Found in Transition
I heard memes are popular in both blog posts and presentations. This meme is pointless and has nothing to do with the content of the blog post itself, as if it was added solely for a laugh to make up for a lack of decent content. Like most memes.
Time for a status update! A few things have changed recently, I’ll cover them here.
git commit -m “GitLab Senior Security Engineer”
When I was in Silly Con Valley last month, I learned as I explained my situation to various friends and colleagues that there is a name for the situation I was in - “funemployment”. Apparently when you don’t have to work and you take your time between jobs because you want to end up somewhere where you can really do what you want to do, they give that particular situation a goofy name. My father might have referred to it as “being a bum” if he were still around, while I referred to it as a time of “terrified freedom”.
As of yesterday I am no longer “funemployed”. I work for GitLab as a Senior Security Engineer in the Security Research group. GitLab saw I was funemployed, asked me what I did and where my strengths were, and despite me being 100% truthful they offered me a job anyway. In fact they seemed to be nearly as excited as I was.
This marks my third startup. At some point after the round G or H funding of my first true startup experience at Vernier Networks, I though I probably should get the hell out of there, and I’m glad I did. They closed their doors 4 months later. The second startup was Duo Security, and outside of that whole “it’s not you, it’s me” thing at the end it was a very positive experience.
GitLab reminds me in many ways of Duo - cloud-based infrastructure for the employees, vibrant internal culture, and surprising amount of love from customers. Although Duo was a SaaS company (now a SaaS department of Cisco) and GitLab is a DevOps company, they both do the whole CI/CD thing. I do have to say it is fun to work at a place where the customers want to take selfies with you and say things like “we love you, you make our lives better”. I got that at Duo, so it is awesome to get that at GitLab as well. It is a positive sign that this was a good decision on my part, and I plan on making it seem like a good decision from GitLab’s perspective.
So far the thing I like best is the entire company is remote. There is no office headquarters building. As a remote worker for roughly two decades, this is a welcome change. I no longer miss out on important things due to hallway conversations or “we discussed it over lunch in the lunchroom”, nor are activities centered around an office. And the employees are scattered everywhere. Sure there are large chunks in the usual technical hotspots including many major US metropolis areas like in the Valley, Chicagoland, New York City, and Austin, but there are plenty all over Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. This place is remote heaven.
I plan on being here for a while - this place seems really cool, and the security department is really growing.
Enigma Videos
Enigma 2019 videos are up, so when you look at some of my recent blog posts, the links regarding various talks that point to the talk descriptions include an embedded video. Or you can just go to YouTube, here is a link to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEj7rL10vd5ZKykbgLxfiTGIezyhUJBdw
Future Content
Even though I am now employed, I’ll still be creating content on this website and my YouTube channel. Expect more content very soon.
