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Ever wondered how internships can lead to a thriving tech career? This episode hosts an engaging conversation with Tay on Tech, a young African American man from Mississippi turned cybersecurity guru. His astounding journey from Mississippi to Texas and his passion for cybersecurity captivates the minds of tech enthusiasts. Together, we explore the setbacks faced by individuals in places with scarce education and job opportunities, and how self-investment can turn the tide.
A large chunk of our youth is engrossed in college education and internships - but how many of us are doing it right? Through my own experiences, especially my first internship at Southwest , we delve into the importance of securing internships early, choosing the right classes, and utilizing the educational system effectively. Moreover, we also touch upon the vital role of proper guidance for those from underserved backgrounds.
As we steer towards the end, we dive into real-world scenarios discussing job transitions, insights into consulting, creating engaging content, detecting insider threats and strategies for acing interviews. We open up about our experiences with different tech companies and their compensation strategies, reinforcing that the tech industry is not just about code and software, but is filled with endless possibilities and paths to success. Tune in to embark on this riveting exploration of the tech industry, filled with invaluable tips, inspiring stories and unique perspectives.
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Is that when you had your eyes on like, all right, I gotta get an internship, I got an internship.
Speaker 2:My first internship was actually with Southwest, so like internship turns to like a contract of position, it was like a knockout analyst though it wasn't really, it was really desktop supportive of me and none of this and I think that was from like 30, 35 dollars an hour.
Speaker 1:I wanna actually talk about the internship that we met each other at that.
Speaker 2:He probably ain't learning, cause I know I ain't learning.
Speaker 1:I didn't learn shit at the internship, so listen they spent all the money in the world to build a new sock just to lay us off. They didn't give us any training on how to use their SIM or like we had no use cases. I swear to God, the only thing we did and he can vouch for this was look for WannaCry. Once WannaCry popped, Bro, I was like I don't know if you wanna at a hot level. If you want to talk about it, Francisco? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't care, I was breaking my racist interns. It was so like, it was so crazy.
Speaker 1:So real quick, we want you to bless the audience. A general number of, like your total count, it's close to 500. Is that when you had your?
Speaker 2:eyes on like all right, I gotta get it. My first internship was actually with Southwest, so like internship terms, like a contractor position, it was like it was like a knockout. It wasn't really. It was really desktop supportive of being done this and I think that was from like 30, 35 dollars an hour.
Speaker 1:I wanna actually talk about the internship that we met each other at that.
Speaker 2:He probably ain't learned anything, cause I know I ain't learned. I didn't learn at the interns. So listen.
Speaker 1:they spent all the money in the world to build a new sock just to lay us off. They didn't give us any training on how to use their Sim or like, what like we had no use cases. I swear to God, the only thing we did and he can vouch for this was look for WannaCry. Once WannaCry popped, Bro, I was like I don't know if you wanna at a hot level. If you want to talk about it, francisco, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was breaking my racist interns. It was so like, it was so crazy.
Speaker 1:Real quick. We want you to bless the audience, a general number of like your total clump it's close to 50 million. Are you interested in starting your career in the cloud? Well, if that's you, then I got some for you. Level Up in Tech is a comprehensive 24 week program guaranteed to help you land a high pain role in the cloud. Some of the skills that they teach you in Level Up in Tech are server config and troubleshooting, aws infrastructure as code, ci, cd scripting, containerization and more. Level Up in Tech has helped over 800 people start their career in the cloud. So if you're interested in the program, click the link in my bio, click on the tech resources and click on start your cloud career. But my iceberg for you is gonna be all right, you gotta pick one.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Big glow or sexy red In the aspect of what.
Speaker 1:Have fun or anything like either or.
Speaker 2:Like you say have fun. What do you mean by have fun?
Speaker 1:Like you might wanna go have like a good time or something Like who seemed like they gonna be funner.
Speaker 2:Nah, so that's crazy, though, cause I was in Houston like a month or so ago at a conference I was speaking at, and Glorilla was out there at the strip club. You ran into her. Yeah, ran into her at the strip club. She was on the stage. You know what I'm mean, but I don't know. I feel like sexy red, though, like fun wide oh man, that's a good question. Probably Glorilla, cause I feel like sexy red, I feel like she had too much fun with me, like she just like it depends on what we doing. You gotta kind of tell them, like what is the event? Like where are we at, what are we doing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I don't know, that's good.
Speaker 2:You know, like over at the strip club, you know what we at the club.
Speaker 1:I feel like part of me wanna say big sexy. Nah, I definitely think so. Part of me want to, but I don't know if she know how to act.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's what I, but I ain't wanna say that, nah, I don't understand, cause I feel like Glorilla and she know how to act. I feel like sexy red is like I don't care, but then that's also like that's where the fun gonna be at too, like turn us up. But I think that's really what I was trying to say. Like I don't really know, like if she gonna act right.
Speaker 1:Nah, I feel you for sure.
Speaker 2:That's a good question though that's a good question.
Speaker 1:Like, let me go ahead and intro the pie real quick. Welcome back to the textual talk podcast. Well, I'm your host, hd, and we got we got a banger for you out of there, man. We got the infamous Tay on tech. Listen, this is a real intro. I ain't seen this dude since 2019 in person.
Speaker 2:And we stayed in the same area.
Speaker 1:No, it's not, it is. I ain't seen it like, think about since pandemic. I ain't seen you like in a long time. Oh yeah, I haven't seen you since you had to look girls. Yeah, that's my scene. You, we went to get all, we went to Gators, yeah, yeah, so that's a long time.
Speaker 2:That has been a minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but y'all know what to do, man. If y'all in the podcast man or YouTube or you listening, hit the like button, subscribe, leave us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. But I don't need to introduce my guests, but I'm going to introduce them. You may know them as Tavionne Payton, tay on tech. Mr I didn't have three or four luxury cars in like two years. Mr, I'm rich. Mr High rise Mr. Cyber security Mr. I was doing black tech Twitter before it was cool. We got none of them. Mr, you know Tay on tech in the building and you know I'm just going to let him introduce himself and tell the audience about him.
Speaker 2:Yeah so I introduce myself. So, tay on tech. I've been in the security industry since I was about 19 of 27 now, so eight years, kind of. Starting out from high school, I had no idea what cyber security in the tech industry was. I was going to be a politician. Until I started taking those classes and reading all the books and having to do all this research and I was like, yeah, no, this isn't it. But yeah, one of my junior college professors, he introduced me to I took a hacking and he told me you can actually get paid to do this stuff and I was like what?
Speaker 1:And I felt a little over since and I want you to briefly talk about. You know I'm from Louisiana, but you from Mississippi.
Speaker 2:Oh, hold on, we're not just going to say like, oh, like Mississippi, just first in Louisiana. No, no, no.
Speaker 1:I'm just talking about we from states that typically people is not really doing much. They either in jail or they working like some regular job yeah, you know, struggling to make ends meet. And like education there is like very low, so more so I'll just talk about it since, like for the fact you, coming out of Mississippi, doing what you do now is like do you ever think about that? Sometimes, Like you came from Mississippi.
Speaker 2:No, so he ain't even from Jackson. No, so, like the past, because you know, I'm been in my house and things like that, and so like I've been homeless for like the last two and a half three months, so I've been going back like the Mississippi and stuff, and like when I just be riding around, I'm like damn, like if I were to stay here, this would have been me, Like my thing was, if I were to stay in Mississippi, like the height of my career probably would have been like a G squad manager or something like that, because it's like that's all I really knew, like I didn't know nothing. Like we don't have no big corporations there. Like you get to be a manager at Walmart Call Center. There's like no really jobs out there to where you can be like, oh, I'm working in the tech industry. I wouldn't have been exposed to nothing like that, but then, like me moving out of Texas like it exposed me to everything. So, no, as I go back home and I just be looking around, I just see everything, I like, damn man, like my life could have turned out so much more different if I were to stay here.
Speaker 1:Right, that's how I feel, and I feel like I looked up in the sense only because right when I graduated I had to go back home and I did get to help this gig in Bolshevik by the Air Force base, but that's because, well, now it's GDIT. They had a contract out there. Before then there wasn't any jobs out there and that was a pain to me, having to move, couldn't find no job anywhere. They was. I probably had one of the higher paying jobs in the area and that was only that 40K.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the thing about there, because I know, when I actually was like you know I kind of want to pursue like a career in technology, like I looked up like network engineer, security engineer, like the whole state of like Mississippi, I think it was like five jobs that came back and it was like help desk. It was like in Vicksburg, because Vicksburg have like a nice little tech I ain't going to say tech space, but something. So when I looked into, like Dallas, Texas itself, thousands and thousands of jobs, and I'm like I'll be a fool to stay in Mississippi when I oh, this is here. So that's what made me love. Like I looked it up and I was like, yeah, now I'm going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same here. It was like NDE for Streetport, la 10, 15 jobs, dallas 2000, 3000. Yeah, so, definitely. So I'm a little older than you and I go to you. Since you're a little older than Marquis, I don't do like I do, marquis, I really do. Marquis will be turning nothing like 25 or 25 or 26. I'm like this is like 30. Now he young. You see me clown him about him being actual like a Gen Z, none 90s baby. I'm dead, wait, I hear, really not.
Speaker 2:You born 96.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 96. So I'm like I'll let you all. I'll slide a little bit because we barely make it. Though I had a cousin that's around your age. He was kind of like a little brother for a little bit. He was at my house like every weekend. So I was like he know a lot of stuff I used to watch, so I was like I'll let 96 pass, but like 97, 98.
Speaker 2:But sometimes you got 96 pass. You count the guy that 97 pass to counter. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I feel like if you four years old in the year 2000,. I think you decent, I think you straight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get it. I guess it depends on how you was raised at 97. But like 96 is really the cutoff, it's really 95. But 96 just really kind of be grazed by.
Speaker 1:Did you do any like community calls or anything like that, mississippi? No, when did you come out here?
Speaker 2:So when I left Mississippi like in my head it sounds like a restaurant I was gone. So I'm in school in Alabama. I went to school called University of Mobile and it was like a small little private school or whatever. I went there for like a year and then I moved out here to Texas that's your rent track but then I had a knee injury and it was like, eh, school wanted me to walk on instead of give me a scholarship. I'm like I'm not paying this. So I ended up doing that. And then I went to Farmers Ranch DCCD anyways, some community college in Farmer's Ranch. I stayed there for like a semester and I moved to Arlington and I went to like Tarrant County and I took like a computer science course hated. And then for one of my electives I chose like intro to cybersecurity or something like that. And man, I felt in love. Like it was just like, yeah, I was staying up four or five o'clock in the morning like learning stuff, doing labs, and it was just, I don't know. It was like love at first sight, like I didn't have to like force myself to learn. It was like, nah, I really wanna learn this. And that's not to say you know anybody that wanna get this industry, you gotta have a passion for it, cause I'm all about the type of person like, hey, man, get your money, like, get your money. You don't have to have a passion for it, but it helps a whole hell of a lot if you do have a passion for it. Like you know, if, like you're reckoning anymore, you're just like all right cool, like this is fun to me and I'm getting paid to do stuff that I enjoy doing anyways. But yeah, you definitely don't need to have a passion for it, but it helps if you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, think about it you. Are you going on a year, six or seven, eight?
Speaker 2:Well, and you wanna count, cause you know they don't like to count internships. Yeah, they don't count internships. I don't like, bro, I was doing the same shit, so I count your internships.
Speaker 1:I count what I was doing at the college of business. Yeah, like my little IT gear.
Speaker 2:So we count internships like eight years, yeah, if we count in outside of that, like five.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, but you know what I wanna say. I'm gonna push back on. I think you do gotta like it, because you me, they, marquis or anybody else. We know the people that's actually going out to keep on learning and build other skills and can fix problems and have value. They excel Cause they like what they do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you also gotta think about this as well too.
Speaker 1:And I'm gonna keep it in the premise of maybe focusing on more technical roles. Yeah, because none technical is a little bit different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's completely different. Yeah, you know well. I say the thing is in our roles. It depends on, like, what type of person you are in a role Like are you an? individual contributor, like like you know what I mean. Like are you a person that has to be told what to do and things like that, and most likely, like if you're someone that don't really care about it, you're probably gonna get told what to do and I'm not gonna say you're frown upon it, but it's like you're an engineer, so it's like we hide you to solve problems, right, and so I guess once you get more like into it with your job and you really started licking the stuff, then I feel like you eventually become to liking it Like you know what I mean, because you don't stay in tech 10, 15 years and not somewhat like it, and so that's the whole thing is like some of these people are just starting and I do.
Speaker 1:I'm with you, get your money, but I let them know. Hey, if you just wanna do whatever you're gonna do, you might just wanna try something else, because your job may be phased out if you don't try to keep on learning it Exactly Bingo.
Speaker 2:And that's one thing I try to tell people too. Like, especially in this space, like we see it every day, where, like people get like a mouse source, like India, especially in cybersecurity, like tier one cycle and stuff like that, they quick to source that out. And so that's why I try to tell people like I mean, annelies, jobs are a great stepping stone, but you definitely wanna have that skill sets where you can like solve problems and engineer stuff and just being able to have, like you know, be a solution oriented type of person versus just hey, so what should I do next? It's like I hired you to tell me what to do.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and that's one of some of the things I talk about in my LinkedIn course strictly about that how to go in somewhere and by the time you hit six months to a year, you know we've made a good impression and you can do what you want or you can stay there.
Speaker 2:And you'll be surprised, though, like, cause I know with me when, the first time, like I get in the environment, just cause I've been in so many different bars, and especially when I was consulting like I know what's like we definitely gonna get on that. Yeah, so you just really understand like okay, this don't look right. I've seen this. Like these logs don't look right. Do we have this covered? Like it's like as you get more experienced, your job gets so much more easier. Cause, like I know, I just feel like built out this data pipeline. This is very kind of new to me, like I'm you know. It's like engineering, like some cloud stuff and data. It was basically it was data engineer, like it wasn't even it was kid engineer, but it was data engineer and I learned so many different skills. Said, and I'm just like dang like now, if I was to go do this, like it took me like three months to do this project. If I was to go back and do it now, it's probably took me like three weeks, so it just that's the fun of it, that's the grind we're going to.
Speaker 1:We're going to get into that. I want to briefly ask you. So you left the college in Arlington and then, so after that, is that when you went to North?
Speaker 2:Texas yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, tell us about North Texas, cause I would tell the audience that, ideally him, he didn't major in CIS or computer science. He did it an unconventional way, so I actually want him to touch on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also, man, I kind of finessed my degree all around, like I didn't take any math or science. Well, no, I didn't take science. I didn't take any math classes. I didn't take any like pre-cal calculus, trig, none. I have to take any of that, cause I took like AP calculus and high school and got the credit. But when I went to UNT I have a degree that's called integrative studies and with integrative studies you basically shoot, choose like three colleges like you know school of business, school of engineering and all that. You choose three of them and you have to split classes from them. So I chose college of business, which was business, computer, information system, stuff like that, computer of engineering, I think. Or your school of engineering, which was computer science and then learning technologies, which was actually like like IS class, information security, or there's information technology and things like that. And I kind of like I knew I wanted to do cyber security. So I looked at all the classes IT related, cause I mean, at the end they cyber security, just use securing the IT stuff. So database management system, admin, net, record, fundamentals. I took a demo assembly class. I can't believe I did that. I took a assembly. I know what's assembly Very low level program language. So I can even tell you what they really use it for.
Speaker 1:They were teaching us visual basic. What the fuck, Nah man?
Speaker 2:yeah, it was on no job applications. Bro, try assembly. Bro, try run it. Like so you use assembly to create compilers, so it's stuff like that. But yeah, so I was just taking, like you know, certain classes like that, and so, like the way, how, and then, like some day, how, like certain prerequisites, like oh, you need to take this class, I'm like, well, I would go to a community college, take it. Cause, like, say, for instance, if I wanted to take like a certain level program class, it's like, oh well, you gotta take physics as well. It's like Cal to and some other boys. I'm like I'm not doing that. I'm like you know, I'm having to take three classes. I can take this one. So I would just go take like the first programming class at a community college, roll it over, and it would be the prereq for the second level course, and so I'll skip out, like that. So I was like transferring back and forth and it was like all right bet. So I was actually supposed to be there for like five semesters but I ain't no been there for like three. So by just kind of going down, like like even with my school counselors and stuff like that, I wouldn't even go into them, cause, like when I was basically like, hey, this what I'm doing, do the Alfred this like this semester and stuff like that's the only time.
Speaker 1:I would kind of go down. So when you get your advice, is this sign off on what you want to do Cause like the way how they would have me.
Speaker 2:I've probably been at UNT for like three years yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's what we should actually talk about. That Cause, if I just got a lot of stuff going on, they really not that concerned with your career journey, like for real I know they was. They was never telling me like the right classes. That's what it was up to me to look at my curriculum Say okay, I want to take this, this and this. I want this teacher, I want to get here Like you got to do all that stuff. So finally, some friends has been to college before. If you need help, if not, you're going to strike out trying to go by what you advise or say, put you in the wrong classes and all that.
Speaker 2:That's my brother. He was at school. He was like yeah.
Speaker 1:I was in the wrong class. I was like you're going to pay attention to what the class was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bro, and cause you really got to be invested, like you really got to look out for yourself. Like, am I paying though I don't think it's really the advisor job to sit there and guide you. I think it's more like a really like, I mean like advice, like, hey, like I'm thinking about taking these classes this year, do you like? How do you feel about that? Or, you know, in the terms of me graduating earlier, on time, or this, like that, I really feel like you should like take control of your own college degree and like the class you're going to take. And then it's like, hey, like it's just all for this semester. Is it like? I feel like you have to take control of that versus relying on them Because, bro, they got thousands?
Speaker 1:of students doing this, for that's what I'm saying and a lot of them don't know, because I mean even your first semester seminars, bs you ain't really learning. Now you going to get an EZA.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. I think that's. I think that's really the big thing, though, like in college and I was very mature by the time I got UNT too Like I had an you know not going to class fail a couple of classes. Have we All right, yeah. So you know, I really kind of I had really kind of got there and at that point it was like I was like all right, bro, like I had a plan. When I came out here I was like I need to be graduated by this time, I need to be breaking by this time, and integrative studies really helped me out. I like, in my personal opinion, I feel like if you know exactly what it is you want to do, like I feel like go integrative studies because you can legit customize your schedule. But that's also a bad thing too, because a lot of people do that just to skate by and they're really learning thing meaningful and it's just like, oh, I ain't learning in college and I paid all this money.
Speaker 1:Integrative slash general studies. But I want to ask you before because I know you were interning Were you in turn before UNT or when you once you got there? No, before UNT. Okay, we're going to talk about that real quick. But did y'all know, while he was at UNT he declined and offered to be part of the RDC team and marketing them came up to him and was like hey yo, we see you watch and a man so like that you trying to be down with us.
Speaker 2:He told him no man, no, I did, oh man. Now that's funny though, because I actually I hooked with him a couple of times. He's real, like real life. Funny, bro.
Speaker 1:I know, I really like funny I was mad when, like I found out, my younger cousins their apartment's like two doors down from them. I was like so why didn't tell us you like? You know your cousins act just like them. Like, put us on. It's too late, though, but shout out to them.
Speaker 2:I'll be laughing at them, dudes.
Speaker 1:I don't even know about the AMP dudes, I just know the Casanet and do business, that's a, B now man, yeah, I was just been laughing because they be like beefing stupid stuff Like that's funny, though, see. I wish I could be paid to be childish like they do. I've been trying to do that for a long time. But let's talk about now One of the things I tell people like I'm not one of the people that say anymore, you ain't got to go to school, or go to school, it really will work for you. I do tell people a lot of times I think the benefit of school that it can help you with is, like some people, if they don't go to school and they go straight into working, I don't think they built some of the social skills that you kind of get from having to navigate with different people in college, and I think that's one of the things that college really like excels you with, but one of the other benefits that you get from going to college that people don't utilize, like I told my little brother, I was like he got an email from his professor they were taking like 10 of them to GDIT to go to the building. I was like go. I was like the moment you step foot on the college campus, you should be trying to get internships and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, A lot of people like me.
Speaker 1:I got bad advice. Hey, go to the career fair, your junior year no right, as soon as possible.
Speaker 2:Right, you want to start applying as soon as possible?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so from the moment you took that class and community class that you really love that got you in cyber is that when you had your eyes on like all right, I got to get an intern next semester.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, talk about that first internship.
Speaker 1:What was that like?
Speaker 2:No, so my first internship was actually with Southwest. I remember that, yeah. So I was working with them and it was kind of weird how I got that. Actually, I was working in G-Squad when I met the recruiter and he brought his computer in and I fixed it. He was like you know, you look pretty young how are you looking at school? Yeah, and he asked for money. We were like dad, I've got my resume. Yeah, I got one in the car actually and I gave it to him and, yeah, I had an interview set up the next week and the crazy thing about it, like after the internship ended, I got reached out by a staff and agency tech systems to go back and go work like as a contractor so like internship terms, like a contractor position. It was like a knock analyst, it wasn't really. It was really desktop support of a man under this. Really what it was. You always finesse that knock. Yeah, they said knock analyst but it was desktop support, but I was working like 24 hours, like I was working like two 12 hour shifts like Friday and Saturday overnight, set up in the 7am, and I think that was paying like 30, 35 dollars an hour, yeah. So I was on the break in 24 hours a week, two days a week. I was good.
Speaker 1:For my little. You know that was given my little 20 hours in college, 7.25.
Speaker 2:No, that's crazy. So do I mind entire time in college I never had a minimum wage job Like I was at least always making at least 25, like 25, 30 an hour. So like you know, in college you know typically everybody can have like a struggling stories. I mean I had my first year, my first year of a different strength, because I wasn't working out on track. But like after that man I was making like really good money and I wouldn't even have to break a lot either big take not the little one I mean. I definitely say start interning as soon as possible, get the resume out and, in turn, for sure.
Speaker 1:Right and with y'all, it's now. It's so much access to jobs and stuff like that Y'all have no excuse.
Speaker 2:LinkedIn. No excuse, and LinkedIn wasn't really popping like that it was not like you know, now they got the LinkedIn influences and stuff like that. But like back then it was cool, it was definitely helpful, but now it's just like shit, like yeah, it's like that.
Speaker 1:Like I know he get reached out to probably like five times a day.
Speaker 2:Right, I can put that on my phone right now. I bet somebody probably reached out to me today and say, hey, we got a job Like I actually had someone reach out to me like two weeks ago, had a job like a total company like $600,000.
Speaker 1:I want to set that joint. I shared one that the other day on the post. It's like a cloud security something, but it was.
Speaker 2:it was around that same but yeah, I think this was like for a blockchain security engineers and shit like that that's cool.
Speaker 1:You used to niche down on that, so yeah, I'm definitely starting to niche down.
Speaker 2:I want to actually talk about the internship that we met each other, that he probably ain't learning because I know I didn't learn shit at the internship, so listen well, this, I don't even know if they really existed anymore because they merged with Trellix, but they did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I don't know my fault. Mcafee and FireEye merged together and made Trellix. That's what it was. Mac, make me who FireEye For real? Yeah, remember fire. I had like that breach or something happened with them.
Speaker 2:They did, they did.
Speaker 1:They got like an office down there by the star in Frisco. Oh dang Ain't no. Hey, listen, fun fact when I accepted the offer for the gig I got now. I was actually eating McAlister's in the old parking lot of McAfee, the ghost town.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I don't even remember that. Nah, yeah, dude, it was in Plano Plano, yeah, plano Preston, plano, preston. And the Hedge Cop, yeah, Preston, really that was with 2017, right Like 2017, because I started in March of 2017. Yeah, 2017.
Speaker 1:Because the next year the next month.
Speaker 2:I started that summer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the next month I got laid off and then you was back in school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was still there, though I ended up leaving the internship because I got another internship with a better Scott and White. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, it was just like, bro, I'm not learning, I'm not learning nothing here.
Speaker 1:It's like you know. It's funny, though. Shout out to Big Willie. Man Willie probably was the only one that was doing stuff. Willie was doing more work than me and I was on salary, getting paid. He was intern.
Speaker 2:I forgot, bro Willie they probably the only reason why they was sitting around was because of Willie.
Speaker 1:It was you, Willie, and it was somebody else that came in at the same time.
Speaker 2:I remember I mean it was somebody else, but I remember, I remember we had like our manager was like a sales guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I told my Alex, yeah, I thought it was Josh. Yeah, josh, okay, I'm trying to see. So Alex was the manager at first. The guy who's like big, tall with a bald or a hat. Yeah, he was the manager first. Then Josh came in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He was like security sales, Like man, that was a listen. We could actually have a whole pod.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's like, that was a show, Like like the same was a hot mess trash garbage, but you know companies still be using that.
Speaker 1:They'll reach out sometimes.
Speaker 2:You know, by using Mike Mike.
Speaker 1:They, like people, still be using nitro when, before I start working to opt of adults was pretty much offered me because I knew how to use nitro and some of them they're using our McPhee products, right? Not a similar trash? The note the person who was the manager. Neither one of them never ran in the sock, never worked in a sock before. They spent all the money in the world to build a new sock just to lay us off. They didn't give us any training on how to use their SIM or like what like we had no terrible bro, we had no use cases. I swear to God, the thing that he can vouch for this was look for one across once, one across pop bro, I was like. I was looking for an IP with the one across like yeah with the signatures and then send them to the networking team. That's all we did.
Speaker 2:Bro, that was, and then it was at one point. When they try to make it like a physical, wait, I know the physical people in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then they came in and saw some, first of all, oh didn't they Bob, mr Bill in from the FBI, who didn't know what he was talking about at all. Yeah, I remember that time. Oh, we need to learn Python. I say, bro, you don't even know what you're doing.
Speaker 2:So what are you using Python for?
Speaker 1:Right, that's why that's what he moved away. But I wanted to get run on the podcast because runs who I wanted to be the manager.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, run new stuff, yeah.
Speaker 1:Run was, like you know, running out and was contractors him and the two other white guys kind of think they name was Daniel and some of us I think that's a name.
Speaker 2:I got a run up and went to another because I forgot the name of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we're going to say but out of us contractors, and it was a period of time when you know they want them to come over full time. And so, you know, run was, you know, doing his negotiations and stuff like that. He walked into work one day and Bill told him you're welcome. And run came in there real was like I almost lost my job. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:No, that that broke country was definitely toxic. You know it was I'm. Yeah, I couldn't work there. I used to.
Speaker 1:I used to go to the stone bar stuff on the weekends, when I had to work on the weekend, go to stone bar and walk around.
Speaker 2:So when, like, like bro, it was nothing like we was, like we were just being in a room, just like sitting there, like I didn't learn nothing.
Speaker 1:Bro you, I learned everything was not to do now for so, only reason.
Speaker 2:I knew only reason.
Speaker 1:I learned some stuff was from run. Runs Like all right, look, that's what you need to do. I'm going to show you how to do this. Text didn't know nothing. I used to say text, do you know what to do? He was saying no, but he wouldn't speak up. I was like I don't know why. I know what they were.
Speaker 2:Bro, I would just come in. I was like, as an intern, I'm like hey, so what do I do? Like it was legit and I just got our record. Really, I'm like hey, like you know what you know I want to hear. You know, I was learning from fucking with.
Speaker 1:I was learning from that intern Right A Neville one show was nothing like. We learned a little bit like. See now, kelly did do, he did the forensic investigation. So they had a forensic lab so he actually has stuff he was working on, so we tried to figure out what he was doing. His real name was James Brown. That's the funny thing.
Speaker 2:White doing that, james Brown.
Speaker 1:But now that's funny. But then you went on to have two internships after that, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I went to Baylor Scott and White.
Speaker 1:So you did Baylor, scott and White during the school year. Then you did Cisco after that.
Speaker 2:And then they just got that, and then I got my full time job.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you want to add a hot level. If you want to talk about Cisco, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was breaking my racist interns. It was so like it was so crazy. So, um, this is a great name. My name is Michelle. She's a. She's a prophecy engineer at, um, amazon. Now See, we worked at Robin Hood with each other and now she was at Google for that. But, um, like her parents are people like all of them have like high degrees, like doctories and stuff like that. And um, it was just kind of going around. I ain't living like what do your parents do? In my head I'm like why are we even the asking this stuff Like by what appearance? Can I ask him like how you get this internship? I'm like the same way you got this internship, or maybe not, maybe y'all had a connection I did, but it was kind of going around like asking like what our parents did and stuff like that. And um, it got to her and I was like, oh yeah, like you know my family, like they got that dog. I forgot, I think, her mom's, I don't know what it's like, but they got the doctor's degree and I was like what? And I was like, yeah, that was like we were like she actually got a doctor. It was like, yeah, she got a doctor degree and I was like, oh, like I didn't really think people like I was like what, yo, yo dawg, and it was like I don't remember exactly they would say some other racist like bro, it was like what the f so we ended up. Well, she went to HR and so in um, yeah, it's like um, I got listed as, like you know, a witness and stuff like that. But yeah, from what I've seen, nothing happened.
Speaker 1:I bet it didn't Cause. Yeah, the other thing is what I found out about Cisco throughout the years like they don't pay what they're supposed to.
Speaker 2:No, they don't at all.
Speaker 1:They do it as if, like you, supposed to be happy you working for Cisco.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that was the thing. So, um, I didn't get a return offer from that internship or whatever, cause I stopped coming like to the internship Like we was in a rich scene. We didn't have like nobody in the office, it was literally just like a bunch of interns in the room. So I would just stay home and work from home Like cause we we typically get um partner up with somebody and like I was um installing like uh, cisco, uh ice and um like the firewalls and stuff like that. So like I was actually going out to clients, I ended up going like the best buy or whatever in um Minnesota, I think, or some shit to kind of help them install that. That was Minnesota.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'm saying how was it? Oh it's, I wouldn't go back, you wouldn't?
Speaker 2:No, I mean it's that's cold. I don't like the cold.
Speaker 1:Oh, you weren't doing the cold.
Speaker 2:No, I was doing the summer, but I'm just saying like.
Speaker 1:I like I just cause target out there. So that's why I said it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I had a catch up off from target to target.
Speaker 1:I just played pretty nice Cause they wanted me to move they do, but they was remote at the time when I was talking to them. They wanted me to move. They put the roles on hold. No, they wouldn't be. I couldn't move them in Minnesota.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. But, um, yeah, so like, and I wasn't learning nothing, I did get my CCNA and all that while I was there. So I did get that, um, and I got my CCNA cyber ops or something like this.
Speaker 1:I know you're talking about this, Like, uh, the guy that used to work with me at income at the knock. He was talking about the cyber ops thing. Yeah, it was trash.
Speaker 2:But, um, it's just, I would never work with Cisco. Well, you know what Let me not say never, just in case they may up to pay but no, like, um, like a year after that they ended up offering me a job and I was just like no, I'm good, like the money wasn't even worth it. It was like I think the offer was like one of five it wasn't even more than I was getting paid Like. And then one of you like no sign on bonus. They give you one, but it ain't like 10, 15, maybe 15, maybe 15, but like $10,000. It went nothing crazy, but and it's. I mean, cisco is not just like a huge name for me, like it's not, like I'm a network, it'll have the same buzz I used to have.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, it's like Cisco. Palo Alto is where Cisco think they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely think that is what they is. It should even check, point it and Cisco down to me. Yeah, pay wise, yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, it's a lot of even like the fan companies now, like the thing the fan companies are, they're still the fan companies but like, as far as pay, they're not paying with. Like the late stage startups and all that. Like, everybody want to go to the fan companies now, but it's like now you need to start going to like the squares and the open eyes and stripes and stuff like that. Those are becoming the new standard of fame when it comes to pay. But you know what?
Speaker 1:happened, though and you know this because we're going to talk about this probably in a second In 2020, the influx of everybody being remote and stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:All the fan companies just kept on hiring people so they could take the talent and a lot of them weren't doing nothing. So over saturated market. That's why a lot of people got laid off. A lot of people was not doing work.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If we want to be honest, I got documents and articles that proved that a lot of people was not doing work, yeah, and they was getting paid a lot, and that brings no value to the company. So all them sob stories that some people are going to be lying about. They just looked, a lot of people just looked up. They didn't, I can't say they didn't deserve them.
Speaker 2:But I'm going to say they didn't deserve the roles. Yeah, it definitely was, Because I know man because like during the pandemic, bro, then that was letting you like leave California and stuff, and that was still well, some companies still paying you like on a New York in the like San Francisco. Like, bro, like man, money was good, Money was good. Like, oh, you got to, okay, here, cool, here's offer, Like it was. So it was so easy to get a job. Doing that time, Like, if you was like even just somewhat good at it, it was like you could have got a nice job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about brief. Okay, so you got your first full-time offer, or you start your first full-time job at Optif, where we were working together and you still were in school, and then at the time I was actually finishing up grad school and now I remember you had I'm trying to see if I had already said I was working there you called me up it was like yo, hey, yeah, I was like I like it so far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause that's the thing I interviewed like six different teams. Cause like they hit me up like a year ago, like a year before, they hit me back up and they were trying to give me to come work over there and I was like, oh, like I'm going to someone like my last year. But you know, like you know, whenever I'm finished this internship, like can y'all contact me around this time in my head and I go hit me back up, bro, august came, I kidged in the August came, they hit me up and they was like, hey, how's it going? Yeah, we see when. Are you still interested in Optif? I was like, yeah, what's?
Speaker 1:up.
Speaker 2:So I interviewed bro, I think I had like maybe 10 interviews because it was like I interviewed like all the teams and I think it was like the pentest team was like a consultant role, a cloud consultant, it was like forensics and it was like something else and like so I was painting them all against each other to negotiate my salary and the crazy thing about it. I really wanted to go like do the pentest, but they wouldn't, pay that much money and saw it and I was trying to get them, like you know, leverage that. It was like the digital forensic team they was that was actually paying a decent amount of money, but they wanted me to move to Denver, I think, or something like that yeah they wanted me to move to Denver. And I was like I ain't moving to Denver. And so the next one was the one you know, ashley and all of them and so I was like, hey, can you match this offer? And she matched it.
Speaker 1:I was like that cool and I started that's because the the Fusion Center they had that bread with the contract. That's probably one of the biggest money business. They stick out that contract now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. That's because I was just on the cruise and I saw like the Disney wish. I was like dang, that's crazy. I used to actually monitor this show. For now, the systems and stuff.
Speaker 1:You know what's funny? What I thought about was when I was in Burbank.
Speaker 2:I was so mad I wanted to go to Burbank bro.
Speaker 1:But I'm laughing. When I went to Burbank because that's the time you're in, richard going to it in the WhatsApp, what happened? Man Richard said something to you about like in in so many terms, where you, at boy, like that type of tone and you say, man, I ain't got to tell you shit. I remember that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So that's one thing about me going to the corporate world, bro, I was always like oh boy, like it was like bro, I don't know.
Speaker 1:No, but Richard started, though he didn't, he just was picking. Yeah, because when I tell you so you was, this was, you was long gone. Like I said, we eventually did. The people who you always think were messed up ended up messing up in the long run.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Surprisingly he was on a person that ever thought will mess up. But he done do good well, on a pressure. He was one of the people man Like. Sometimes he couldn't even respond, like if he messed up on something he'd be scared. I'm like, bro, if you don't just tell this person this. So I say I like like when he would like do that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, nah, man. Yeah, that's one thing about I had to learn how to like go off on people, professional though.
Speaker 1:I think you was matter of fact. You left right before we go into the Frisco office.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I left like two weeks because I think that was in the process of moving when I left, because I remember when in office I actually go work back for Ashley though Ashley was like one of the best managers, like she was definitely top manager, top two. That's facts.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Ashley, she is that crowd strike. Now she is. She had never been a crowd strike. I can complete. We still on LinkedIn with each other.
Speaker 2:But now Ashley was like dope and I, when I had came in, I was like you know, I'm leaving. She's like I'm not surprised, like you leave early. She like direct distancing, like it was interesting. I was like now it was cool, it was like I was doing this in my internships. So it was like because I wanted to go like as a Splunk engineer, like I was trying, I forgot his name, john. Yeah, the black guy.
Speaker 1:Splunk engineer. Yeah, that was doing a splunk with us.
Speaker 2:No, he was. No, it was John.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was John.
Speaker 2:Like I was like, yeah, yeah yeah the goat, yeah, no, I was like I would kind of shout on him and talk with him and stuff like that. Cause, like I really wanted to go on the engineer side of things, but obviously somebody had to leave or something happened because we didn't really have like open slot and I wasn't trying to wait to get promoted or anything like that. And um yeah, but yeah, I ended up leaving after like being there for eight months, yeah, and that's when I went to consult to a booze down in Hamilton Best experience I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 1:Kids, you're not crazy. The funny thing is. The funny thing is like right before the pandemic started I actually was trying to move over to the consultant side of Optus Cause John I had so I got right now that he's on it.
Speaker 2:He's like on a pen test inside, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, splunk conf, in whichever one of us was a 2019. The first one I went to John and everybody was there, so John had plugged me in with the consulting people and stuff. And so I was going to try to move over there, but then, you know, 2020 happened. So it was like, uh, that was, that was dead traveling and stuff. But yeah, man, I wanted to touch on Ashley real quick because, like I said, I asked you probably like top two and it's not two for me. Yeah, no, she definitely won the best man I knew. I knew Ashley was going to be good because the night I used to work night shift, so Ashley was there at night.
Speaker 2:I just worked the night, sometimes too Did you. Or did it go switched? Oh, when you switch, yeah, I see.
Speaker 1:I started. When we first started the contract June 1st, I was doing nights and it was worked out for me because all my classes were like at night in grad school. Ashley was listening to that Drake scorpion when I came in.
Speaker 2:I said all right, she's going to be silent, but your ass yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh man. But yeah, he left us guys for for greener pastures and went to booze Allen. But you know, I think I remember you talking about like one of my questions. I didn't look at my questions why, but one of my questions was did they hold your hand when you was a consultant? Hell, no, go figure it out man.
Speaker 2:I still remember, bro, I ain't getting. No, they broke. It was kind of good, but it was like, bro, they threw me in there with the woods bro, so when I came in there, I was supposed to be doing instant response or whatever. And so now, wouldn't that bro, they got me doing Splunk architect and engineer. I'm like bro, it wouldn't come to splunk, I barely can search this one. And y'all got me trying to architect this stuff. Bro, I took training, like I was being the hotels, just like reading up on all this doing this, bro, I think I probably want everything as like a Splunk admin in a week of just like the fundamentals of Splunk, I just learned it, learn how to like search through the administration, all that. And yeah, bro, it was, I was getting thrown. I got thrown fire, bro, but it helped me though, like I feel like in consulting, though, you definitely got to be like a go-getter. You can't be someone this way. You know somebody to tell you what to do, cuz, cuz, it's, cuz, it's so political to like I don't. I think now I would navigate, probably finding there because I got a little bit more experience, but you got to think about like I only had, realistically, eight months of experience like in corporate like you know real corporate America Before going to consulting. And it's so political, bro, like it's all about who you know. I had a good career manager too, so that was pretty good he was. You know, he got me and stuff like that. But uh, yeah, bro, it's political.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's super political. That reminds me like Goldman Sachs, like the best advice I got was from Frank and he was like be visible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's bro, that is it be visible, communicating, talking to people, like that's. That's literally what it is. You want to make sure, because the thing about it is like when it comes like layoffs and stuff like that, or again, the best country, because the thing is what people don't know about consulting. You have what's called a bench, and the bench is basically like you're not, you're not billable right now, and so, like with booze Allen, I think, if you're on a bench for more than like Two weeks, I think, or a month, because the thing is they give you like for like 40 hours for training, so like whenever you're on the bench you don't want to be on the bench, you want to, like I'm used to for training, or but like when you just on the bench you're not doing anything. It's like you know we're not making any money off you, so if you don't hear for too long you, you won't get fired. I forgot exactly what they call it.
Speaker 1:It's like a lo w or something like that.
Speaker 2:Like a rick they hit you with, like, but it's basically like you finna get fired and so the way you would like kind of stay from being off the bench, like whenever you're not on the contract or on the gig, you're probably fine like internal work, like that made me like work that needs to be done internally for booze Allen and you will kind of work in there, stuff like that. I'm not saying on the contract for SAP, like a year, like I would like they would keep. They kept requesting me to come back. So I built that cyber fusion center. I built out their instant response, your instant response program. I built out their fundamental management program. I have re architect. There's like instance, bro, I did some my best work at SAP and then I went to like Verizon Media, which was like Yahoo something and yeah, yeah. Yeah, now, they actually reached out to me a couple of times.
Speaker 1:I heard they scared the dude.
Speaker 2:The pair noises fire. Yeah yeah, that's called paranoia. So they reached out to me a couple of times, all the game.
Speaker 1:One of they directors was actually at Opto right before right when I was coming in oh, that's dope. And he got a podcast and everything like I don't know we ain't got time to talk about. We talked about that later, yeah. But what I want to tell everybody is so all them things he named are achievements, and when I'm doing y'all resumes, I always say what are things you achieve? That your job? He don't have to and based on what job he applying to, he can decide what achievements he want to put down. Yeah, and that's how you get a call back.
Speaker 2:Nobody want to say job description, thank you, yeah, I came in to work.
Speaker 1:Oh, every day I looked in the same idea that, okay, but what did you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like what. What did you triage? Like, what did you like? How did you help reduce the tickets? Like, how did you help like? Yeah, like.
Speaker 1:I don't even care if all you did. You went through and you fixed all the documentation and you fixed the use cases. Do you know how many places got some trash use cases in trash?
Speaker 2:documentation and I think that's what people really don't like. When it comes to documentation, like in security, documentations like bro, like I, just cuz I was in like the data, like data pipeline bro, I just wrote so much documentation like I how we change the configuration, how does it operate, what does architecture look like? You know, we want to make a config change like what you know? What about errors that may come across? How you troubleshoot that.
Speaker 1:I like documentation is very, very, very important and in a security, especially as an engineer row, documentation is probably 20% of what you do if you're actually engineer stuff, facts, not only that, like I'll talk to one of my guys, he actually still up to it was like bro, like your name, still like a lot of yeah, I should like if everyone's come back to that interview like just go look at my work now for real but Also what you just said about documentation reminds me about what we know about pen testing. And everybody think Mr Robot, shoot my bang bang now realizing like the real part, they care about that report. Yeah, that big write-up that people don't like to do, yeah, but you got to get them because they paying you a lot of money for that.
Speaker 2:And I wrote a rent a pen to show off a kind of interview. I mean I interned at selling these two. I forgot about that. So I like and I'm actually did a pen test with them that. So their security team was like the pen test team, this security engineer like it was like all in one thing and so I actually went on a couple of pen tests with them and like the report was like Crazy long. I think I still remember I have right like a 50 page report.
Speaker 1:So yeah, crazy thing, I actually want to do a physical pen test.
Speaker 2:I Don't know, like man, what am I doing? One for sure, but I definitely think I want to kind of go towards like Rating like a man, I like, I want to do one.
Speaker 1:The ones like social engineer, where I'm acting like I worked there. I and I just don't make a fake like Verizon badge and say, oh yeah, or I got to come install this like I want to do something like that.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't mind doing it too. You got to go to like a smaller consult security consults in Company, kind of getting this stuff like that, though it's so many like when you just sit down and watch people.
Speaker 1:It's like so many things you see your flaws. You can exploit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people, are they just a wicked sleep? I know I can go through it and do this damage like people you know even then and tweet out that password all the time. I don't even realize it.
Speaker 1:Definitely they do but I Was gonna ask you about that was pretty taking a shot. We are. I'm gonna get on that in a second. I'm gonna let you actually talk about so. Well, remember, in the beginning, guys, I told you like he was one of the first people to be doing Twitter. He was. I remember back at the octave. You was on Twitter, yeah, talking about like all this tech stuff, and so he was already there. So I could never say, like you got on the wave like everybody else did, like you had been there, like I had a Twitter since 2011,. But I was on that time. I'll be a sore. Yeah, he was on my tick. I'll stop my boxing and and.
Speaker 2:Bunko boxing. Yo is it buckle yeah.
Speaker 1:Listen. Everybody now shout out to Mikey rocks. That's all I got there from my little girl. I got her singing his one of his songs, cuz my one of my intro's used to be this song, perfect. But he's to be talking about that all the time. So that's how, like kind of I won't say you're claiming the fame, but people's I would. That's, that's tail. That's kind of what it was he's to have his own whips, like all the stuff that like that I do now for business wise or how I'm helping clients about. He was doing it already, so I'm letting y'all know that now like that's like no cap, but what made you want to already just try to brand yourself?
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know, bro. So, to be quite honest with you, like I had no Aspirations to like want to do that. I would just share my journey, to be honest with you, and like, over time it was just like Dang, like you know, like let me it just kind of like happen, like as I was okay. Like people's always hit me up asking for advice, all right, let me do consultations. I started doing consultation stuff like that, but then after a while I just kind of like once I feel like my brand was kind of big enough, like I rebranded to where now is like I still talk about like career advice and stuff like that. But like Career advice is so repetitive it gets repetitive at a time. It's like I'm getting tired of telling y'all to do the same exact thing and so I still do that. But also kind of like prefer now like tech reviews because, like I've always been to like technology, like I always, like you know, taking stuff apart, like reviewing phones, like that's really like my passion, like doing stuff like that, and so I was just, like you know, tell you on tech that's actually how I got the name like tail tech was like more so like the technical reviews. Like you know, tay's reviewing the tech. So that's really how that take on technique came about. And, um, yeah, it was actually nothing to do with side of here. Now, like that, it was supposed to be tech reviews only, but it was so hard to make that transition because everybody knew me from, like career advice and finance and all stuff like that, and so it was like I I'm tired of trying to do it and then, like my brand kind of got big enough. I'm like you know what? Yeah, either y'all gonna rock with me or y'all not gonna rock with me. So they started rocking with the tech reviews and stuff like that. You know, whenever I do do them, but I'm still the career advice stuff still outside and it's just like it's so hard For me to just like completely leave the career by so long because, like it still help fuels my other stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it was funny that one chicks reached out on your things like do you do consoles? And I want to go on your thread and say how you could have no, I didn't. I hit her up like we follow each other, so I was like I saw you on this post, like I do console, you can hit the link. She ain't saying nothing, but I was just like because one of your I did that on one of your friends Instagrams one time, not really trying to do it, I just did it like hey, like oh. He asked me like you know how, we got tired of saying Jonead questions, so he asked me something I was like oh well, um, shoot, bro. You know, you could ask me to just hit the link in my bio and then I'll tell you it is off camera. But it's like hey, don't sell your stuff on my post. I was like man, my bad, I really wasn't trying to, I was just like. I think I know you're talking about yeah, tired of telling people the same thing, yeah, just just click the link in my bio. It was like you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't really.
Speaker 1:I didn't take offense to it, it wasn't under me, yeah. But what you're talking about with the tech reviews is what you would have been in on. But you was to. You know you was living your best life when we had to take me up yeah, two weeks ago.
Speaker 2:But wait what's it? Oh yeah, oh, I was. Yeah, I think I was in Bahamas or something like that.
Speaker 1:See, yeah, that's life but that was one of the things to talk about. So it was me, damien and lees, and we was talking about Back in the days, like out of android phones, and I was saying how, in 2010, I used to watch like phone dog and all these other channels. I was like I used to want to review phones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you definitely enjoyed it was angel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they said like all the phones, like all like the stuff that in what was it m?
Speaker 2:mk, mbk, mkbg yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like all that stuff, like I was on that like back then, but I didn't know Like this tech too, all them. But that's why I was telling you even before this, like people did enjoy like the couple episodes erican idea when we took like articles or real, so we seen on twitter and we just talking about it. But I do mine in a sense like I'm a Joe by our Joe button podcast man. So I was like, yeah, like I like Joe button right, I was like I'm gonna be the pie like this, also like the side. Like you know, joe do his interviews but people come weekly like man, let's see. Did you hear about that preacher? Yeah, this this tech that came out.
Speaker 2:So merging, that is like pretty cool I wanted to do that, bro, but I don't, I don't like, I don't think I just got like the work ethic because I got so much other stuff I'm doing right now. I man listen.
Speaker 1:I congratulate you, bro. I mean, they were like your work ethic crazy. It's like how do you? That was like how do you pot, how do you have your clients?
Speaker 2:and I just, I just get it in. You, I'm not, and you even even with your boxing channel, bro, you was always consistent, like that's one thing I can't say about you consistent as hell when it comes to that, like that.
Speaker 1:This actually helped me be more consistent, because I love boxing but for one it's a niche sport and I had to keep on up in the ante to even really Talk about stuff people didn't care about. Yeah versus in 2020. Like you're like you know what. I'm gonna pivot and talk about stuff I've been talking about like I've been helping people and I got content for days. I can talk about being laid off. I can talk about job offers. I can talk about this and that. I can talk about managers yelling at me. I can talk about like a whole bunch of stuff and people want to hear because it's relevant right when you was coming up. I was coming up, whoever's coming up?
Speaker 2:before us Because I know I was, I used to always talk with you and Pat, I'm, by certain segment, yeah, I was a little bit older than me and I'm like, oh, like you know, asking questions and doing all this and stuff like that. So I definitely it was definitely like dope, did I had y'all to kind of like lean on, ask certain questions?
Speaker 1:Speaking of, you might need that episode me for McAfee. Yeah, that'd be funny. That was like Optima he was at.
Speaker 2:McAfee Damn. Yeah, that's crazy, cause I'm running something like yeah, you know panel. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, man, that's crazy. But um, we're patting now.
Speaker 1:He's at what they say on a confidential.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Um, let me get this real quick for you. Uh, I want to switch paths because I know you actually did something After booze, but I want to jump right into you, getting into doing more, first of all moving to the finance space and then doing insider threat, and I kind of want you to tell the listeners and the audience what's insider threat about, because we see it all the time.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, no. So insider threat a lot of different companies paint insider threat different, but at the end of the day it's because thing like, because inside a third is basically a third detection at the end of the day. But it's more so like, instead of protecting like the company from like outsiders, you're protecting the company from like insiders because you got to think about it. Your employees, or probably they, have access to all of this important data every day and they may or may not purposely be trying to S for trade data. They may unwillingly or unknowingly know what they're doing and that's trading today. So basically, I put in security controls to make sure that our employees are not stealing data. So, whenever you guys are like doing stuff on your computers, we know everything you're doing. We know every website you're visiting. We know everything you're clicking and downloading like, we legit know everything. Now, are we looking specific at this one person saying, hey, he's doing this? It depends, you know. I know at one company we had, you know, created this list was like everybody that recently put in a two weeks notice list of everybody. And you know, whenever it's like a certain threshold of like, they mean a lot of data to themselves doing doing something within like termination. Yeah, it's like you, you really you send a lot of emails to yourself. Now I created this threat detection to where, like it looks for when you send yourself, like to your personal email, and like it looks like three consecutive letters compared to like your Work email, compared over to your work, I mean your personal email, and we get alert like, hey, this person potentially sending subs to their email. So I look at him like, huh, this, this, this is data from that. So we know, we see that, we see all the documents that they send and it's like, okay, this is family pictures or it's, this is that's. I was nothing really, you know crazy was like, oh, this is work data, we're littered. Hey, you know, we'll contact their managers. Hey, we need you to lead all this on your computer and that's your recycle man.
Speaker 1:So like so it was really like that so um, you know, did you build a customer section, or did y'all also have a tool?
Speaker 2:So we use D-Tex to. So D-Tex is like in, started it's pretty I'm not gonna say it's probably fairly knows like probably like six, seven years, it's I don't know, but it's kind of fairly. But it's it's specific for like inside of threat. But, um, I Know now what I'm kind of doing. I'm doing threat detection but I'm also kind of like starting to go like in the inside of threat portion of like our Like applique, our customer application. So like I'm doing, like I'm having to work with like a lot of Kubernetes, ecs, clusters, all these words mean is big money. Yeah, like you know, really it's really like they about sick dev ops, that's. That's kind of what I'm trying to try and pivot into and so like, say, for instance, like you know, one of our engineers probably Going into like one of our customer databases and they're probably doing something else must be doing. So I'm really more so I'm not building inside threat for like corporate or more so for our applications and this way Way harder bro, like it's so hard.
Speaker 1:I Was a, so we use like semantic for like our DLP so we kind of have a lot that's still built into it. But there are things when I noticed, immediately say, hey, we could, you know, use this with XOR and spoke without, and then use like more Rba type stuff to actually make this a little bit more efficient.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean that's cool, though I guess we go inside there because I inside three on the corporate level. It's pretty easy, like it's stopping you from stealing documents, like that's easy.
Speaker 1:You know it can get, because this also a term, so you can, you know. I know you do this for sure Because it's probably your job description, with you being engineering, but it's a term I told y'all about that's getting pretty popular. Threat modeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we bro. I literally, I'm literally doing this right now for a vault instance. So if you guys don't know what vault is has to curve up, especially like secrets management. So, you know, never using like API keys or are you trying to get secrets to authenticate servers and things like that you essentially Authenticate into vault which holds all our secrets. Get the secret, do that.
Speaker 1:I'm really I'm third modern right now to build third detections and All that bit of dashboard, but I'm literally like they just architect the entire volume, no, but that's the thing too, is like and I know you know this from doing consultations one of the biggest issues I think that we're seeing with some people that want to get into the Industry they have to know research. They don't. They don't understand the job, so they want to do they don't. So it's like I Can help you only so much, but you got to go do an extra initiative like.
Speaker 2:That's kind of what I stopped doing comes with it, cuz it was the same thing and it was like bro, have to shit, you can Google. Like I Love somebody asked me a really good question. Like when somebody asked me a really good question, I'm like you did your homework, yeah, I don't mind him. Like I asked to sit, take my time. Cuz like you know what to look for is like oh, how can I get inside the security? I'm not answering that question. Like if you go on some of my posts and stuff like that, like, oh, like, what certification should I give a side to skin? I'm not answering that. That's a Google, that's a Google search bro, oh dude that freaking tagged me Akin. Oh, I know some about.
Speaker 1:Bro, why is he asking this? This or he was like he was acting like with his personal help dance one time.
Speaker 2:Now like something. I don't mind it, but it's like, bro, as a certain point is some of these questions, bro, you come on my bio bro.
Speaker 1:I got a whole free YouTube video with a slice you can download. I got a free ebook. Feel the form, how you get the free ebook bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when you have to go like that I know they're not serious, but I know it's my time yeah and that's the whole reason why I was from the gate. I started charging not honestly, and I was trying to be no, you know being, but I should have. Even now, though it's like I'm getting to the point now because, like I'm more so content driven now, I don't mind doing it on the content side of things because, like man, tick tock, Paying.
Speaker 1:That's what's one like. He also big on tick tock, like see the thing with me and the only difference is I don't really make tick tock content. Clip up these. No, no, I do click. What I'm saying is like click, tick tock, like a certain way, sometimes like the content, whether you do it in in the app or it does.
Speaker 2:It does because I was testing that out. It's like you know, I was always like recording through my camera and uploading it wouldn't do as good, yeah, but you recording the app or use cap cut, yeah, bro, it does amazing. But even then, like After you build up, you know so much it, the algorithms it started working with you.
Speaker 1:It takes a little minute, yeah, and what you can also do is I think some you know the guru tick tock rules to tell you about going live, you know stuff, and they'll have boosted. Yeah, it does, but I have figured out the sweet spot of like finding out how to like get people to find my videos while searching. I just type a lot of search terms for SEO in my description.
Speaker 2:That's so. That's what you gotta do. It's the SEO at that point.
Speaker 1:I'm taxing there, but that's what I'm really good at on YouTube.
Speaker 2:I do a lot. Yeah, you did, cuz you put me on Tube buddy and all that.
Speaker 1:I don't even use Tube buddy no more. Oh yeah, I Q nothing. I use so With my process. I use bus route for my audio portion of the podcast. Oh, but sprout has a tool called co-hosts. Hey, I fire if you see my last couple descriptions uh-huh, bus Bro dude, all that, oh damn, and so I use that. It make an SEO driven so people can find on the web and then also it'll do the chapters for me. It has blog posts, it makes from it and everything.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah you see, you're gonna see me start this.
Speaker 1:I use opus clip to do all this. Oh, you said what opus clips you just say. I just take the YouTube link, throw it in there and it give me like 10, 15 clips.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's too much.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna keep up without its content, man.
Speaker 2:Man. I don't think people realize how much work it is. Well, like these last two and a half months, him in creative me creating content, like it feels so good not to have to, but it's like dang. I got so much content to like release. I got a lot of brand deals to man. I got like I actually gotta send a script off the one on right now like autonomous. I want that. I want one of they. Desk.
Speaker 1:I got.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. So they asked me what sort of one it, but I just got like a regular desk because I'm have to to that set up. Some have one for my gaming station and like my MacBook station.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I can?
Speaker 2:I can look you up cuz I think Joe up, look that's you how they go oh.
Speaker 1:But what I found out to I can, I'm gonna go with autonomous. What I found out about Brandon now is a lot of the Companies have been sleeping on a little bit. Of people got like a yeah brand and you to bring yeah, but now, slowly but surely, they've been like reaching out to have like different things, so it's like I'm not tripping. A lot of them have been late to get on podcast and YouTube. Yeah no.
Speaker 2:Coursera, man, they're Coursera been fucking me, man, I just I gotta do my my Google video soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what they, what they give you, it's not a lot, it's one of they. They play this stuff. I Know you got more than me. They wasn't. They weren't really in the budget much yeah much on me, did you just get? Four fingers. No oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I know why, though?
Speaker 1:because I did a ad for them and I did trial and error with the podcast. I did admit roll should have been pre-roll.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so yeah, no, so Joe following on.
Speaker 1:What they looking for is a little bit, but it's a YouTube video though. Yeah, but if they work with you in the past or something, or whatever your oh no links you've been sharing, they probably like your yeah, it's, definitely I didn't really post my, my link and stuff, but it don't matter, it don't they even? They even owe my commission. You know I do a lot of affiliate stuff now, so I've been.
Speaker 2:I've been going hard with little careers and money, bro, like bro I've I've made like mid Five figures from like affiliation with Coursera. That's so I'm doing two YouTube videos for now, like it's four figures.
Speaker 1:That's yeah, it's DC. This one is like right under four.
Speaker 2:But yeah, if one video though, right yeah.
Speaker 1:I'ma send it to. I'm gonna send it to my god. I'm gonna let him edit, even though he may be mad when he want to quit the email list.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, no, man, really that's, and that's kind of like when I really started seeing these brands in Spain, like even like my Microsoft deal that I got Microsoft, that's they actually came back to me. They want me to do another deal with them, so that's dope.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna plug you with broadest love. Up and take.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me know then.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he rocked with me and then he's already see.
Speaker 2:you're following in what you was already talking about Boom, he's solid, let me know cuz I mean I've been like even Samsung, like cuz I've been trying to get like a lot of like because I know like like a lot of Careers, correct credit, karma or career come on that boy.
Speaker 1:They'd be reaching out to me, but.
Speaker 2:I reached out to me, someone like I. I tried to refrain from working with so many Because at that point it's like I want to be kind of loyal, to like, yeah, one brand. When it comes like affiliate, I mean I don't want to be out and I feel like Coursera is like you can't you yeah yeah, you know course careers and level been real good. Careers is really good. I'm with course careers too, but I don't really talk about them as much level.
Speaker 1:Well, I love about level what. They know that I have my post. I stole a little bit of what Cyrus do. I just say, hey, go to, yeah, yeah, but level people like Josh Maddacor, so his courses always do good, they go. Click on my link in my.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've just really licked it's. I'm yeah, I have course careers in mind. I can plug you. Yeah, no, that'd be dope.
Speaker 1:Guys, I forgot to tell y'all it's episode 100, right? So I had told him I don't know, was it like months ago or something I said we're gonna do episode 100 or something. Yeah yeah, and we got a shot right here. This is of a Martel. This is way better than Hennessy. So look, if y'all listening right now you got a shot. You want to pull a. Pull the shot up. Y'all watching, pause it Go get your shot of your choice. It ain't got to be liquor, you can go get you some juice.
Speaker 2:You're getting water.
Speaker 1:This episode of 100 and we're gonna keep on going.
Speaker 2:That's smooth. Hey look, you give them out. You should have told them hit me up for a brand deal.
Speaker 1:Hey, martell, reach out to me.
Speaker 2:Hey, ain't no free promo, no, just plain.
Speaker 1:Hey, now for real look my analytics on YouTube is ages 25 to 34. They gonna rock with that, martell.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But what I want to actually ask you real quick is we ain't actually the money question. Listen, if y'all know who he is, he flashy People be on TikTok trying to see who he talked to in his real life like he a real celebrity. I'm chillin', he's a real celebrity. I really had some listen. If we could be like Brandon Martell and say, ooh, it's time to get messy, If I had more time we'd get real messy on here for the stuff I asked him.
Speaker 2:It's like Patreon level.
Speaker 1:We can come back for a second we could. We definitely got some more to come in.
Speaker 2:We could probably mess around and record in my crib whenever I get everything set up.
Speaker 1:Say less. You know. You know I'm down, but I did want to ask, seriously, though, the money question, and the reason why I want to ask you that is because we here, and you also, are entrepreneurs as well, but we always hear from the entrepreneurs how they try to down people who work regular jobs, not knowing it's people like you and people on the board to all these companies that make more than entrepreneurs, and so that's what I wanted to talk to you about is like why is it important to niche and be very good and like y'all saw all the things that he's able to go on interviews and say I did all this stuff, when you can say that nine cents out of 10, the job is pretty much yours.
Speaker 2:No, like my interviews are no longer interviews. It's like conversations of like, oh, like, how do you do that? Like, I can say this interview, like I, like I can throw the interview to where, like, they're not asking me questions. Like, oh, like, yeah, I did this, this is why I did it, boom, boom, what are you guys? Environment, I try to like take my relevant experience and like, oh, I've done this this, how I can do it here, boom, boom. So that that's really like when you an interview, you have somewhere experienced. You want to take control over it. So it was like then I drilling you down with questions because, like, I hate being questioned, because, like I hate it.
Speaker 1:Bro, yeah, like funny enough, like this role I got. I killed the interview because I had all the solutions, all the stuff they are trying to do now. I had already did yeah Everywhere else, especially Optiford, like that big company. I was like with a who we're supporting, with Disney. So I was just like I did it already. I was telling somebody over there I said three years in and we still was finding new stuff in the environment.
Speaker 2:That environment was so big bro.
Speaker 1:And the fact that see, you was gone, but I was there for the launch of Disney Plus. Oh, I know that was crazy, it went too bad, that traffic. Oh, it went, it went, it went through without a hitch Like. But when Disney Plus came, they also added Fox and Hulu. So they started like really, yeah, they bought Hulu dinner. Yeah, we had like another similar login to all that, so I needed to buy Disney Plus.
Speaker 2:Then, instead of having Hulu because I got Hulu, I got Hulu my Hulu is free to Spotify.
Speaker 1:I got Disney Plus through, like my homeboy.
Speaker 2:He like it was a long time ago, dad and HBO Max.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got HBO Max too, but I was going to say about the question thing. I have one of my clients interviews that I have all my clients record that interview so I can listen to them, critique them. Yeah, I think the biggest thing that a lot of people need to work on is filler words. Yeah, you really do make yourself seem like you're not sure every time you're saying um. If you say um all the time, I know it's hard, but just think about what you're going to say. Pause in your head and start talking. Start method, man. It'll help you. Even this also helped me with not saying um as much or like you know, I used to say you know so much, I say a lot. Up until a couple of episodes ago, I saw a post I won't say Liberty Madison probably posted it and she was saying how saying um, sometimes take away your credibility or seem like an expert.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause, think you're trying to think about what you got to say instead of just flat out saying it yeah, so now I think about mine before what I'm going to say.
Speaker 1:Slow it down and then come out.
Speaker 2:And and that's. And that's the thing when people do interviews as well too. Like they'd be trying to lie, I guess sometimes be sound smarter than what they really are, and a lot of times those people got years and years of experience so they know a bullshit. Or when they see more fact, you just talking yourself out of a job.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's why I tell people when it comes to our, our interviews, like, so I have, and that's one thing we're going to do one day. If you want to have fun, we can go live and I have these sock analysts, interview questions and you can see people's answers. Oh no, we should do that. You can see people's answers on the Google. And I told I told one dude straight. I said, bro, I can, I know you didn't know the answer, but I can see all you deal with. Slap something from Google and throw it on here versus trying to make sense of what. I asked you and put in your own words that's not going to fly. I was like, don't get me wrong. I Google all the time, but I put it in my own words. I know how to explain it. I'll tell you a soft skill that a lot of people don't recognize, like knowing your audience. So if you know your audience, you have no problem if you want to move through corporate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because some people that your manager report to they don't understand all that stuff about data pipelines.
Speaker 2:So that's one thing about my manager. Like my director, he actually is very technical and I love it.
Speaker 1:That's how. So Yahoo manager super technical. That's why I want to work with paranoid. I literally had the offer but they had to put it on hold and Q4. Okay, and I was like I don't feel like waiting around.
Speaker 2:I'm Morgan, have me bent, so I definitely didn't want to do that, no more.
Speaker 1:And then target when I was doing I was interviewing for the DC sir Ellis at target and they had to put that on hold too.
Speaker 2:That was during the pandemic.
Speaker 1:Oh no, this was last year.
Speaker 2:This was oh, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:That was a man, I'll tell you. That was like a cool, like. That was like one of the more challenging interviews I had with a director. But he was like he asked me about looking for lateral movement and then data exploitation on a Linux box and then we was talking about like SSH and you're saying like they went into the files of the to get the MFA codes. It was. It was fire and listen. It's a strategy. I think I said on another interview I mean episode, but all I do is string my interviews along and questions. I really liked that I think somebody might ask me in another interview. I take a mental note of them and get better on that answer and then tell the next person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's. That's cause I'm trying to actually move more in like a depth set cops real now, like data engineering. Like you know, the data pipeline see, I see the pipeline money. I'm trying to go into like stuff like that now Cause, like I see one of them in a cyber security role but like I know, like big data is like huge.
Speaker 1:I need to. I want to look more into a lot of companies. It's going to eventually happen, but there are really no real guidelines over AI right now.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we actually working on that right now.
Speaker 1:So once that happens, with the generative AI, that's going to be big, so you can. That's another niche, just like I don't know if it's going to big data though, when you think about it. I don't know if you watched my episode that deal with Aaron uh realford. She works for Google. She's a policy data engineer.
Speaker 2:No, I didn't. Some of the things like we talk about and I should link that in here. You got to link that in this episode.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't go back, I'll look it here, but we need to ask okay, a real quick, a day in the life of a security engineer at a blockchain company and I told people a lot of times too, this dude is doing so good at work. They interviewed me out of the strength that we worked together, swear to God.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How did it go anyway, did y'all have an interview?
Speaker 1:We interviewed, I think I think one of the things I was struggling with last year a lot until the end was I had a year of really not being super technical, so I had lost like a lot of some of my skills here because I also had been doing all this other stuff. So it's hard to like really study for different things. But I also knew they probably was looking for somebody a little bit more engineer focused.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:Because that's what happened with me. I interviewed man bro. I was interviewing with this company called Woven Planet and they work on like autonomous vehicles and working on the software and they're a subsidiary of Toyota. They have a freaking smart city in was it China or Japan Called Susanoo.
Speaker 2:Oh, susanoo, like Southskates, isn't it? Nah, for real, bro, it's like it's far.
Speaker 1:I wanted to do it because, like this is an issue.
Speaker 2:I remember we talked about that.
Speaker 1:I remember we was talking about that, yeah, it's an issue, but, like I was like that's the thing too, guys, like find technology that gets you excited and you'll probably find another passion. Now for sure, that's the whole thing. It's like I did a project on this in grad school the Internet of Things, the smart city, smart clothes so I already knew this was what 2018. So what's what? Five years ago so going on six years I said with them, I think we, and I probably said within five, 10, 15 years, this is going to be the norm Smart cameras, smart, all these different stuff. We already got it now with these door bills, I remember what's that nest? What's up? That wasn't a nest, camus, was that?
Speaker 2:ring cameras.
Speaker 1:What other cameras was? They got hacked like a year ago. They got hacked. Everybody's looking through people, cameras and stuff and talking to them.
Speaker 2:Might have been ring?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Could have been, but real quick.
Speaker 1:we want you to, we want you to bless the audience. A general number of like your total comp, like because listen, I didn't even tell you I didn't list off where he worked at, but he said it already. He worked at Robin Hood. He worked at Op, the Cisco booze he worked for like a startup at one point. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So a lot of my comp is in equity right now and we just went out of lawsuit and so in the secondary market our stock doubled and that's a secondary market.
Speaker 1:So you got two different. So you got stocks and a crypto.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so they actually give us the crypto talking to, but so the actual equity from the secondary market it doubled. So the actual I really don't really truly know the actual value of it, but I know they did have a buyback. We're not even buyback, they bought, we are a buyback and I think they did the buyback at like I think like $68 a share or something like that. And so if I'm basing upon that number, then I probably have about I think like $550,000 in stock, but then you know, we don't, I don't really know. So, all in all, like if I'm counting my equity to where I which I really can't count my equity like, let's see, Listen, he got to bring the calculator up.
Speaker 1:That's how much bread it is.
Speaker 2:It's close to 500. And we count the equity. That's the part of it.
Speaker 1:And this is just from one job. I didn't even touch on the other stuff. He's touched on on other pods Cause I was like this is unique. They don't know him like I know him. So, but quickly, what is like a typical day to day for you? Cause I know like your work is really more so based on tasks. It's like okay. Yeah, Unless I knock this out I can go do whatever I want to do.
Speaker 2:Um, like Rick Ross, a lot of it's cause I really might, might, um, man, well, my director, cause we don't have a manager and we have a lead Like my director, reporters like my director, so like like he give me like freedom, like do what you want to do, but that's just heavy yeah.
Speaker 1:It's it's.
Speaker 2:It's good and it's bad. It's good because, like I really can God, like God this success for my career. But it's bad because it's like, if I'm not taking responsibility and discipline though, it's really easy for me to get caught not doing anything. But I'm right now. So I was working on his data pipeline. I was telling so, um, we, we have like a third party that we use for, like our Sam, and we try to like take everything in house right now, and so I was working on like a data pipeline that makes it like extremely easy for us like the onboard data and all that Cause you know, we're using like big query and all that Like cause a lot of people don't realize like a lot of Sims and stuff like that. It's really going to be based on like big data, like so big query spark, uh, patchy spark, uh that like you really going to be using SQL and a lot of stuff like that to kind of create your queries and do your research and threat detection and threat hunting. That's really what everything cause it's like. So, like you know, you got Kubernetes, you got all these DevOps, you got this infrastructure and all this data, and it's like you know the tradition of saying, like you think about putting all that data in Splunk, it's way too expensive, yeah way too much money. And you know a lot of companies are realizing this now cause they adopted all these new technologies. So they happen to go like big query and big data, um stuff like that. And so I had to pretty much kind of create a data pipeline that handles terabytes and terabytes of data, you know, making sure we were getting that. You know no errors in that. And so basically what I kind of did, um, I built like a ECS cluster or whatever, using Vector. I'm getting super technical right now. But, yeah, yeah, I just ended up like kind of building that out or whatever, and it was a lot of infrastructure I had to build up a lot of stuff that I didn't take into account for. So I just finished it up now, and so right now I'm going into like a space of like um hardening, like our um Hatchecourt vault instances and all that. So I'm like I'm doing that as well too, and I'm also um looking at, um implementing like runtime money, like I none Kubernetes um stuff, and probably doing like some external attack surface um money and stuff like that. So it's a lot, bro, and that's just like the high level. So that's not even like you know stuff that just comes up and they oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. But I'm not gonna lie, this is like I haven't had this much fun and learning experience since Boobs Island, so that's why I've definitely been learning a lot, like I've been forced to really, um, I'm really moving as a data engineer, which is like really good because I want to go inside that they have set off space, so like Terraform. Um, I'm good, uh like, oh, that policy is cold, centennial, centennial, centennial, I think, centennial policies. Code um, infrastructure is cold, like I'm, I'm doing a lot with like cloud engineering, cloud infrastructure. So, yeah, man that's far, listen.
Speaker 1:We want this to be longer, but we have some food in the beginning. We definitely do a part two and they'll probably be at a special location, but if y'all did appreciate this conversation, y'all know what to do. Hit the like button, subscribe, hit all the notifications. If you're listening on Apple podcast or Spotify, leave us a review and if you want to donate, the links in the description and if you want to follow, take his social media handles. Will be in the description as well. But, like your boy always say she was HD until next time, let's stay textual and we out. Uh huh.
