no idea what they're doing . You know you can't have that , but I just think you've brought up multiple times where setting expectations is important as a leader and I agree with that 100% .

Speaker 4 44:55

Yeah , I'm a big thinker outside the box , and part of that is I'm a big believer in telling people where the fucking box is so that they know when they're thinking outside of it , and that includes organizations , expectations , etc . Here's the box . Do with it what you will .

Speaker 1 45:10

That's great . I love it . I love it . Let's kind of pivot a little bit . You are on TikTok . You have quite a few followers . What kind of inspired you to start the TikTok and why do you do it ?

Speaker 4 45:25

Here's what's horrible I got a TikTok because I wanted to be funny .

Speaker 3 45:28

One of my bucket list

Neurodivergence and TikTok Growth

Speaker 3 45:30

is to be a standup comedian . Okay , all right , and not going to happen , okay .

Speaker 4 45:38

When your friends laugh at your jokes you realize that's not real life . But I did that , trying , and I would do . You know I would . I did the snarky route for a while . You know stitching people and stuff like that . My first viral video which is still growing now , it's amazing was a conspiracy theory about Denver International . Okay , it's now hit a million views , but it was viral at 250,000 to me and I'm like , oh my God , I got 8,000 followers from that video , every single one of them a far right wing conspiracy net or a far left wing conspiracy net . All right , okay , I fed the troll .

Speaker 3 46:11

I mean that video fed every single one of these , yeah .

Speaker 4 46:15

So then it's like spending the next two years pruning that from . That's unfair to say so that got me those followers and then so that was interesting , so I started telling other and it blows me away . That's like a minute and a half long story . Who the hell watches long TikToks ? Well , if you follow me now , everything I do is two , three , four minutes . And I was watching . I wouldn't watch me . Why are you watching me ? I can't even stand to watch mine . To correct the subtitles I get halfway through I'm like I'm bored and I just finish it off and send it because I don't have that kind of attention span . And then it was literally . And then I had another one go viral which is just a rant about people who stop in the middle of entryways and decide that's the place to have a conversation , Okay . And then it was like , oh my God , how stupid are people . And right around that time we started having an understanding . I called the pandemic the best two years of my life so far . Okay , Because fuck all you All right , I've enjoyed that .

Speaker 4 47:09

But , we started to understand a little bit about what was driving us personally wise , neurodivergent , wise my wife myself , my kind of my kids , pretty much everyone . Oh my God , when I learned my dad yeah , whatever , he'd walk into the house I don't know why I'm bleeding he had hyper focus working in the garage on the car . He would cut himself and wouldn't know because he's too busy to notice that he's bleeding . It's like what a weird dude . Love him , love him . So eventually it was last April , may I had a couple of TikToks get a little bit of traction that were about neurodivergence and information security and they created the beta program and I had a video go kind of popular with like 30 , 40,000 views .

Speaker 4 47:47

And it was funny to call out another TikToker . At that point I think I had 12,000 followers , okay , I'd slowly grown some , but in a year and a half , since the DIA video , 4,000 more followers . And then someone followed me and I did what I always do , which is I looked he's generating current content . I followed him back , okay , isn't it ? His handle is criminal dumb , okay , so yeah , so I follow him back in . His comment was wow , an influencer is following me . I'm like influencer Okay , cause he had like 1500 followers , okay , and within the next month he shot past me to 15,000 . I'm still at 12,000 . He created a tracker that every hour says how many more followers he has than I have . So he was up to 6,000 more followers than I was . He hit 35,000 . I've been creeping up , so now he only has 1500 more . But that was just funny . You know well , I'm being followed by an influencer . Watch this . I'm going to leave the influencer in the dust .

Speaker 4 48:37

You know , and so now we just give each other a lot of crap about that .

Speaker 4 48:41

But , I grew , largely because of influence of him and some of his friend group that he kind of brought along , and I saw that they were focused on just one or two topics information security and whatever . So for me it's been information security , general tech management and neurodivergence . I have cut almost everything I have out of it . Every now and then I'll go what I call outside of my lane because I think I have enough followers to sustain it , and then that video gets to 100 views and I'm like , well , shit , okay , still don't have enough followers to do something outside of my lane . But that is really what it was , and I found a lot of gratification , especially once the people started asking for mentorship . I'm trying to guide some of that stuff and there's a part of me that like to think that some leaders might actually watch me and decide that maybe they need to listen to what I'm saying . One of the more popular ones I had recently was when I went to something called the CIO CTO Roundtable .

Speaker 4 49:32

Okay , this is just an informal group of about 50 people and some lady came up and she was talking about how we she was this former CTO and CEO of a company and she said we need to get people back in the office . You , society doesn't function , you cannot work , you think you don't need to be around people , but you need to be around people . And so after that I sent the guy who founded a message and I said no , no , I want my time to tell her otherwise , to say otherwise . I want the counter argument that I don't need to be around people and at least 10% of the people in this world are that way . And if you're in tech , make it 75 to 90% of us are at least neurodivergent .

Speaker 4 50:08

Some of us need that communication , some of us absolutely shun that . So again , it's not . It's not the same thing across all of us . And then we had , and then he set up a call with me and then now that's going somewhere . We're going to actually do some stuff on neurodivergence with this group of the company I work for actually celebrated neurodivergence day back in , I think , may . I didn't know that was a thing , and here I am Okay . So I think that was a big part of what I don't offer .

Speaker 1 50:35

That's a question All good , all good . And you know what I think I did too , tim , do you remember ?

Speaker 2 50:44

Absolutely not . No , all right .

Speaker 1 50:47

Can we just take a second and define for our audience what ? What is neurodivergence ?

Speaker 4 50:51

Sure , the opposite , of course , is neurotypical , or as I call them normies , normies neurodivergence .

Speaker 4 50:58

I'm not the person to define this . I talk about that , but that doesn't make me an expert . Sure , my expertise is lived experience . I just want people to understand that I know my place . Okay , but when I think of neurodivergence , I'm thinking of people that have some kind of mental processing difference about them . I'm even not willing to call it a disorder , because I experienced it as a superpower . Okay , but this is your ADHD , your autism spectrum , which is an awfully broad set of things and that encompasses anything from anxiety Okay , that could be depression , that could be . What are the people ? Tourette's Okay Is a form of neurodivergence . Obsessive compulsive disorder is a form of neurodivergence . Okay , anything that impacts your thinking dyslexia is a form of neurodivergence . Neurodivergence is anything that sets you apart from standard processing and estimates that I've read it , and I think we don't know say that somewhere between seven and 20% of the population has some form of neurodivergence .

Speaker 4 51:56

It seems like everyone I know has it Okay , and especially now it's become kind of a fad thing . But whether it's a fad thing or not , the objective things that we're seeing people is very much true . Okay , when you talk about people's learned experience , I always have a song going through my head . Okay , I was a narrator in my head and about six months ago I decided that his voice really , really needed to be the guy . What's his name ? I forgot the guy who plays God in the Jim Carrey movies .

Speaker 4 52:22

Okay , yeah , whoever he is he is not the voice in my head that narrates everything I do , because I could , all right , thank you . Thank you , daniel , I'm glad you're paying . Morgan Friedman is in my head all the time . All right , that's awesome . Yeah , and my wife is like what ? My daughter is a fantastic artist . She's neurodivergent is crazy because her parents were so Kong Valley syndrome .

Speaker 4 52:42

And yet she cannot picture things in her mind . I'm like how do you draw , you know ? So I think that she can , and she's just too stupid to realize that she can . Okay , I don't know how I'll say she's , she's a genius . So I call her stupid .

Speaker 4 52:54

with love but , I think a lot of us is trying to understand how our brains are working and maybe not understanding other people's experiences with them . She has to build a picture of things in her head and yet I know now that some people can't . I know that some people can't hear other people's voices . I can picture people's voices all day in my head and in fact , I recently learned that not everyone can , though Most people probably can . Okay , so if I can hear Morgan , morgan Freeman's voice , that sounds like something that would be required to do voice acting . So I created a separate tick tock account just to try to do voice acting , to work with my voice . Since I can hear these voices in my head . I'm not saying I want to mimic them , but I'm learning to change it . And I'm also not putting my face on it , because I think there's a lot of power in that .

Speaker 1 53:36

I mean , if you , if you aren't aware that you might be neurodivergent , or if somebody that you're working with is and you , you know , once you understand and I don't want to say compensate , but work with , once you understand how to work with whatever it is that they have or are dealing with , there's just going to be a whole lot more success .

Speaker 4 53:56

Yeah , I , every now and then I'll do something . I do some speaking engagements of all sizes and I'll do something really stupid , just like , well , I'm waiting , I'll just start going do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do , do do do see no , I can't hum , you've got that . I'm barely in tune . But , man , I'll get every generation and say I've got popcorn going through my head now because of you .

Speaker 1 54:16

I'm like let me see we're coming up on our hour here . What is ? Is there something that we should have asked you , that we haven't covered yet ?

Speaker 4 54:30

before we run out of time , Sure , I think one thing that's worth talking a little bit about is how to get into tech and how to get into information security . Okay , one of my favorite sayings this is shamelessly self quoting myself is not what you know , it's not who you know , it's what you know about whom , ie when you're a security guy and you know what that guy keeps in this weird folder .

Speaker 4 54:48

Okay , but that being said I've talked about

Career Advice for Advancing in Technology

Speaker 4 54:52

mentoring . Okay , we've talked about advocating . I talked about Jen being kind of a personal advocate , for me , at least the one on one . Networking is very important If you want to get in talk to someone . If you're already in the company that has a tech department , start talking to them , start talking to one I'm not even saying them .

Speaker 4 55:07

If you're like me and you don't like talking to new people , Okay , pick someone and talk to . The next time someone comes to your desk , talk to the help this person , get your name out there , because you will never get into technology if someone doesn't know . That's what you want to do . So it begins with expressing interest . Okay , then the second part of that is understand that you can start your tech journey exactly where you're at . I was working for a publishing company .

Speaker 4 55:31

Okay and I was helping the people next to me with their computer because that's where I wanted to go . And eventually the owner saw that took him six months . And then he's like , do you want to help Chuck do the computer stuff ? I'm like , yes , that would be great . Okay , I didn't ask him . He saw it again . This is the guy I told you . He was kind of looking for people that maybe he could mentor . So express an interest , get to know people in your immediate circle who are there . It's easier if they work where you work let let them know .

Speaker 4 55:58

But the biggest thing and this is the hardest one for so many people , it was easy for me is no one to cut and run . If you've become friends with a couple of technical people in your organization and you just don't see an opportunity to start looking , the thing that helps . That is easier to get a job . When you already have a job , there's no stress , you're more relaxed and interviews , you can have a good time with it . If the opportunity isn't materializing and the people aren't interacting with you where you're at cut and run , find a different opportunity . That is kind of what it takes . Get a job that has to . If you're not in tech , get a job that has technology in it anywhere . Get a freaking help disposition . If you can take the pay cut , do it for your . It's on your resume . Double your pay at the next job If you're already in technology .

Speaker 4 56:36

Get good at something . Get decent at the network . Become knowledgeable on the cloud . Learn something about databases , okay , anything like that . Okay , get good enough that you see the problems with it and start talking to your security people and , if it doesn't go anywhere , become the security person in your area of expertise . Okay , I'm going to focus on the cloud . And why are all of our S3 buckets open to the public ? Oh , because AWS renamed a button again and it's just a default thing . That sucks because they do that every two years . Okay , so now you become that SME and then you can claim that on your resume for your next opportunity . Getting where you want can be a series of one and two your jobs . A lot of arguments online about whether that's good or bad .

Speaker 3 57:14

A lot of people .

Speaker 4 57:15

I won't hire someone who has , you know , all these short hops great , you're missing out . Okay , I don't hire people who can't talk to people great , you're missing out . You will find the opportunities . And the last one is be willing to talk to people in resumes , be willing to apply for things . We all get nervous that if we don't get this exact one right , that we've burned a bridge and there are no more opportunities . You need to understand that there are so many opportunities . You cannot apply for all of them in a six months period of time . They are renewing so fast , but they are hard to find . So while you're looking for them , try to be employed , try to step up where you're at towards what you're looking for technology , security , compliance , networking , cloud , anything like that .

Speaker 1 57:54

But you have to earn it where you're at . There's just a ton right there . Brian , this has been a fantastic conversation . You have blown through this hour in record time . You've given so much great advice to our listeners . I hope I hope our listeners are able to soak that all up . Some things that stick out for me are when you said that the leadership training that you got from the Denver International Airport stated you have an obligation as a manager to grow your people and step out of the way . More managers need to hear that to live that . That was a fantastic quote and that's going to stick with me for a while .

Speaker 1 58:33

I do want to recommend to our listeners if you haven't taken the time to do any sort of the personality type indicator test , take the time , go do it . There's a lot of free ones out there . I'm going to drop links to several of them in the show notes , so take the time , check it out . If you're a manager , I would highly encourage you to do this as like a team project . Have everybody on the team , go ahead and do it .

Speaker 1 58:56

And , like Brian said , at first it kind of sounds like a loadable , it kind of sounds a little weird , but once you dive into it and you start to peel it back , you're like , wow , this really makes a lot of sense . So it's very cool stuff . And , being more kind of self aware , it's going to be good for your career , it's going to be good for your teammates and the folks that you work with , if you all kind of have that understanding . Because , like Brian said , you can be working with somebody and be like , wow , that guy is such a jerk . Oh no , it turns out he's just , you know , because of his personality , that's , that's how he is , that's just how he is . I shouldn't take that personal . And then you can , you know , work , work , work or communicate and work better with them in the future . Brian , where can people find you ?

Speaker 4 59:40

So , yeah , I put a kryptonite us on TikTok . I'm actually kryptonite on Twitter , though I have 306 followers and I refuse to call it X , so I pronounce that as 10 . Okay , I'm on the 10 platform , as kryptonite really ticktocks . The only platform is Twitter . Thank you , that's exactly right . I really don't do any of the social media right now . I am on LinkedIn . My TikTok profile does have my LinkedIn handle . That's one way people can actually find out where I do work . So , again , I'm not really trying to hide anything .

Speaker 3 1:00:13

But that's really it .

Speaker 4 1:00:15

I don't see myself moving to YouTube , instagram or anything like that because this is just a fun side thing . I'm getting enough of an audience here , I don't feel I need to go out . I want to add one quick thing for the DIA training . One of the things I've learned that I do in my marriage and in work and this is part of our team norms is always assume no harm intended . So when someone gives it , whether it's your wife , your spouse , your lover or your coworker , you know hey , do this . Assume no harm intended . They might be in a hurry or whatever . Assume the same grace will come back to you and we can work objectively on what was said .

Speaker 4 1:00:49

And that's why I love being a little bit neurodivergent . I miss some of the cues . I assume they're not there . I've told my boss , if you get mad at me , I'm not going to notice . I really I'm not going to notice that you're pissed off at me . So just tell me what you want and I'll go walk away .

Speaker 1 1:01:01

So that's it Always assume no harm intended , that's . That's great , great advice all around More great advice that you shared with us . Brian , thank you so much for joining us . Thank you so much to everybody in the chat . They was able to join us this evening . When we can , we do try to live stream the recording of our episode . So make sure you're following us on Twitter . Make sure you're following us on TikTok . We recently started a TikTok account earlier this year . We don't have anywhere near the followers that Brian does . I think we're up to like 850 . But we're getting there . We're getting there . We're starting to put some regular contact out and we're having a fun time doing it . So make sure that you're following us on TikTok . In addition to Twitter , I think we're on Instagram too , but we don't really post post much over there , just some pretty pictures every now and then . But , brian , thank you so much for joining us this evening . This has been a super fun conversation and we'll see you next time on another episode of the Art of Network Engineering podcast .

Speaker 3 1:01:53

Hey there , friends . We hope you enjoyed listening to that episode just as much as we did recording it . If you want to hear more , make sure you subscribe to the show and your favorite pod catcher you can also give that little bell rascal a little ring , a dingy , so you know when we release new episodes . If you're social like we are , you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram . We are at Art of NetEng , that's Art of N-E-T-E-N-G . You can also find us on that weaving web that is the internet , at Art of Network Engineering dot com . There you'll find our show notes and some blog articles from the hosts , guests and other friends who just like getting their thoughts down on that virtual paper . Until next time , friends . Thanks for listening .