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by TechBro8615
1011 days ago
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Personally, the worst impact of "bringing my work home with me" has been when I'm spending time adjacent to infosec or pentesting. That's a discipline that requires cynicism (engineers are incompetent, can't protect their systems), paranoia (everyone is constantly trying to hack your vulnerable systems) and distrust (any user input could contain a malicious payload). Unsurprisingly, these are not the ideal qualities for fostering strong relationships, especially with a new partner or anyone you met recently. I don't think this is discussed often enough. The traits that make for the best infosec professional are the same traits that make for the worst spouse. And that's before even considering the tendency to "over analyze" that comes with the baseline analytical mind required for any engineering profession. So how to manage it? Well, I'm not sure you can really turn it off. But you can be aware of it. Remain cognizant of your own biases, and redirect some of that analytical energy into introspecting and analyzing yourself, before you take it out on someone else. But don't take it too far - sometimes your gut instinct is right; maybe she really is cheating on you, maybe you're not just crazy. But take a second to think about it. And make sure to communicate your biases to anyone whom they might affect, so that they're prepared to recognize when they emerge - that's when a good partner will sympathize and bring you back to earth, and a bad partner will take it personally and exacerbate the situation. |
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An innate draw to perfectionism becomes the engineer's plauge. The notion that we can approach a quality in our craft compels us, stirs us and drives us, pulls us to an ideal we never quite seem to reach. This plauge promotes paranoia, large egos, self doubt, loathing, fear, complexities and difficulties in our relationships, in our selves.
One day, about 8 years ago, on a trip to The Island of Hawaiʻi, a day tour around the island brought with it a brief stop to see some giant ocean turtles, laying eggs upon the shore. Before we were released from the bus, the tour guide emphatically begged us, striving for a personal connection, to please, please leave the turtles alone. And then, as though I was watching the birth of conceptual inevitability, I watched happy couple after happy couple, smuggling turtle eggs for digital photos. Most were placed back, a few were broken, yolks dripping into the water and rocks and a quick shriek turned to laughter.
I felt free. I felt a freedom from responsibility, as the expanse of the loss of control I have finally came from its spectre and showed me the infinite boundary of what I cannot control. This freedom was not joy. It is not joy. It is the cold comfort of certainty, the icy maw that I cannot escape from with more than a few variables of integers at a time, and to simply allow myself to be the briefest of willful rejections amongst it.
And so that's how I turn off at night. I know that if I disappeared into the static between clouds, this would all go just about as well, or poorly, and that I am not going to save the world if I just push git commits fast enough.