0:00

is so vast. There's a different

0:02

area to security. There's the incident

0:04

response, there's compliance, there's this and that.

0:06

But I do recommend for those

0:08

who are web developers or software engineers

0:10

that want to transition to security. You

0:13

have a really, really good chance of getting

0:15

to application security. And that's why I was honing

0:17

in on the OS top 10 and like

0:19

web vulnerabilities and stuff like that, because it already

0:21

builds on what you already know. You

0:23

already have like that solid foundation of web

0:25

development. Now you have to learn about like different

0:27

ways that like an attacker can try to

0:29

explore your application. And so your job

0:31

would be to help secure that application

0:34

from those attacks and everything. So

0:36

welcome back to the free code

0:38

camp podcast, your source for raw.

0:40

Unedited interviews with developers. Today

0:42

we're talking with Taylor

0:44

Alexis. She's a developer

0:46

and cybersecurity analyst. Instead

0:48

of going to college, Taylor spent

0:51

years working at various fast

0:53

food and retail jobs. She taught

0:55

herself Python and JavaScript using free

0:57

code camp. Then worked

0:59

as a software engineer for

1:01

five years before specializing in

1:03

security engineering. Now instead

1:05

of building applications, she breaks

1:08

them. Support for this

1:10

podcast comes from a grant from

1:12

Wix Studio. Wix Studio provides developers

1:14

tools to rapidly build websites with

1:16

everything out of the box, then extend,

1:18

replace, and break boundaries with code. Learn

1:21

more at wixstudio.com. Support also

1:23

comes from the 11 ,300

1:25

84 kind folks who support

1:28

Free Code Camp through a

1:30

monthly donation. You can

1:32

join these chill human beings and

1:34

help our charity's mission by

1:36

going to donate .freecocamp .org. For

1:38

this week's musical intro, with yours

1:40

truly on the drums, guitar, bass, and

1:42

keys, we're going back to 1990 with

1:44

the theme from the

1:47

Nintendo game, Astiniacs.

2:48

Hey welcome to the Free Coke Camp

2:50

Podcast. Hi. Yeah,

2:53

it's awesome to talk with you.

2:55

I've known of you for many,

2:57

many years and I'm excited to

2:59

learn a little bit more about

3:01

you. First, I want to ask,

3:03

what exactly does a security engineer

3:05

do? So greatly

3:07

depends on the domain that in.

3:10

like there's incident response, there's application security. What

3:12

I do is it's kind of like

3:14

a mix of different things because I work

3:16

directly under a CISO at a consulting

3:18

firm. So we offer a variety of security

3:21

services to tech startups like in specific. So

3:24

if they need vulnerability assessments, we

3:26

provide that. We're actually starting to do

3:28

like penetration testing as well or

3:30

ethical hacking for those who are unaware

3:32

of what that is. So being

3:34

able to legally like break into or

3:36

flaws in systems such as like

3:38

networks and web applications, mobile apps and

3:40

everything like that to help make

3:42

those applications and systems and networks secure.

3:45

We also do compliance. That's actually a lot

3:47

of my work too now. So

3:49

we help build security programs from scratch

3:51

because a lot of these startups, they

3:53

often like the products first and think

3:55

about the security like afterwards. So,

3:59

you know, they'll need certain things

4:01

in place to become compliant with different

4:03

standards such as ISO 27001, SOC2,

4:05

I don't want to bore anyone with

4:07

all the different standards and stuff. Often

4:14

a really important thing if they're

4:16

trying to secure funding or different customers

4:18

Like is if they are compliant with

4:20

certain standards and stuff like that because

4:22

they're trying to see because other

4:24

Potential customers are trying to see can

4:26

you are you do you have certain

4:28

controls in place? That will protect like

4:30

our data and everything like that. Can

4:32

we trust you with our stuff? Basically,

4:35

so we help prepare different tech startups

4:37

for those like audits and getting

4:39

those Certifications and stuff like that. So

4:41

like my typical day It's

4:43

a little interesting. So

4:46

as a security analyst and everything,

4:48

I'm actually working with different startups. So

4:50

one client could need a risk

4:52

assessment done, or another client could be

4:54

asking a question about recently. yesterday

4:56

they actually asked me for advice on

4:59

implementing a dash tool which for

5:01

those who don't know that's the automated

5:03

scanner that can help find like

5:05

vulnerabilities and stuff like that so from

5:07

an external standpoint so like they

5:09

need to help with like you know

5:11

what kind of tools you know

5:13

best fit our needs and everything like

5:15

that because the potential customer needed

5:17

that needed them to have that implemented

5:20

in order for them to work

5:22

with them so yeah it really depends

5:24

it kind of varies like the

5:26

type of work I do Awesome.

5:28

Yeah, so it sounds like a lot of

5:30

what you're doing is kind of just helping

5:32

people fix their fast move fast break things

5:34

kind of like mentality and startups like everything

5:36

is done as inexpensively as possible, just trying

5:39

to get the product out the door, see

5:41

whether people like it, see whether people will

5:43

pay money for it, and a lot of

5:45

times security is just one of those many

5:47

things that ends up as technical debt that

5:49

people will eventually get to. Yes,

5:51

a lot of my work is

5:53

actually educating, raising awareness on why

5:55

security matters, why you need to

5:58

have certain tools in place, why

6:00

secure coding is important to help

6:02

defend against vulnerabilities and everything like

6:04

that, so for sure. that it's

6:06

a lot of shine to make

6:08

people feel like. Make

6:10

security an important step in the process,

6:12

hopefully from the beginning of the

6:14

software building lifecycle, but at any

6:16

stage we can kind of get in. Yeah,

6:19

and you worked as a software engineer for like

6:21

five years before you got into security, and

6:23

along the way, did you take for granted

6:25

a lot of the things that you now know

6:28

are very important about security? Yeah,

6:30

actually, and I didn't I did not know

6:32

a lot about secure coding when I was

6:34

a front -end developer actually I didn't know

6:36

much about I didn't know of cross -size scripting,

6:38

but I didn't I didn't have like the

6:40

knowledge that I have now I didn't know

6:43

about the awas top 10 and everything and

6:45

I've noticed that And I thought that made

6:47

me a less of an engineer And so

6:49

I got into security and then I've met

6:51

other very very smart software engineers that don't

6:53

know like that much security and also like

6:55

as you know like A lot of software

6:57

development courses and coding courses, like they don't

7:00

actually teach about like secure coding or anything

7:02

like that. That's taught us a separate discipline.

7:04

So that was like an extra step that

7:06

I had to kind of like go through,

7:09

you know, trying to like. Fill in those gaps

7:11

and everything for sure and also another thing

7:13

is like I didn't know a lot of Linux

7:15

I didn't know a lot of networking and

7:17

so when I was transitioning to security I had

7:19

to kind of build up my knowledge and

7:22

that stuff but Have been that software development, but

7:24

like background really helped me with getting jobs

7:26

that I do have because I know about get

7:28

I know about the you know Sdlc and

7:30

everything like that I know about the different tech

7:32

stacks I know about like you know react

7:34

and view and everything I know how databases work

7:36

and stuff so Yeah, Sdlc is software development

7:39

lifecycle. I believe yes, okay So it's basically like,

7:41

from cradle to the grave, what happens with

7:43

an app? And all the

7:45

many life events. From

7:47

design to deployment. Yeah,

7:49

awesome. So I'm very excited

7:52

to learn more about security. But first, I

7:54

want to learn more about you. Many

7:57

people probably already know who you

7:59

are. You had this photo of you

8:01

mopping the bathroom or something at

8:03

Boston Market. And then it was like,

8:05

that was the first one. And

8:07

the second one was like you working

8:09

as a software engineer. And

8:12

yeah, I want to learn

8:14

a little bit more about your

8:16

kind of developer origin story and how

8:18

you were able to teach yourself

8:20

all these skills just using free learning

8:22

resources and also just leveraging the

8:24

community around you. One of the things

8:26

that you mentioned that you've used

8:28

in the past is free co -camp

8:30

of course. And yeah, I'm excited to

8:32

learn more about that. Period of

8:34

your life. My understanding is you were

8:37

in Jacksonville, Florida at the time.

8:39

Is that is that correct? I

8:41

was I spent time like it was

8:43

kind of half -and -half like when I

8:45

was really learning how to code it

8:48

was actually in Orlando, Florida is so

8:50

in Central Florida. Okay. Yeah Yeah, take

8:52

us back to that experience like what

8:54

you were doing because you know a

8:56

lot of people when they finish high

8:58

school They go to college if they

9:00

have been like sufficiently academically inclined, or

9:02

if they have the money to go

9:05

to college, if they live in a

9:07

state that has an inexpensive community college,

9:09

often they'll go there. What

9:11

was your entire approach? Like, take

9:13

us back to high school. Okay, yeah. So

9:15

high school, I was not the best student.

9:17

I'm just going to be honest. Like, I'm

9:19

pretty sure if my math and science teacher

9:21

saw me in STEM today, they'd be like,

9:23

wow, she actually made it. I

9:27

was really, really shy. I

9:29

don't really think I gave myself a chance, honestly, in

9:31

class. I'm not even going to try to blame the

9:33

system or anything like that. I think

9:35

I was just, like, really, like, shy and, like, very introverted,

9:37

and I just didn't want to be around people, so I

9:39

would just be, like, awkward, like, in my own world. And

9:42

so I wasn't the best in math

9:44

or anything like that. And when I

9:46

graduated high school, Didn't

9:49

really know what I wanted to do like

9:51

growing up I wanted to be a lawyer

9:53

actually like I I wanted to go to

9:55

like Harvard Law School and everything like that

9:57

But like things didn't like work out. I

9:59

didn't have any like money like and I

10:01

didn't have like the Like the academic, you

10:03

know aptitude and everything to get into like

10:05

a really good school and stuff like that

10:07

So I got into you know, I did

10:10

with a lot of 18 -year -olds do I

10:12

got into fast food worked at like McDonald's

10:14

and Macy's and I It

10:16

just worked like a bunch of jobs, like

10:18

in retail and fast food. I did not know

10:20

of what coding or computer science was or

10:22

anything like that. It's

10:25

really cool when you meet other people

10:27

in the industry who started off taking apart

10:29

computers and everything and hacking the systems

10:31

and being in hacker forms when they were

10:33

10 years old and I'm just like,

10:35

dang. When I was 10 years old, I

10:37

was... I don't know, on Wikipedia. Like,

10:40

or watch like VH1 or something. Like,

10:42

I wasn't, yeah. I didn't know

10:44

about, I didn't know about any of that I

10:46

wish, but yeah. It's just a different path, right?

10:48

So, I did come across

10:50

a coding when I saw like a

10:52

YouTube video, I think for like Code

10:54

Academy or something like that. Just like

10:56

a coding like ad and I was

10:59

like curious about it. I

11:01

was like, well, what is it? And so, I

11:03

did not know that like you know

11:05

everything that we do like on our computers

11:07

and everything like we're interacting like with

11:09

applications that are built with code and I

11:11

just I had no idea I would

11:13

be on the computer every day like playing

11:16

games flash games everything like that but

11:18

I never actually like thought about how do

11:20

these things like work and everything so

11:22

um yeah that's what I was doing and

11:24

I came across coding specifically in 2017. Okay,

11:26

you're interested in coding, but like how

11:29

do you go about teaching yourself to code?

11:31

That's like a major endeavor. It's one

11:33

thing to know what coding is and appreciate

11:35

that like most of the things that

11:37

are exciting in the world right now that

11:39

are happening in software are happening because

11:41

a developer will them into existence, right? Or

11:43

a team of developers will them into

11:46

existence. But it's another thing to actually put

11:48

yourself in a position where you can

11:50

develop. How did you do that? Honestly,

11:53

diversity and my resources

11:55

and everything. At that point

11:57

in 2017, the main resources that were

11:59

out was Free Code Camp and Code Academy.

12:01

Those are the two sites that really

12:04

stood out. And then, of course, Udemy.

12:09

It was hard, honestly.

12:12

When I first tried learning how to code, it

12:14

was February 2017. and I

12:16

tried to print like Hello World in Python

12:19

and then I stopped immediately and I didn't

12:21

actually resume learning how to code for like

12:23

some months because I was like I don't

12:25

know what I'm doing. I didn't understand like

12:27

the basic building blocks and what was the

12:29

purpose of a function and comments. I just

12:31

didn't understand and I guess I just didn't

12:33

think I would be technical enough or that

12:35

I would have like the raw intelligence to

12:37

be able like take on this endeavor of

12:39

learning how to code honestly. I'm

12:41

being honest. But

12:43

my father actually motivated me

12:45

to keep going. But

12:47

at that time, so I was 21, I

12:50

had reconnected with my father and everything. Because

12:53

when my parents divorced and I was a

12:55

kid, I was with my mom and I

12:57

didn't get to talk to my dad really

12:59

because they were separate. um living

13:01

their own lives and so I reconnected with

13:03

him and like he saw that I was like

13:05

on like free co -camp and he was just

13:07

like you should keep going with that you

13:09

seem like it seems like it made me like

13:12

happy or something I was just like really

13:14

and then he died actually like a few months

13:16

after that so That's what

13:18

kind of kept me motivated to keep learning

13:20

how to code. I try

13:22

to tell people because I get a

13:24

lot of people that reach out to me

13:26

and they don't feel smart enough to

13:28

learn how to code and become a software

13:31

developer because a certain concept is hard. I'm

13:34

like, that's a cyclical feeling. You're going

13:36

to have that feeling throughout your whole

13:38

career, whenever there's a new topic or

13:40

concept that comes about. And there's things

13:42

that took me a long time to

13:44

understand when it came to coding as

13:47

well. So it's just having to go

13:49

back to it. Sometimes it's

13:51

the resource so like if you're trying to

13:53

learn from like one course and they're teaching

13:55

a topic that you don't understand or that

13:57

doesn't resonate with you then diversify and try

13:59

like another instructor you know or try videos

14:01

maybe because maybe you're a visual learner as

14:03

opposed to someone who as supposed to like

14:05

you know learning from like books or written

14:07

tutorials and stuff like that so find like

14:09

your learning styles important and being open to

14:11

diversifying your resources those are the two things

14:13

I would say that help me keep going.

14:16

Awesome, man. Uh, I'm

14:18

glad your dad got to see

14:20

you. Uh, pursuing this passion, uh,

14:22

for a pass. Um, yeah. Um...

14:27

Yeah, maybe you can put us

14:29

into that, that moment. Like, not that

14:32

moment that your dad passed, but like,

14:34

kind of that, that area of your

14:36

life. So you're, you're kind of cycling

14:38

in and out. You're, you're, and I

14:40

experienced this too. Uh, I always say,

14:42

like, lots of people... up on

14:44

learning the program. I gave up several

14:46

times, right? And so you're kind of

14:49

like cycling in and out of feeling

14:51

like you can do this. How

14:53

did you have the temerity and

14:55

the willpower to keep thrusting yourself

14:58

back into it? I

15:01

had to build my community and

15:03

I didn't know I was building a

15:05

community, honestly, because I was, I

15:07

had joined like the 100 Days of Code

15:09

Challenge and I think that public

15:11

accountability kind of helped me keep going

15:14

because I started to post about what I

15:16

was like learning the struggles I was

15:18

having with like learning programming and what I

15:20

was building and just meeting like other

15:22

people that were also like learning to like

15:24

that is so key and I didn't

15:26

have anyone around me like out you know

15:28

in the real world that uh, was

15:31

also doing this, like, no one else in

15:33

my family was in programming, actually, correction.

15:35

I just found out, rather recently, that I

15:37

have an aunt that I did not

15:39

know about that actually has, like, a computer

15:41

science degree from, like, way, way back

15:43

then, like, 70s, 80s. And I was like,

15:46

what? But at the time,

15:48

I didn't have anyone. I didn't

15:50

have a support system. So

15:53

yeah, finding that online and just keeping

15:55

in mind what my dad told me

15:57

and everything like that helped me for

15:59

sure. Yeah, I didn't

16:01

know what I wanted to do. So

16:03

you were able to leverage kind of

16:05

this support system that you went out

16:07

and built for yourself, kind of like

16:10

a spider like weaves a web to

16:12

stand on. Right? Or a beaver builds

16:14

a dam so they can control a

16:16

part of their ecosystem. You kind of

16:18

created this mind space and these people

16:20

around you. And that was what you

16:22

needed in order to be able to

16:24

sit down and grind through all the

16:26

learning resources. Yeah. There are

16:28

people that have been in

16:30

tech for 10, 20 years.

16:33

that were like being like super encouraged into

16:35

a lot of us in the community like

16:37

in the 100 days of code or code

16:39

newbie community on Twitter um in so like

16:41

that was very helpful honestly it was it's

16:43

very encouraging for sure and honestly like I

16:45

had to motivate myself too because I was

16:47

like I knew that I did not want

16:49

to be in fast food for long I

16:51

was like I'm about to quit this job

16:53

at Boston Market like I'm not about to

16:55

keep doing this job so and I wanted

16:57

to see what was happy with soft development

17:00

and honestly at the time You know how

17:02

like now software development is like being pushed

17:04

so heavy as far as like oh make

17:06

six figures and everything like that like get

17:08

rich quick kind of thing? At the time

17:10

I swear like in 2017 I wasn't even

17:12

drawn to it because of that like I

17:14

was seeing people look on YouTube like coding

17:16

phase whoever like they just I just liked

17:18

the knowledge that they like gave like other

17:20

people and like the and everything and I

17:22

just I wanted to create value too for

17:24

others too so yeah. Yeah, and

17:26

there are a few things that you

17:28

can do that just can unlock that

17:30

much value for other people just like

17:32

that you can do yourself, right? Like

17:34

you can go and build houses for

17:36

people, but it takes a lot of

17:38

people to build a house for somebody,

17:40

right? And it's it also

17:43

takes a whole lot of lumber and a

17:45

lot of other resources like you if

17:47

you have the developer skills you can sit

17:49

down with like a laptop or you

17:51

like even go to like a library and

17:53

use that either there and you can

17:55

build something that people can use. And

17:57

that's kind of like the power

17:59

and the leverage that software specifically gives

18:01

people that other mediums of creation

18:03

do not necessarily, is being able to

18:05

help a lot of people at

18:07

scale without using a lot of material.

18:10

I agree. Yeah, taking from idea and

18:12

actually realizing that idea and everything,

18:15

making it a reality, like that is

18:17

a power for sure. I think

18:19

that's what drew me to Frontend Development,

18:21

especially because I was able to

18:23

get the immediate results of what I

18:25

was coding and stuff. So

18:28

were you working these retail jobs

18:30

while you were teaching yourself coding? Yeah.

18:32

Like either two in tandem? Yeah.

18:35

At one point I was working on

18:37

both Walmart and Boston Market and I

18:40

would work... Like especially at

18:42

Boston Market, I'd be working like eight

18:44

to ten hours shifts sometimes without a break

18:46

and then I didn't have a car

18:48

so then I would run home and then

18:50

I would get on the computer and

18:52

for some reason like I was just like

18:54

I was really on the computer for

18:56

six to seven hours like barely sleeping like

18:58

I was just I was just really

19:00

fascinated like especially when I was like running

19:02

like problems with my code or like

19:04

not understanding something like for me what What

19:06

drives me is I have this need

19:08

to have to understand something. So I think

19:10

that's what also is a really important

19:12

trait for someone to have when they're trying

19:14

to get into tech. If an obstacle

19:16

doesn't put you off from the whole mission,

19:19

then you have a chance of getting

19:21

into tech, honestly. Because that's a lot of

19:23

what a lot of our journey as

19:25

artists will have obstacles and be able to

19:27

overcome them and be resilient. Yeah,

19:29

I was working like my butt

19:31

off for sure. I often I often

19:33

say like learning programming is more

19:35

of a motivational challenge than it's like

19:38

a specifically like technical challenge or

19:40

Yeah, and then it has anything to

19:42

do with like aptitude or even

19:44

like interest in you know computers early

19:46

on Because it doesn't sound like

19:48

you really got that I mean it

19:50

sounds like you were like a

19:52

curious kid who didn't necessarily You know

19:54

perform well in school, but was

19:56

also you know you were interested in

19:58

stuff and It's just

20:00

that you were waiting for the

20:02

right thing to come along

20:04

and then you really just took

20:06

to that yeah Waiting for

20:08

my passion honestly. Yeah, yeah Let's

20:10

talk about that period between

20:12

when you knew oh, I'm really

20:14

interested in this and then

20:16

when you got your first job

20:18

Yeah, so I want to

20:20

say I was studying for about

20:22

seven or eight months before

20:24

I Got an email I received

20:26

an email from a

20:29

CEO of a small

20:31

consulting firm based in Seattle,

20:33

Washington. And I remember

20:35

the email, because I was

20:37

like, what is going on? Basically,

20:40

what happened was he reached out to

20:42

me, said he had actually been following

20:44

my journey on Twitter for a little

20:46

while. And they were hard -engineered software

20:48

engineers. And he was wondering if I

20:50

would be interested in anything for the

20:52

role. And I was like, yeah. And

20:55

the rule would require relocation to Seattle,

20:57

and I had never been to Seattle, like,

20:59

ever in my life. At that point,

21:01

I had only lived in, I think, what,

21:03

California, Nevada, Florida, and Georgia?

21:05

Like, I hadn't been to, like, Seattle. One

21:07

place where most Americans would live, yeah.

21:09

Yeah? Oh. I mean, you live

21:11

on both coasts, that's cool. Yeah,

21:13

yeah, for sure. Yeah,

21:16

so talk us through what

21:18

that process was like. How

21:20

did you react to getting that

21:22

email? Did that feel... I mean, you've

21:24

been studying for like seven months

21:26

at this point. Yeah. Yeah. And

21:28

I had built some projects. I built like

21:30

a really, I remember the apps too. I remember

21:33

them and I was hosting them on GitHub. Yeah.

21:35

What were some of your early apps? Yeah.

21:38

So like, for me,

21:41

like how I developed ideas for like landing

21:43

pages since I wanted to be a front

21:45

end developer, I thought of like startup ideas.

21:47

So like, I thought of like a beer

21:49

and chocolate delivery service. So I created like

21:51

a landing page for that. Let's

21:53

see. I developed a landing

21:56

page for a fake beauty e -commerce

21:58

app because I was like, oh,

22:00

I'd love to build a beauty e

22:02

-commerce app to sell Korean skincare and

22:04

cosmetics and stuff like that based

22:06

on skin type. I was really going

22:08

into details. I was thinking, if

22:10

I was going to sell a startup,

22:12

this is what I would want

22:14

to advertise and try to market. I

22:18

did that. I also built a real estate listings

22:20

app, kind of like a Zillow clone. That was

22:23

the one I was the most proud of because

22:25

of the UI, honestly. There's

22:27

a lot of gradient effects and everything.

22:29

I'm sure it's so dated now. But

22:32

at the time, I was proud. Those

22:35

are the projects that I had

22:37

on my resume and on my

22:39

GitHub and everything. The

22:43

interview process basically consisted of the

22:45

first call being with the CEO virtually

22:47

talking about why I want to

22:49

be in tech and what... you know,

22:51

I'm passionate about and everything and

22:53

then it moved on to like the

22:55

technical portion which honestly is like

22:57

the least technical interview I've had since

22:59

then. Like I'd have to say

23:01

like in total because I've had like

23:03

full on like whiteboarding interviews and

23:05

this one was actually one of the

23:07

more like laid back ones that

23:09

was like this is it's a really

23:11

good like junior role like kind

23:13

of like interview for short. Basically they

23:15

had like me talk with two

23:17

of the engineers on the team and

23:19

walk through the code. the solution

23:21

for one of my projects that I

23:23

had, which in this case, I

23:25

believe it was the real estate listings

23:27

app. And they

23:29

asked me questions like, What

23:32

is my process for developing like a new

23:34

feature? How do I design it? How do

23:36

I consider like accessibility and everything since they

23:39

knew that I was also learning about accessibility

23:41

from their different resources that I was like

23:43

using and everything and so oh and also

23:45

about like how I would make like my

23:47

app like Responsive since at the time I

23:49

did not build I did not build that

23:51

website out responsive first So,

23:54

yeah, they were just trying to see my minds,

23:56

honestly, and how I'm able to communicate. And I

23:58

think that's also something that I also try to

24:00

tell people a lot, is these interviews are really

24:02

them trying to see how do you communicate and

24:04

how do you work through a solution and can

24:06

you work with a team member? Can they understand

24:08

you and everything? Do you ask questions? They're

24:11

just trying to see how you perform. And

24:13

of course, how do you perform under pressure as well,

24:15

especially those white boarding ones. But yeah. Yeah,

24:19

so that's what the ANP process was like, and

24:21

it was really simple. was just like two steps. Yeah,

24:24

and then so you go at

24:26

the Seattle and you start working as

24:29

a software engineer? Yeah, it

24:31

was like my first time like

24:33

on a first -class flight. I felt like

24:35

so cool. Yeah,

24:38

I had like three Cairnberry Vacas. I was

24:40

just like really, really happy on the

24:42

plane, but yeah, so yeah. Like it was

24:44

my first time in Seattle and everything

24:46

and it was also my first time having

24:48

my own place as well because they

24:50

provided relocation And so he was like hey

24:52

before I came out there. He was

24:55

like can you find a place? Um

24:57

in Seattle mind you I never been

24:59

there like I said and I was

25:01

like yeah sure and then I found

25:03

like a little micro studio It was

25:05

like super super small like less than

25:07

I don't even I don't even know

25:09

anymore actually micro studio so like I

25:11

Mean square footage like So like this

25:13

place for instance, it's like it's 35

25:15

square meters. I want to say Like

25:17

my micro studio was even less than

25:19

that. Okay,

25:21

so that's two square

25:24

feet. That is like

25:26

less than 400 feet.

25:29

So less than 400 square feet. And

25:31

of course, now you're in Bangkok, Thailand. We're

25:34

going to talk about that. We're definitely going to talk about that

25:36

a little bit. So

25:38

I just want to give people

25:40

context. So you're moving all the

25:42

way across the country, like Jacksonville,

25:44

Florida, or Orlando. To

25:47

freaking Seattle like you could not

25:49

travel farther across the continental

25:51

US And you're moving into a

25:53

I mean like the room.

25:55

I'm standing in here. It's probably

25:57

like 150 square feet. Maybe

26:00

200 so this is like not

26:02

much bigger than Yeah, it's

26:04

literally about that. It's about that

26:06

size and not even lines

26:08

you like that studio was about

26:10

I want to say like

26:12

around 150 there yeah

26:15

there wasn't even like there was not a full

26:17

kitchen at all there wasn't even a full

26:19

closet like there was a rack and that represented

26:21

the closet like a single bed yeah but

26:23

it was in such a nice part of Seattle's

26:25

in Ballard I don't know if it been

26:27

said Ballard Um, it's like a suburb,

26:29

like maybe like 10 minutes outside of like

26:31

the cap, uh, the, the downtown Seattle and

26:34

it was really nice. And it was five

26:36

minutes walking from the, from my office, like

26:38

from our office and everything. So that's why

26:40

I picked it as well. So it was

26:42

like right there in the main street. So

26:44

there was a bunch of like bars and

26:46

restaurants. So it was really nice, um, like

26:48

area, very safe, honestly, but also close to

26:50

my workplace. So. Yeah. So what was it

26:53

like, like the first few months? working

26:55

there, doing front -end development,

26:57

being in a completely new city, not

27:00

working in fast food. Yeah,

27:02

so when I started that job it

27:04

was July 2018, and it

27:06

was definitely a struggle at first for sure,

27:08

having to adjust to a whole new

27:10

city and everything, but also at the same

27:12

time I grew up, as you've heard,

27:15

I've lived in different states and everything, so

27:17

I was open to living in different

27:19

places. It wasn't foreign to me. But just

27:21

being away from, like, not being close

27:23

to my family, that was my first time.

27:25

Being away from my mother, for sure. My

27:28

siblings, like, no one was in that same

27:30

state or, like, nearby. And, of course, my father

27:32

had passed, so I really felt extra lonely,

27:34

honestly. Um, but

27:36

yeah. So it was, I was definitely like a

27:38

recluse at first. And just, like, trying to,

27:40

like, get, like, my bearings at work and trying

27:42

to, like, um... you know, just like become

27:44

like accustomed to like this like new workload and

27:46

everything because I was from having a workload

27:48

of working at, you know, fast food, like working

27:50

the drive -thru and cleaning bath and floor. So

27:53

like, oh, can you like help us like

27:55

develop this like new features like a whole different

27:57

like my shift for sure. And having to

27:59

like learn about like sprints and everything and stand

28:01

up like, you know, meetings that we would

28:03

have like, you know, just getting like used to

28:05

that. that whole

28:07

new culture working under like a project manager

28:09

who has like roadmaps and deadlines and

28:11

stuff like that it was it was very

28:13

different from like having to like build

28:15

like follow tutorial like online from like a

28:17

course and everything they don't teach you

28:20

all that you know yeah so they don't

28:22

necessarily they're just teaching you the specific

28:24

technical topics that you're gonna be that knowledge

28:26

that you're gonna be using on the

28:28

job they don't teach you the kind of

28:30

a meta aspects of working on a

28:32

software development team Yeah, and

28:34

you mentioned like you had like a

28:36

product manager or project manager that you

28:38

worked under and they delegated different features

28:40

and bugs and things to you and

28:42

then did you do like sprints? I

28:44

mean did you have like stand -up

28:46

meetings? Did you have all that stuff? Yeah,

28:49

daily stand -ups and everything like that

28:51

for sure and having to like

28:53

talk about like any like block you

28:55

know any blocks that we were

28:57

having like or questions that we have

28:59

about certain features or whatever tasks

29:02

that we have to do and everything

29:04

like that, for sure. And I

29:06

also learned about other functions in tech

29:08

or in IT, such as what

29:10

DevOps was. I didn't know

29:12

what a DevOps engineer was and what

29:14

role they play, system administrator,

29:16

all that kind of stuff. So that was

29:18

all very new. Actually, in

29:20

that first job, we didn't have a

29:22

dedicated security team. I believe that must

29:24

have been outsourced or something. So I

29:27

wasn't even exposed to security yet. So

29:29

yeah, they taught me nothing about security.

29:32

Well, that sounds like

29:35

an exciting moment in

29:37

your life. New city, new

29:39

field. Can

29:42

you remember how much you were

29:44

sleeping during that period? I'm

29:50

sure it was stressful, but

29:52

the more color you can put

29:54

on that picture, that portrait

29:56

of you in this new office, I

29:59

just like to try to transport myself

30:01

and put myself in your shoes to

30:03

the extent I can. It

30:05

was a very surreal feeling. It

30:07

didn't really feel real, even my first

30:09

few weeks or months into the

30:11

world and everything. I'm

30:13

glad that I did get

30:15

proper I

30:18

wouldn't say I was given proper

30:20

training, but I was giving a

30:22

lot of support for sure on

30:24

that job and everything. So

30:26

yeah, it was, it was just, it's different. It's just

30:28

like, know, you're just trying to like adapt like a whole

30:30

new like mindset and you're trying to see like, okay,

30:33

so like for me, like where does he like fit into

30:35

like this like team and everything. Also

30:37

like there's like different personalities and everything,

30:39

you know, Working like on a tech

30:42

team and everything so yeah, I was

30:44

just like being able to like deal

30:46

with people of different backgrounds and personalities

30:48

for sure That was another thing. Yeah,

30:50

we're where there are other people on

30:52

the team that had Not gone to

30:54

university like we think of like the

30:57

typical like developer as somebody who went

30:59

to university when they turned 18 and

31:01

got a computer science degree and then

31:03

just got an internship and then just

31:05

kind of like rode that like linear

31:07

progression that I would probably say at

31:10

least 50 or 60 percent of developers

31:12

do that even today. Were

31:14

there other people with less traditional

31:16

backgrounds and journeys? I

31:19

was I

31:22

actually don't know. I didn't even

31:24

inquire about a lot of their

31:26

backgrounds or like what degree they

31:28

had and they didn't ask me

31:30

either. But I want to say

31:32

like the two senior engineers, they

31:35

were twins actually. I

31:38

don't believe they had degrees. Yeah, I remember them

31:40

telling me that. And they were also from Florida, too.

31:42

They are from Miami. And they

31:44

were some of the smartest people that I've

31:46

met. Actually, a lot of the smartest people I've

31:48

met, they don't have degrees. Like my current

31:50

boss, actually, he doesn't have a college degree and

31:53

he's a CISO, which is pretty cool. But

31:56

yeah, at that time, no. A

31:59

lot of people were still... you know,

32:01

coming from a traditional background and everything, for

32:03

sure, having a computer science degree. Yeah.

32:06

And CISO is Chief Information

32:08

Security Officer? Is that correct? Yes.

32:10

Okay, cool. Yeah, I try to like

32:12

break down the acronyms for people listening. Like,

32:14

I'm not even sure of that, but

32:16

basically he's like, it's the equivalent of the

32:18

CTO for security. Yes, yeah.

32:20

He carries out all the executive

32:22

decisions when it comes to

32:24

security. He develops the security strategy

32:26

for a company and he

32:28

executes that. Yeah. So,

32:31

do you have any particularly

32:33

trying memories from that moment

32:35

when you were working in

32:37

Seattle where you got really

32:39

stuck or completely overwhelmed or

32:41

were there any moments where

32:43

you were just like, I'm

32:45

not sure if I'm cut

32:48

out for this? Yeah,

32:50

honestly, I remember this. I

32:52

had a project manager and

32:54

she was like really... Hard

32:57

on me. I would and I want to

32:59

say she was like really just like hard

33:01

on the team And I guess like she's

33:03

like under pressure herself because you know now

33:05

As I'm older I tried to think about

33:07

I try to have like more compassion I

33:09

try to be like more mindful of things

33:11

so like I'm not even trying to like

33:13

put her in like a bad Way

33:16

or anything like that, but I

33:18

want to say she probably was just

33:20

a perfectionist and she probably was

33:22

just like learning her job as well

33:24

Because she sent me like ten

33:26

tasks like 11 p .m. On slack

33:28

like to do and she wanted that

33:30

done like by 9 a .m. In

33:32

the morning what mind you yes,

33:34

yeah, so just to be clear like

33:36

you have ten hours and it's

33:38

Yeah, and I'm already like I'm I'm

33:40

asleep Cause like when I wake

33:42

up in the morning, she's like, Hey,

33:44

she's like, what's the progress on

33:46

the task that I've assigned to you?

33:48

I literally shows that like she

33:50

assigned those tasks to me at 10

33:52

PM. And I was just like,

33:54

this is, I'm not, I

33:56

haven't even looked at this. I just woke

33:58

up and work doesn't even start until nine.

34:00

Like we're not even like, we're not, um,

34:02

you know, it wasn't expected of

34:05

us to go into office until nine AM.

34:07

And so like that's usually when I was

34:09

starting my day. And I was like, yeah,

34:11

like when I, like clock in for work

34:13

and everything like I can begin those tasks

34:15

she's like she just really gave me like

34:17

a hard time about that and like at

34:19

the time I hate it now because like

34:21

the way I am now is like I

34:23

don't show emotion like um I really don't

34:25

like because you don't I don't know but

34:27

uh but then at the time like I

34:29

was just like oh my god like I

34:31

didn't really know how to like process it

34:33

so like I was internalizing and I felt

34:35

really really bad and I just felt like

34:37

oh my god it's like for me um

34:39

at the time and I was definitely questioning

34:41

like if I should like even like stay

34:43

in this job but I was just like

34:45

I'm already here um yeah I mean a

34:47

dream it almost feels like a hazing ritual

34:49

or something like Alright,

34:51

let's see if she's tough enough

34:53

to hang. Yeah, and

34:56

there were some other guys on the team

34:58

that said that she's done other stuff like that

35:00

to them as well. And

35:02

they're just like, I don't care. They're

35:05

just like, it's unreasonable.

35:07

Because at end the day, our CEO,

35:09

he's a very understanding person. And so

35:11

he wasn't honest at all about that.

35:13

So she was just, I don't know.

35:15

I know, I know for a fact,

35:17

I wanted to tell my boss so

35:19

bad, like, can you please not have

35:21

her be my project manager? Like, because

35:23

we had another one that was much

35:25

better. But I just, I

35:28

didn't even say that. I didn't even, like, raise the issue.

35:30

I just, um, you

35:32

know, I really leaned on the support of,

35:34

like, my teammates for real, like, on, you know,

35:36

just being good to, you know, co -workers and

35:38

everything like that and helping guide me and

35:40

stuff. So, and now the work place.

35:43

similar to like how when you were learning

35:45

to code and undergoing, you know,

35:47

extreme difficulty because learning programming

35:49

is hard. Similarly,

35:52

you kind of like went out

35:54

and you kind of crafted an environment

35:56

for yourself, supportive people. And

35:59

it sounds like you did the same

36:01

thing with your colleagues at the company. And

36:03

so you had kind of like the

36:05

support network and you all were able to

36:07

like vent and discuss like, oh, it's

36:09

kind of messed up that someone so expects

36:11

this of me. And it

36:13

seems like that was a big part of

36:15

how you kind of coped and stayed strong.

36:17

What did you say? Vensing? Because

36:19

I never vented to my coworkers, but

36:21

I more so was just like asking for

36:23

like guidance on how to like navigate

36:25

certain things. Okay. On how to develop my

36:27

communication skills more. Because I

36:30

think that was also like something to like

36:32

being able to like stand firm like in

36:34

your communication. Okay, like I cannot like and

36:36

working with the project manager to set better

36:38

deadlines for things Those are the things that

36:40

like I learned a lot from the more

36:42

senior engineers that kind of like took me

36:44

under their wings when I say that they

36:46

when I like that support system They yeah,

36:48

so yeah, that's kind of learn how to

36:50

manage the manager Yeah,

36:54

and how to be a better, yeah, how to

36:56

just be like a more communicative developer because it's,

36:58

like you said, it's not even just about the

37:00

technical skills. It's everything. You

37:03

know, it's being able to set

37:05

realistic expectations when it comes to deadlines

37:07

and projects and everything that you're

37:09

given. It's being able to be vocal

37:11

and to communicate things without being

37:13

overly emotional. You know,

37:15

and it's also setting inside like your feelings like

37:17

in the workplace. That's why say I don't even

37:19

like, Display

37:21

a motion like at work like that, you

37:23

know, like of course like you are

37:25

friendly you're kind and everything like that But

37:27

if you're like under stress or like

37:29

under pressure like I just try to have

37:31

like a Try to just center like

37:33

my thoughts and my emotions and everything like

37:36

that and just not yeah Yeah, just

37:38

just get that ice in your veins where

37:40

you're gonna Knuckle up. I'm just gonna

37:42

do this. I'm not gonna let them see

37:44

me bleed right that James won't ever

37:46

let them see you bleed And

37:49

it sounds like that's a big part of

37:51

how you navigate it, is just be really stoic

37:53

about it. Yeah. Yeah.

37:55

What are some of the biggest lessons,

37:58

the biggest takeaways from that first shot?

38:01

Oh, wow. Get.

38:09

It's so funny that that's the

38:11

first thing. I swear. I

38:13

remember the senior engineer, he

38:15

taught me how to Create

38:18

my first branch and you know

38:20

push commits and everything like that and

38:22

like the importance of writing like

38:24

meaningful commit messages and like that's really

38:26

taken me very far Having like

38:28

knowledge get so yeah And also not

38:30

being afraid to ask questions That

38:32

was another big takeaway because there were

38:35

a lot of things I didn't

38:37

know like I didn't know what vagrant

38:39

was and that was what we

38:41

used a lot for environment Yeah, big

38:43

right. It's a dev ops tool

38:45

for like Just having like a preconfigured

38:47

environment Now

38:51

people have like kind of like migrated

38:53

on over to like other like virtual

38:56

machines and everything like that. But yeah,

38:58

well, Vagrant is used to

39:00

configure like virtual machines and everything,

39:02

but like now they've migrated on

39:04

over to like other tools. But

39:06

yeah, I haven't used Vagrant in

39:08

years. But you got your first

39:10

exposure to that type of tool.

39:12

Yes. At the job. Yeah. And

39:14

that's what made learning like other

39:16

tools like such as like Ansible

39:18

or like terraform like not that

39:20

form of a concept they're like

39:23

learning like infrastructure as code because

39:25

you are writing You are code

39:27

like your infrastructure like invagrant So

39:29

yeah, yeah, awesome. And so When

39:31

did you decide to leave that

39:33

job and move on? Oh

39:35

my gosh, I got laid off got

39:37

laid off. Yeah, they laid off all

39:40

the juniors They laid off the instance.

39:42

Yeah, it was actually I've looked up

39:44

that company. They've changed the name Um,

39:46

but they, all the developers

39:48

that I, you know, had worked

39:51

with, they're no longer there. Um,

39:53

so like, I don't know. And I guess like

39:56

they completely like restructured the company. But yeah, they

39:58

had like, uh, they told me that, you know,

40:00

they were just like running out of like money

40:02

really, like of clientele and stuff. So, um,

40:04

they just had to like, you know, just make

40:06

a decision to like keep like the more senior

40:08

developers and everything. And yeah, that crushed me. That

40:10

I was, cause I was stuck. Yeah,

40:12

you're in Seattle. Like you've

40:14

uprooted your entire life. Yeah,

40:17

yeah, that happened around the holidays. It

40:19

happened around Christmas. What

40:21

did you do? Oh my gosh,

40:23

I was like depressed, but I have money

40:25

though because since I lived in a micros, because

40:27

I had thought about it when I initially

40:29

was looking for a place right before I started

40:31

my position. I was okay. Like I knew

40:33

how much I was going to make. post

40:36

taxes because I use this website called

40:38

smartasset and it kind of gives you

40:40

a good estimate of how much your

40:42

paychecks would be after taxes, depending on

40:44

the state, sometimes the city, all

40:46

that kind of stuff. And

40:48

so I had an idea of how

40:50

much I'd make, and so I found

40:52

an apartment that was way less than

40:54

that, so my apartment was $900 at

40:56

the time, which was probably considered a

40:58

lot for such a small apartment, but

41:00

yeah. And so

41:02

I had savings and everything like that. So I

41:05

was living off my savings, honestly. And

41:07

I started freelancing, actually. Because my best

41:09

friend, he had a contracting company and everything

41:11

like that. So we started just, we're

41:13

just like, hey. I was like build out

41:15

some like mobile and like web apps,

41:17

like let's just get this money like this

41:19

way. And I was like, okay, cool. And

41:22

so that exposed me to like work with like different

41:24

clients, stuff like that. So that's what I was

41:26

doing for a while. And then I was able to

41:28

like, you know, give my own clients off of

41:30

Twitter as well, just from, you know, having the tech

41:32

presence on Twitter and everything like that. So I

41:34

was doing that for a long time. So

41:36

first of all, that's really cool that you

41:38

like live well within your means and you were

41:41

able to kind of plan. Because

41:43

a lot of people when they

41:45

get the first job, they're like, all

41:47

right, I'm gonna go get a

41:49

lease on it. You're like like

41:51

you planned out and you had

41:53

like this kind of emergency fund and

41:55

then you were able to leverage

41:57

the social media presence that you built

41:59

up to find clients and you

42:01

were able to Do client work and

42:03

make yeah, what was that like

42:05

that period of your life? It

42:09

was definitely interesting Because

42:12

I was traveling I was giving

42:14

conference talks like so I spoke in

42:16

Believe like Seattle. I spoke in

42:18

San Francisco. I spoke in Germany, which

42:20

is really cool Chicago and stuff

42:22

like that So I was doing that

42:24

but then I was also like

42:26

getting clients and everything and I also

42:28

found clients like not even through

42:30

like online, but just from I remember

42:32

I was at Uh, Linux

42:34

mall in like Atlanta is like this big mall and

42:37

I was coding on my computer. I was just like

42:39

working on like a project or something like in the

42:41

food court. And then like, there was some like random

42:43

person that was like, Hey, like, are you coding? I

42:45

was like, yes. And they were like, I have an

42:47

app and it was just everyone like, so I just

42:49

ran into people and they were just like, I have

42:51

an app and everything like that. Or like, I, you

42:53

know, I want to eat commerce store. And that's, I

42:55

really, really got good with like WooCommerce and Shopify. Um,

42:58

cause a lot of people, like they had, you know, they

43:00

wanted to set up storefronts and so I just, and I

43:02

learned that from YouTube. Yeah. So

43:06

I was, they were like, Hey, can you build

43:08

this? I'm like, yeah, sure. Whatever I didn't know,

43:10

I just like learned how to do. Like I

43:12

just looked it up on like YouTube or something

43:14

or found documentation, definitely a lot of documentation, um,

43:17

to like build themes and like whatnot. So

43:19

yeah, that's, it was definitely interesting period

43:21

because like I knew that. I

43:23

didn't want to be in front of web

43:25

development forever. I knew I wanted to get into

43:28

security at some point. I'm

43:30

just trying to make ends meet. I'm just trying to

43:32

do my thing. I'm trying to travel and everything. I

43:36

think I was also writing coding

43:38

tutorials as well. I was trying to

43:40

stick to that as well. If

43:42

I can make a few

43:44

observations, first of all, you

43:46

just did whatever the client needed. And

43:48

you weren't like, well, I'm not going to

43:50

do WooCommerce or WordPress. You

43:52

didn't get all up on your high horse.

43:55

You're just like, sure. WooCommerce,

43:57

I'll build this app. You didn't think

43:59

of yourself as an XYZ developer. You

44:01

were just like, OK, I'm just a

44:03

Swiss army knife dev. I can do

44:05

whatever. Wherever

44:07

the business leads me. Yeah.

44:11

Yeah. So it

44:13

sounds like you were very pragmatic about making

44:15

it into me. At

44:18

the time, yeah. I mean, and also I had

44:20

exposure to WordPress from having my own blog on there.

44:22

So when I had my portfolio site, when I

44:24

was like looking for a job and like how my,

44:27

that CEO, how he found me and everything,

44:29

I had my portfolio site on there

44:31

and it was built with WordPress. So I

44:33

already had that exposure. So it just

44:35

made like sense to like, you know, with

44:37

clients or like ask about... WordPress

44:39

and Shopify and other CMS

44:41

solutions are just always a really

44:43

perfect solution for small to

44:45

mid -sized businesses and everything, where

44:47

they need something fast and that's

44:49

easy to manage. I

44:51

was really good with teaching people how

44:53

to use things, so not only was I

44:55

building the websites, I was also teaching

44:57

them... You know how

45:00

to update their content everything like that and how

45:02

like WordPress works and everything So and then when they

45:04

did want to expand it's like a blue commerce

45:06

or like you know add in like that shopping feature

45:08

Then I was also able to help them and

45:10

I was just thinking of that and I I

45:12

guess like having like my best friend who

45:15

was like really like deep into business like that

45:17

helped me as well with like being able

45:19

to sell my services and all that kind of

45:21

stuff So yeah, and it just it also

45:23

like made sense like I knew like react to

45:25

new JavaScript and everything like that So I

45:27

wasn't afraid of like, you know digging take the

45:29

front end and Customizing like code or anything

45:31

like that. So it helped in PHP isn't it's

45:33

not it's not that formidable language You know

45:36

compared to JavaScript, which is what I was working

45:38

with that work and everything. It's not it's

45:40

not as a big of like a WCF

45:42

as job it is for me. I

45:45

would not want to

45:47

go to Java. I

45:49

definitely can hear you there. The

45:51

jump from Java to JavaScript

45:53

is like a jump from a

45:55

car to carpet. What

45:59

do you work with the most

46:01

then? Mostly Python and JavaScript. And

46:04

I just keep it simple.

46:06

Like PHP, you mentioned PHP,

46:08

Peter levels. He just does

46:10

everything in PHP. And every

46:12

single project, he just uses

46:14

PHP and SQLite, I think. Yeah.

46:18

And so whatever the tools, they get the job

46:20

done, those are good tools

46:22

to use. You'll talk to these seasoned carpenters

46:24

that are using basically the same tools that

46:27

they've been using for the last 20 years

46:29

to get things done. And there might be

46:31

some newfangled tools. And maybe they'll experiment with

46:33

those. There's a high bar

46:35

to clear for actually adopting a new

46:37

tool and like moving to a completely new

46:39

stack and all the new learning that

46:41

is necessary with that. So

46:44

would you say you've been relatively focused

46:46

at least when you were front of

46:48

dev like on JavaScript, Python, and then

46:50

a little bit of PHP? Yeah,

46:52

yeah, definitely. It was those languages for sure.

46:54

I mean, I was always interested in learning

46:56

other languages and everything, but As far as

46:58

what else I got a day to day,

47:00

I was definitely focusing on those. Those are

47:02

my bread and butter. And those are also

47:05

languages that I recommend to people when they

47:07

want to learn how to code. Because

47:09

they're still so popular today. JavaScript

47:11

and Python. Awesome,

47:14

let's talk about your journey into security

47:16

because I'm very interested a lot of people

47:18

listening to this may already be working

47:20

as devs or they may not have figured

47:23

out how they want to specialize and

47:25

security is one of those things where they're

47:27

always gonna be like North Koreans trying

47:29

to hack you and You need to be

47:31

ready, right? Okay,

47:34

so how I got into security I

47:36

started learning it through like try hack

47:38

me That was actually like what got

47:40

me like into and also TCM security

47:42

because they had a lot of courses

47:44

on YouTube for sure Around that time

47:46

and I want to say I started

47:48

learning like in 2022 2022 is when

47:50

I joined like trihack being everything and

47:53

I This is the thing though This

47:55

is what I tell people is that

47:57

like you don't just start if I

47:59

like learning security like for the most

48:01

part You're trying to get a technical

48:03

role in security Usually have

48:05

to start off with already like Linux

48:07

like you have to like learn like

48:09

operating systems and like networking and I

48:11

did not know those two things like

48:13

in -depth I knew basic Terminal commands and

48:15

everything like that from being a developer

48:17

for how much like use like get

48:19

and everything but I Wasn't as confident

48:21

with like with Linux in general and

48:23

so I definitely learned like a lot

48:26

I was reading books like Linux

48:28

Bases for Hackers. There was

48:31

another Linux System Administration book that I

48:33

was also going through and learning

48:35

about how to set up a lamp

48:37

stack, which for those who don't

48:39

know, was commonly

48:41

used to help push out

48:43

WordPress applications. You're developing

48:45

servers that are built with

48:47

PHP, MySQL database. Apache

48:51

like web server and Linux so like that's

48:53

what makes up the lamp stack and solve stuff

48:55

Yeah, I was like learning how to like

48:57

build that from scratch because I was like well

48:59

like I know you know how to run

49:01

a web, you know WordPress application I didn't know

49:03

so much about setting it up like from

49:05

scratch because you know how you can use like

49:08

I was using when I was a developer

49:10

and I was building out like the WordPress sites.

49:13

The WordPress sites already hosted up by like using

49:15

like a one click solution from like Digital Ocean,

49:17

which is a cloud hosting provider. And so the

49:19

people are like an easy way for you to

49:21

like deploy like a WordPress application without having to

49:23

like know like all the mechanics that's going into

49:25

it. But when I was learning like security, you

49:27

know, it is kind of like important to learn

49:29

about how like those things like a built and

49:31

everything. So. I was on try

49:34

hack and I was doing that and then I

49:36

learned about Active Directory, which I had not known what

49:38

that was at all. For

49:40

those who don't know, that's

49:42

what, you know, it's helps you use

49:44

to manage like Windows like environments and

49:47

everything like that and control like users

49:49

and create policies and deploy those and

49:51

everything like that. And so I, you

49:53

know, I learned how to build. and

49:55

set up a domain controller in a

49:57

virtual machine. Definitely learned a lot of

49:59

virtualization because everything that you're using, whenever

50:01

you're practicing a tax or you're setting

50:03

up anything, you're using it all in

50:06

virtual machines, which are isolated from your

50:08

actual host machine. And

50:10

so I learned how to set

50:12

up a whole domain controller and hooking

50:14

up windows like hosts and everything

50:16

and learning how to run a tax

50:18

against them. So

50:21

it was just a lot about learning how to build a

50:23

thing and then how to break the thing. And it was

50:25

a constant cycle of that for sure. So

50:27

yeah, I was used to trying to hack

50:29

me, but I always tell people to learn how

50:31

to build a stuff like yourself in VMs.

50:33

And that's how you really get your hands dirty,

50:35

and that's how you actually understand things. Don't

50:37

just do modules. That wasn't how

50:39

I retained the knowledge. I'm a very hands

50:41

-on person. So

50:44

yeah, I was doing like a lot

50:46

of that, I was doing courses,

50:48

I was reading books, and I just

50:50

became fascinated, okay, Quincy? Like, I

50:52

was listening to this podcast called... like

50:55

Darknet Diaries. Oh, excellent

50:57

podcast. Everybody who's interested in security, you

50:59

should definitely listen to that. I love

51:01

Darknet Diaries. Yes, and it's a really,

51:03

really good podcast and it goes over

51:05

like real stories of, you know, different

51:07

like hacking events and like incidents that

51:09

have happened or just even covering like

51:11

just like interesting stories and paths of

51:13

like people that are in security, like

51:16

Jason Haddix and, you know, people

51:18

like that. So shout out to Jason

51:20

Haddix actually. It's really cool. But

51:23

yeah, that would keep me motivated

51:25

because I was always interested. I started

51:28

to learn about people like Aaron

51:30

Schwartz. If you don't know

51:32

who that is, he was one of the

51:34

co -founders of Reddit, and I'm actually a whole

51:36

Reddit junkie. Because I definitely

51:38

use a lot of Reddit to

51:40

build up my roadmap, honestly, for

51:42

security. So when I was curious about

51:44

what should I learn from being a developer

51:47

to being in security, there's 10 ,000 people that

51:49

ask the same exact question. That's

51:52

how I learned about resources like TryHackMe

51:54

and Portswigger, which is a great resource.

51:56

It's free and it's online. always

51:59

like updated with like different labs to

52:01

like learn different web vulnerabilities. And that

52:03

was that's how I pivoted into security.

52:05

That's how I kind of honed in

52:07

on my focus. So yeah, I was

52:09

building like active directory labs and stuff

52:11

like that. And just like labs in

52:13

general, so I learned about different attacks.

52:16

But like my specialty, I guess, was

52:18

web application, like security and everything because

52:20

I knew how to build it. So

52:22

now I was like curious about like,

52:24

like, Making applications behave like in ways

52:26

that it wasn't intended to is really

52:28

interesting. So and that's where the OWASP

52:30

10 like a lot of the different

52:32

common attacks

52:34

come from. There are

52:36

a lot of websites out there and

52:38

a lot of them are running outdated

52:40

versions of PHP and stuff and they

52:42

don't have security engineers on their team

52:44

because they're a tiny startup and when

52:46

you're a dev team of like two

52:48

or three people, you don't necessarily have

52:50

a dedicated security person. If

52:54

I can recap some of the advice

52:56

you gave there. So, I

52:58

love, like, learn how to build things. And,

53:01

like, I'm a big advocate of

53:03

learning how to build things. Rekookive .org,

53:05

learn how to build software. And then,

53:07

learn how to break that software

53:09

open and do things that the people

53:11

who control those servers did not

53:13

intend for you to do. Because that's

53:15

how you find out what, and

53:18

again, North Korea is going to be

53:20

like, they hack Everybody like it's a huge

53:22

portion of their gross national product is

53:24

like them basically Like you know stealing people's

53:26

bitcoins and stuff like that, right? So

53:28

it's a you have to think about like

53:30

okay What are the most sophisticated? State

53:33

actors who have like these teams

53:35

of like military people that have

53:37

like spent all this time like

53:39

they're gonna attack your website you

53:41

need to be ready and and

53:43

that's what like a lot of

53:45

security is is essentially like You

53:47

know having like a strong defense

53:49

against those types of bad actors,

53:51

right? And there are

53:53

threat actors that target certain industries. So

53:57

if you are, let's say, your developer

53:59

that's working for a bank, and you're getting

54:01

into security, and you're learning about the

54:03

different tactics, the TCP's, they call it, the

54:05

tactics techniques. I

54:08

forgot what it all

54:10

stood for. But basically,

54:12

studying the behaviors of attackers and

54:14

everything. And so there are APTs, which

54:17

stands for Advanced Persistent Threat. There are

54:19

different APT groups that specialize in attacking the

54:21

financial industry and everything like that. So

54:23

let's say you're on the red team, or

54:25

let's just say you're on the security

54:27

team at a bank or something like that,

54:30

then you would be studying those tactics

54:32

and learning about how to defend against those

54:34

potential threat actors. So yeah.

54:36

In my case, what

54:38

I currently do at my job,

54:41

APTs aren't a common threat for

54:43

us. It's more about the

54:45

average script kitty who might be

54:47

trying to run different SQL

54:49

injection payloads or something like that.

54:51

And so you have to

54:53

make sure that all your input

54:55

fields on your web applications

54:57

have proper validation and everything like

54:59

that, encoding defenses to protect

55:01

against different injection attacks and stuff

55:03

like that. That's

55:06

the thing. Security is so vast.

55:08

There's different areas of security. There's the

55:10

incident response, there's compliance, there's this

55:13

and that. But I do recommend for

55:15

those who are web developers or

55:17

software engineers that want to transition to

55:19

security. You have a really

55:21

really good chance of getting into application security

55:23

and that's why I was honing in on

55:25

the OS top 10 and like web vulnerabilities

55:27

and stuff like that because it already builds

55:29

on what you already know. You already have

55:31

like that solid foundation of web development. Now

55:34

you have to learn about like different ways

55:36

that like an attacker can try to explore

55:38

your application and so your job would be

55:40

to help to cure that application from those

55:42

attacks and everything. So I recommend that for

55:44

shorter people. Awesome.

55:46

Yeah, and and that is

55:48

super actionable advice for any

55:50

devs listening to this what

55:52

Taylor just said about Basically

55:54

leveraging the fact that you

55:56

already have this expertise because

55:59

there are advanced persistent threats,

56:01

right? There are these state

56:03

threat actors like that are

56:05

out there literally doing like

56:07

military operations against people

56:09

right and like the solar

56:11

winds attack or something like that

56:13

where they get into like

56:15

tons of computers by exploiting some

56:17

you know uh vulnerability and

56:19

like something that has it's deployed

56:21

everywhere right uh like windows

56:23

machines uh you know all the

56:26

ransomware attacks and stuff like

56:28

that uh but for every uh

56:30

you know advanced persistent threat

56:32

i think is the acronym you

56:34

use uh yeah like Every

56:36

one of those, there are a lot of

56:38

what are called script kitties, which are just

56:40

people that don't necessarily know a lot about

56:42

security. They're just using some tool. Like,

56:45

they're these tool packages

56:47

that, you know, what

56:50

is it called? Like, it's called,

56:52

like, Sploit? I can't remember the

56:54

name. Metasploit? Yeah, Metasploit. Yeah,

56:56

like, they're entire security packages.

56:58

And you can just sit

57:00

there with your... Not

57:03

-so -cheese Dorito covered fingers and drink

57:05

and be great and you could you

57:07

can go in and like screw

57:09

up somebody's website pretty badly Yeah, like

57:11

throwing like some of these tools

57:14

at them and and so one of

57:16

the things that you do It

57:18

sounds like it's just batting down the

57:20

hatches and cover like the most

57:22

common types of attacks that are everywhere

57:24

and that pretty much anybody who

57:26

didn't like Want your website to be

57:28

up could potentially call upon to

57:31

bring you down Yes, yeah, at my

57:33

current position. Well, yeah,

57:35

okay, actually I'll start into like my

57:37

first job in security. Yeah, I thought

57:39

about that. Yeah, so it was a

57:41

struggle. So like if you thought that

57:43

like my whole journey in getting into

57:46

like low development was like hard, like

57:48

getting security was like even like harder

57:50

because security isn't... I do understand people

57:52

say when they say security is not

57:54

insurable. Because it does build

57:56

on like you having like some type

57:58

of like knowledge and something else Like

58:00

for instance like okay like web development

58:03

like you just you learn how to

58:05

code you get a job in tech

58:07

there you go There's entry -level jobs

58:09

in in software development or like a

58:11

system administration or a networking or whatever

58:13

security kind of like builds on some

58:15

type of knowledge of either one of

58:17

those domains that I just like named

58:19

off for the most part and so Like

58:23

a big barrier for me was lack

58:25

of experience even though I had like the

58:27

user experience a software development It

58:30

was like the recruiters like recruiters would

58:32

be like yeah, like that's cool But

58:34

like you don't have like actual cyber

58:37

security experience and so like that was

58:39

really hard and it's very hard to

58:41

get cyber security experience without being in

58:43

a cyber security role now there are

58:45

I would do say like now with

58:47

the knowledge that I do have Of

58:49

like the industry like obey to get

58:51

experiences like do bug bounty hunting Which

58:54

if you don't know what that is

58:56

like that's basically where people can find

58:58

like vulnerabilities and flaws on applications such

59:00

as Facebook and twitter um... or like

59:02

other like public -facing like assets or

59:04

sites and they report like bugs and

59:06

everything and they can receive a uh...

59:08

like a reward like a monetary like

59:10

money like for it which is pretty

59:13

cool yeah it's like a bounty hunter

59:15

like brings in the the the pirate

59:17

hunter zoro and gets there you know

59:19

yeah and it can pay like depending

59:21

on the severity of the bug like

59:23

i think like at open a i

59:25

Um, they're offering, but like bounty's up

59:27

to like over 100 ,000 for like a

59:29

critical flaw. So I'm just like, wow,

59:32

like really really good money. Life changing

59:34

money. Um, but yeah. Um,

59:36

so it was really hard to

59:38

find a job. In security and everything

59:40

like that. Of course there were

59:42

entry -level like penetration tested, which is

59:44

definitely the rule. That's what I wanted

59:47

to be as a pen tester,

59:49

which that means that someone who is

59:51

able to like ethically like legally

59:53

Hack like web application systems networks Whatever

59:55

that is put in front of

59:57

them being able to like break it

1:00:00

and find flaws in it And

1:00:02

yeah, like the word junior pen tester

1:00:04

rules, but it was it's very

1:00:06

comp like it's very competitive

1:00:11

for sure because there's people that

1:00:13

have like computer science degrees not only

1:00:15

computer science degree they've been coding

1:00:17

since they were 10 and they also

1:00:19

have founds like CVEs and so

1:00:21

many bug bounties and they have like

1:00:23

a really really flawless resume so

1:00:25

a CVE that stands for common vulnerabilities

1:00:27

and exposures and that is a

1:00:29

publicly like disclosed vulnerability so yeah that's

1:00:31

what a CVE is and so

1:00:33

like something people already know about basically

1:00:35

but it's like People

1:00:37

just have to fix it It's actually

1:00:39

not of it's not to the knowledge

1:00:41

of like the organization or like the

1:00:43

application or whoever is like in charge

1:00:45

of like the software that she found

1:00:47

the vulnerability and like they don't know

1:00:49

about until you reported it and Then

1:00:51

like they can choose to like disclose

1:00:53

that vulnerability and so it gets assigned

1:00:56

to CVE ID So that now becomes

1:00:58

public knowledge and it's kept in a

1:01:00

public database believe the NVD, which is

1:01:02

national vulnerability database Okay, so

1:01:04

it's basically like let's say like hypothetically

1:01:06

you run like some sort of web server

1:01:08

and somebody figures out some exploit there

1:01:10

or like they find a vulnerability and so

1:01:12

Everybody who is using that web server

1:01:14

should know and it should be patched and

1:01:16

the update should be rolled out But

1:01:18

now everybody knows that like this this exists

1:01:20

out there and you need to update

1:01:22

yourself Well, yes, yes, and so like when

1:01:24

you do report it they do go

1:01:26

through the process of like remediating that and

1:01:28

then like they will or

1:01:30

however they do choose to like treat

1:01:32

that vulnerability and then like yeah so

1:01:34

then it becomes like part of like

1:01:36

public knowledge like okay like you need

1:01:38

to like update or patch up your

1:01:40

Apache systems for instance like it let's

1:01:42

say you do find a vulnerability like

1:01:44

a directory traversal or whatever kind of

1:01:46

vulnerability like in Apache like web server

1:01:49

version one point whatever now You

1:01:51

can report that vulnerability and then it gets

1:01:53

publicly disclosed and everything then it's like

1:01:55

okay boom Like it's documented publicly for everyone

1:01:57

to know like a patch system because

1:01:59

like there was a certain vulnerability and it

1:02:01

will be that CVE ID that I

1:02:03

say that you know that you get assigned

1:02:05

when you do find like that CVE

1:02:07

or when you know when it does get

1:02:09

accepted as a CVE that will forever

1:02:11

be like taught like that CVE ID so

1:02:14

Okay, cool. Thanks. And I didn't

1:02:16

know what that was, and now I do. And

1:02:18

hopefully some of the people listening didn't know what

1:02:20

that is either. And that's used in a

1:02:22

lot of the tools, like a lot of the security

1:02:24

scanners, like if you've heard of like SAS or DAS,

1:02:26

like which are basically tools that you can scan against

1:02:28

like code or web applications, especially

1:02:31

in SAS tools or SCA, which is

1:02:33

used to scan against like open source

1:02:35

libraries, for instance, and dependencies that we

1:02:37

use right as developers. Like

1:02:40

yeah, that's what's used like so basically

1:02:42

like how like those security tools work

1:02:44

is that it scans like your code

1:02:46

against like a whole database of like

1:02:48

of CVE's and so that's how Yeah

1:02:50

Yeah, so that's how that works awesome

1:02:52

And so that's good to know that

1:02:54

like this is publicly disclosed and then

1:02:56

it's actually used to help people identify

1:02:58

Oh, you've got these known issues in

1:03:00

your code, but you need to go

1:03:02

fix these real quick and

1:03:05

a public service announcement for everybody like

1:03:07

don't turn off auto updates on your

1:03:09

computer I know it's annoying to have

1:03:11

to update your software to update your

1:03:13

phone but you should always keep everything

1:03:15

on the latest version for precisely this

1:03:17

reason they're constantly little vulnerabilities being discovered

1:03:19

that are getting patched and you don't

1:03:22

want to be like running some old

1:03:24

like you should literally abandon software that

1:03:26

is no longer supported like free cooking

1:03:28

up wheat we migrated from using ghost

1:03:30

we were on like this old version

1:03:32

and when they announced they were not

1:03:34

gonna Support it anymore. We had to

1:03:36

migrate. We're not we're not gonna try

1:03:38

to like We're not gonna leave ourselves

1:03:40

wide open So that is a compelling

1:03:42

reason to just keep like securities a

1:03:45

real important consideration in what software you

1:03:47

use and whether there are people actively

1:03:49

maintaining it whether you have a reasonable

1:03:51

expectation that these cds are being patched

1:03:53

right I'm not sure if I'm using

1:03:55

the term cds like if that's the

1:03:57

first way to say it, but well

1:03:59

basically yeah, so I have so many

1:04:01

questions. We've only got a few minutes

1:04:03

left, and I just want to start

1:04:05

firing them off at you. First

1:04:08

of all, you live

1:04:10

in Bangkok, Thailand. That

1:04:13

is awesome. And I'm excited to learn

1:04:15

a little bit about how you got

1:04:17

out there and your decision -making process. OK,

1:04:21

sure. So at

1:04:23

the time, when

1:04:26

I first visited Thailand, it was

1:04:28

August of last year. of 2024 and

1:04:30

I spent two months backpacking south

1:04:32

east Asia because I was like a

1:04:34

bucket list school that I've had

1:04:36

plenty since I was like maybe 12

1:04:38

or something. And

1:04:41

so I spent two months like traveling like

1:04:43

Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Bangkok was like what

1:04:45

was what spoke to me like the most

1:04:47

like that was the first city that I visited

1:04:49

out here in Asia and I was like

1:04:51

yeah like I was like I could live here

1:04:53

it was like a passing thought when I

1:04:55

was gonna back up like a motorbike because that's

1:04:58

how we kind of get around it to

1:05:00

like motorbikes out here and so and I was

1:05:02

like yeah I could live here like I

1:05:04

just really it felt very comfortable for me and

1:05:06

so uh I knew that

1:05:08

that's where I wanted to live. And when I

1:05:10

got offered this most recent position that I'm in,

1:05:13

that was in October. And

1:05:15

at the time when I had any before that

1:05:17

job, I was in Vietnam. And

1:05:19

so I had actually told him that in the

1:05:21

interview, because he was like, oh, he's dark out

1:05:23

there. And I was like, yeah, it's like 11

1:05:25

PM here. I'm in Vietnam. And he was like,

1:05:28

oh, he's like, OK. And the

1:05:30

world was remote and everything. After

1:05:34

I got the job like I started researching

1:05:36

about relocating like I did you know ask

1:05:38

my boss like I was like how do

1:05:40

you feel about people like relocating like to

1:05:42

You know to like a different like country

1:05:44

or something like that or like working remotely

1:05:47

from another country I didn't know how long

1:05:49

I wanted to be in Bangkok But I

1:05:51

just knew I wanted to be there for

1:05:53

extended period of time and he's like yeah,

1:05:55

I don't care He's like I live on

1:05:57

a boat and I was like wait what

1:05:59

and like He actually like my boss is

1:06:01

a CISO a chief information security officer and

1:06:03

he Literally like lives on a boat like

1:06:05

sailing the Caribbean And so like I think

1:06:08

he was just like more like open -minded

1:06:10

to people just because of like his own

1:06:12

situation and everything like that So I was

1:06:14

like, okay as long as like I handle

1:06:16

the time zone difference. That's that was the

1:06:18

thing so like I saved up money I

1:06:20

basically like stacked up for like three months

1:06:22

and I researched visas the different visa options

1:06:24

out here and so I just recently got

1:06:26

the digital nomad visa or the DTV and

1:06:29

basically allows me to live in Thailand for

1:06:31

up to five years. Yeah,

1:06:33

I work remotely in Thailand, so I

1:06:35

can legally work remotely out here. Just can't

1:06:37

work for a Thai employer. I can

1:06:40

work for an overseas employer, though, which it

1:06:42

literally works out for me. So yeah,

1:06:44

I just gotta prove for that. And

1:06:46

yeah, that's how I'm living out here and

1:06:49

everything. I got my apartment when I was

1:06:51

still in Florida. I

1:06:53

found the apartment on

1:06:55

Facebook. in one of the

1:06:57

Facebook groups and everything like that, and I got

1:06:59

a Bristol tour and everything, but in my leasing

1:07:01

agent, it really just, he helped me find this

1:07:03

spot. And so, yeah,

1:07:05

I moved out here January 11th of

1:07:08

this year. So I've been out here for three

1:07:10

months. That's amazing. And I

1:07:12

want to dig a little deeper. Like,

1:07:14

first of all, everybody should check

1:07:16

out Taylor's YouTube channel, where she's doing

1:07:18

a short kind of video essay

1:07:20

tutorial types about her move out there

1:07:22

and, like, immigration

1:07:24

considerations, lifestyle, safety, all

1:07:26

those things. But

1:07:28

what inspired you to live

1:07:31

abroad? I mean, you

1:07:33

could just be comfortable back

1:07:35

here in the States,

1:07:37

probably, and yet you're seeking

1:07:39

out these completely different

1:07:41

cultures, dramatically different time zones.

1:07:45

That's a great question. I've always been

1:07:47

interested in wanting to immerse myself in

1:07:49

other cultures. I've always wanted to. a

1:07:52

chart like I think maybe

1:07:55

since I was like five or

1:07:57

six like I was given by

1:08:00

a family friend, a book, um, a World

1:08:02

of Psychopedia book, and I remember I read

1:08:04

that till the pages fell off, like, from

1:08:06

start to finish, like, as a kid. And

1:08:08

I learned about different countries, and I was

1:08:10

just, like, always so fascinated. And as I got

1:08:13

older, I would get on YouTube, and I

1:08:15

would see, like, these, like, travel vloggers, like, make

1:08:17

these, like, you know, videos, like, trying different

1:08:19

food markets, like, out in Bangkok and everything, and,

1:08:21

um, or people, like, learning, you know, different

1:08:23

languages, like, Chinese or, uh... you know French or

1:08:25

whatever and being able to speak to like

1:08:27

the natives and that like that language and just

1:08:29

seeing like how like they just built like

1:08:31

those connections like because you know like this person

1:08:33

from a whole different culture this other person

1:08:36

a whole different culture they may not you know

1:08:38

be able to have like a whole full -on

1:08:40

like in -depth conversation in that language but just

1:08:42

the effort that she made to try to

1:08:44

like learn their language like it meant a lot

1:08:46

for them and I just I like that Honestly

1:08:49

and also the people in Thailand are

1:08:51

just so sweet like the Buddhism like I

1:08:53

always say that it's like the Buddhist

1:08:55

Buddhism like really permits like throughout the culture

1:08:57

and it's how you know and how

1:08:59

like they treat you and everything how respectful

1:09:01

they are and the kind you know

1:09:03

just the kindness and the politeness like all

1:09:05

throughout the atmosphere here so I was

1:09:07

just always really drawn to that and I

1:09:09

was just like yeah and I'm also

1:09:11

someone that I could probably spend a

1:09:13

globe and be like, okay, I'll live here. I'll

1:09:16

see what it's like for like a month

1:09:18

or something. I'm just, I'm always like, you know,

1:09:20

within reason. I've just

1:09:22

always been like barely open minded to that for sure.

1:09:25

So it didn't even scare me. I was just like,

1:09:27

let's just go do it. Yeah.

1:09:31

If somebody wanted to plan to move overseas

1:09:33

like you did, what would be like

1:09:35

kind of like a checklist like in

1:09:37

terms of like how much should they save

1:09:39

up? Like how far in advance should

1:09:41

they start planning? or such a move.

1:09:43

Assuming, like let's presume they're in a

1:09:45

situation like you where they don't have kids

1:09:47

and they don't necessarily have like aging relatives

1:09:49

they're taking care of or anything like that.

1:09:52

Right. I

1:09:54

would definitely, so what I did, I

1:09:56

saved up, well first off

1:09:59

I calculated like my, what I thought

1:10:01

my average cost living would be on a

1:10:03

monthly basis and I used how I

1:10:05

determined that was I looked at my spending

1:10:07

habits, so what would I spend more

1:10:09

on? What would I spend less on? And

1:10:11

then I also looked into how much

1:10:13

the average studio or one bedroom costs out

1:10:15

here in Thailand for instance, or specifically

1:10:17

Bangkok. So I kept that in mind. And

1:10:19

then I also did a lot of

1:10:21

research. I watched a lot of YouTube videos

1:10:23

of people who also share their cost

1:10:25

of living. That's why I also shared mine

1:10:27

still on my YouTube channel. That

1:10:29

whole transparency, I learned a lot from that.

1:10:31

And so I did that times that by

1:10:34

12. Because

1:10:36

like the cost of living out here is not

1:10:38

that expensive compared to the states. So like my

1:10:40

cost of living like right now is to be

1:10:42

like $1 ,300 in total per month and that's

1:10:44

including my rent. And so I just

1:10:46

times up by 12 and I made sure

1:10:48

I had like a good savings account that equated

1:10:50

to that before I moved out here. But

1:10:52

usually people say like you know save up at

1:10:54

least six months. If you save at least

1:10:56

six months, you're so far ahead of other digital

1:10:58

nomads because I've met people out here that

1:11:01

moved out here with nothing. And I'm

1:11:03

just like, no job, no savings, what are

1:11:05

you doing? I would

1:11:07

definitely do not move with your next

1:11:09

check. Definitely save up at least a few

1:11:11

months because you want to have that

1:11:13

whole thing going. And then also research the

1:11:15

visas. That's the next thing to do

1:11:17

once you get the savings set up. Research

1:11:19

to visa options like out here definitely

1:11:21

consider the digital nomad visa You don't even

1:11:23

have to be remote workers even qualify

1:11:25

for it. You could if you want to

1:11:27

sign up for cooking classes like out

1:11:29

here in Thailand They will sponsor that Muay

1:11:31

Thai lessons and everything. They'll provide, you

1:11:33

know, that's another way to get the TV

1:11:35

Thai boxing. Yeah, that's how which is

1:11:37

so cool soap. I know I should right here,

1:11:40

but yeah And so just

1:11:42

like look up the visa options and look

1:11:44

at what's right for you I wanted to

1:11:46

even Japan has a similar like digital nomad

1:11:48

visa I think it's a little bit different

1:11:50

because you can't extend that visa like or

1:11:52

the periods that you can stay like as

1:11:54

opposed to like in Thailand, but like there's

1:11:56

some differences, but yeah So like look up

1:11:58

the visa situation and everything like that and

1:12:00

then also look up the try to like

1:12:02

learn about like the culture and the customs

1:12:04

and like how like, you know, just like

1:12:06

how people like behave out here and everything

1:12:08

like that. So then you can be respectful

1:12:11

of other cultures and everything. Um,

1:12:13

yeah. And then you just

1:12:16

go from there, honestly. Um,

1:12:18

definitely like just look up like other like, like YouTubers

1:12:20

that have like done like the whole movement transition and

1:12:22

everything, but try to sift through the people who are

1:12:24

just trying to like sell you something or like that

1:12:26

try to like BS their way through. Like,

1:12:29

yeah. Yeah. You

1:12:32

seem like the type of person

1:12:34

who kind of makes up their

1:12:36

mind like I'm gonna do this

1:12:38

and then you figure out a

1:12:40

way to do it If you

1:12:42

had a goal in mind, let's

1:12:44

say you had a new goal

1:12:46

like let's say hypothetically your goal

1:12:48

is to What is a goal?

1:12:50

Do you have any goals right

1:12:52

now? I'm actually in the process

1:12:54

of trying to get my OACP.

1:12:56

So that's Yeah OACP. Yeah OACP

1:12:59

a pension security certified professional So

1:13:01

that is a hands -on exam

1:13:03

where you basically have to

1:13:06

break into six different machines, including

1:13:08

an Active Directory network and

1:13:10

then three standalone machines, which could

1:13:12

either be Linux or Windows

1:13:14

machines, and being able to

1:13:16

root those systems, which means being

1:13:18

able to escalate your period just

1:13:20

from a regular standard user to

1:13:22

being able to be administrative on

1:13:25

that machine. Basically, when you

1:13:27

become administrative user on a machine,

1:13:29

that means that you've pwned the machine,

1:13:31

that means you've got it, you

1:13:33

compromise it fully. But yeah, so what

1:13:35

I do for that is I, how

1:13:39

I got set like that goal is I

1:13:41

try to set aside time every day to

1:13:43

it, at least like an hour to a

1:13:45

day to that whole thing. And then I

1:13:47

also write my goals a lot in a

1:13:49

journal, which I don't even realize that I'm

1:13:51

doing. But I do write every day, and

1:13:53

I guess people call that manifesting, but I

1:13:55

don't. This

1:13:58

is what I do. I don't even think of it

1:14:00

like that. But I guess so. So

1:14:02

yeah, I keep myself in that

1:14:05

mindset. I also subscribe to kind

1:14:07

of surround myself with everything around

1:14:09

that. So I will subscribe to

1:14:11

different Reddit feeds, or I'll read

1:14:13

different blog posts or anything about

1:14:15

that just to keep me engaged

1:14:17

in it. So

1:14:19

yeah, that's how I do. I just, I immerse

1:14:21

myself in it. That's how I kind of like

1:14:23

get into a goal and I execute it. Just

1:14:25

like, and that's the same kind of approach I

1:14:27

guess I did with moving out here to Thailand.

1:14:29

I immersed myself in it and made sure I

1:14:32

did like all my research about it and then

1:14:34

I executed as I went. The

1:14:36

thing is like, there's such things

1:14:38

being too overly prepared at some point you're

1:14:40

gonna have to like try. and be afraid

1:14:42

and not be afraid to make a mistake

1:14:44

because it'll happen or not be afraid of

1:14:46

failing while trying to execute that goal because

1:14:48

I've definitely failed at times. Like,

1:14:50

for instance, I failed the OSP the first time,

1:14:52

so I'm on Brown too. So

1:14:55

that's just my whole process,

1:14:57

that's my whole learning process for

1:14:59

sure. Yeah, so to recap,

1:15:02

plan, immerse

1:15:05

yourself, listen to the podcast,

1:15:07

reading Reddit threads, just kind

1:15:09

of like trying to grab all

1:15:12

the different meta knowledge the tacit

1:15:14

knowledge it is like other people

1:15:16

are carrying around with them just

1:15:18

trying to absorb that and then

1:15:20

not over preparing but going forward

1:15:22

at some point if yeah and

1:15:24

if you fail just try again

1:15:26

yes absolutely yeah because I think

1:15:28

I do think a lot of

1:15:30

people get paralyzed in the preparation

1:15:33

phase yeah you are extremely modest

1:15:35

and humble like it but like

1:15:37

the things you've accomplished are dramatic

1:15:39

like I think it's

1:15:41

incredibly impressive. You're

1:15:44

quite young and just to make

1:15:46

such a dramatic series of career

1:15:48

pivots to go from like working

1:15:50

at Walmart and Boston Market to

1:15:52

working as a software engineer to

1:15:54

getting laid off and figuring out

1:15:57

how to like scrap for you

1:15:59

know freelance work essentially and then

1:16:01

Just deciding I want to further

1:16:03

augment my skills and I want

1:16:05

to move in the security direction

1:16:07

and now pursuing this big formal

1:16:09

certification Like you're very modest But

1:16:12

like how do you strike a

1:16:14

balance between being joking yourself deprecating

1:16:16

and getting people to take you

1:16:18

seriously? That is

1:16:20

Wow, that is that's a

1:16:22

really powerful question actually that's definitely

1:16:24

something I that I battle

1:16:27

with like internally because there's definitely

1:16:31

Exposing yourself to and by being

1:16:33

vulnerable especially like in public kind

1:16:35

of opens you up to criticism

1:16:37

and people questioning your intelligence and

1:16:39

your place in the industry and

1:16:41

so I'm kind of I was

1:16:43

back and forth for a long

1:16:45

time about like being so open

1:16:47

about it, but I realized that

1:16:49

It's It's really about how you

1:16:51

feel about yourself, that's like the

1:16:53

most important thing, and I hope

1:16:55

that doesn't sound too cliche. Because,

1:16:58

and it's taken a long time for

1:17:00

me to actually feel like as if

1:17:02

I am capable, because like I definitely,

1:17:04

like that self -deprecation was rooted in

1:17:06

me actually believing that I was not,

1:17:08

you know, smart enough or anything like

1:17:10

that or whatever, but like having to,

1:17:12

I had to really, really work on Removing

1:17:16

like the negative self -talk and everything and

1:17:18

having to remind myself that I am capable

1:17:20

and I try to just keep like my

1:17:22

head down and just try to like stay

1:17:24

focused I don't even try to like think

1:17:27

about all the successes or accomplishments like like

1:17:29

for instance I'm always thinking about like the

1:17:31

next thing and like what I want to

1:17:33

achieve and everything like that and that's the

1:17:35

kind of like keeps me going But it

1:17:37

does help that when you do gets like

1:17:39

motivate like other people just from like existing

1:17:41

and you know being yourself and stuff like

1:17:43

that Yeah, it's definitely

1:17:45

a fine balance. I just

1:17:47

have a sense of humor. That's

1:17:50

so cool. Just stay in focus. Don't think

1:17:52

about the accomplishments. Don't think about the criticism.

1:17:55

One the things that you said

1:17:57

there that really resonated with me

1:17:59

is a lot of times people

1:18:01

are self -deprecating it and they joke

1:18:03

about their shortcomings because the fact

1:18:05

is they are a little bit

1:18:07

insecure. It's

1:18:10

hard to not feel insecure. when you

1:18:12

are surrounded by people who've been coding

1:18:14

for a long time and have CS

1:18:16

degrees and all this stuff, and here

1:18:18

you are just trying to learn and

1:18:20

catch up with them. That

1:18:22

resonates with me, and I think

1:18:24

that's probably going to resonate with a

1:18:26

lot of people. Taylor?

1:18:29

You're such a big inspiration to me

1:18:31

and I know to the developer community

1:18:33

at large. I really appreciate you taking

1:18:35

this time out to talk with us.

1:18:37

It's like super late over there. I

1:18:40

don't want to keep you up too

1:18:42

late. I just want to thank

1:18:44

you again for everything you're doing. Thank

1:18:46

you. No, literally thank you for the platform

1:18:48

that you created. I literally

1:18:50

push your YouTube channel. It's

1:18:53

like such a it's a goldmine of a resource

1:18:55

I still use it this day because it all

1:18:57

just like all the different like topics that you

1:18:59

cover like on the channel all the different people

1:19:02

that you like bring on and everything to like

1:19:04

teach and just the fact that you've made it

1:19:06

free and accessible for like everyone like I think

1:19:08

you don't realize how much you've actually made an

1:19:10

impact on people like me because I don't think

1:19:12

I would actually even be in tech today because

1:19:14

I couldn't afford to like go back to school

1:19:16

or to go do a boot camp or anything

1:19:18

and just the fact that you've made quality resources

1:19:20

like it's It's meant to lots

1:19:23

of people like me that are so tall, so thank

1:19:25

you. That's why when you reached out to me, I

1:19:27

was like, oh my god. It was full circle, really. You

1:19:30

absolutely made my day. Thank you for

1:19:32

your kind words. And

1:19:34

again, seriously, everybody listening to this,

1:19:36

check out Taylor's YouTube channel. If

1:19:38

you want to live abroad in

1:19:40

Thailand, she's got lots of detailed

1:19:43

advice, super actionable, and

1:19:45

tons of luck. with

1:19:47

the second try at the

1:19:49

electric pee. Thank you.

1:19:51

Thank you. Yeah. Good luck balancing

1:19:53

like sleep and work and study for

1:19:55

that while you're living in this

1:19:57

new culture. But yeah, like

1:19:59

just going out there and things

1:20:02

done and inspiring us all. Thank

1:20:04

you. And everybody, until

1:20:07

next week, happy coding.