Thread by @ACotonio

#infosec moment:

1/ Met a gentleman this morning outside our agency building today. Enjoyed some small talk; turns out he just got picked up for a dream infosec job. His first actually. Had joined the USAF in aircraft maintenance, pushed himself to learn IT after hours.

2/ You could tell within the first 30 seconds how passionate he is about this field, and how his intelligence and drive would take him far. By 60 seconds, you could also see his self-doubt & tendencies towards Impostor Syndrome.

3/ Ended up spending nearly 30 minutes just mentoring. He had seen me around in cyber (new here myself), and heard my honestly undeserved nickname “MegaMind”. Turns out it wasn’t entirely a chance encounter.

4/ Nothing, and I mean nothing at all excites me more than seeing someone else’s passion for #infosec. It’s a fantastic field! I honestly felt really humbled he reached out to ask *me* q’s. In that 30 min, I tried to convey w/ brevity things this about this community

5/ You could see he was excited yet nervous, and wondering if he would succeed. So many of us here see heroes like @k8em0, @hacks4pancakes, @troyhunt and think “I’ll never be them!!”

Yes, you will. With time, patience, and a lot of obsession to hone your craft.

6/ Keep striving to be a better you than yesterday. That’s it. Add one more check on the list so that you become Future Me, the infosec heroes. To help someone in need just because!

7/ Gave him my contact info, and told him to reach out for anything. “MegaMind” doesn’t know everything... but I know a lot of people who do. Don’t stress.. you’ll be fine!

8/ Moral of the story: life is awesome, and so much better when you have such a strong community to reach out to when needed.

Just happy for him and can’t wait to hear about the cool shit he gets into 😊