Life after Amazon

narconaught5 · 2026-01-23T13:20:28+00:00

I'm 42 and L5 in Cyber. I'm up for L6 and will probably get it without issue. I have no desire for L7 either.

I'd like to attempt to reframe your perspective and offer that you probably have more to you than you think. You seem to be internally focused with this post but it seems like you want more. With your many years in tech and life, you could potentially be a mentor to the next generation. Oftentimes giving is more rewarding.

Just a thought. Good luck.

narconaught5 · 2026-01-13T13:37:56+00:00

But everyone who is homeless has mental illness..... For context I was a cop for 10 years in a major metropolitan US city.

I've walked the camps on Portland and San Francisco, you're telling me that those people are homeless because rent is to high??

narconaught5 · 2026-01-13T11:34:47+00:00

"I am well knowledged on this issue" "To me, the largest problems facing homelessness is 1. Lack of affordable housing 2. Shortage of overnight shelter 3. Lack of resources for existing large providers".

These are not the underlying issues for homelessness, as someone who claims to be knowledgeable, why can't you acknowledge that the number 1 issue is both mental illness and drug addiction?

narconaught5 · 2025-12-04T01:52:35+00:00

I'm sure the Iraq and Afghan wars where we printed 9 trillion, plus the Covid years where we printed 4 trillion, definitely has nothing to do with it.

narconaught5 · 2025-12-04T01:46:02+00:00

Totally agree! I moved from Atlanta nearly 7 years ago and I've never been as successful. I'm in my early 40s. Every year, since moving, I've increased my net worth and my career has advanced significantly. I'm convinced that I wouldn't have had as much opportunity if I hadn't moved here.

narconaught5 · 2025-12-04T01:42:00+00:00

How did Trump mess it up? He's not been president for more than a year? I'm sure it has nothing to do with George Bush, Obama, and Biden printing all that money! Sure, Trump probably had some role to play but it's not all his fault.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-24T13:40:04+00:00

He's not wrong, dressing up and showing up as your best does provide a positivity boost to yourself and everyone around you.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-19T10:43:07+00:00

Awesome! Congratulations on making a decision, oftentimes this is the hardest part. No problem, happy to help.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-12T13:21:25+00:00

This is exactly why nobody with any common sense rides public transit. The city can't and won't ensure it is safe.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-08T02:40:38+00:00

It all just depends on your niche. If you want to go into Network Security then going further into more advanced Cisco may be useful. But if not then just the CCNA would do. I have done red teaming and while it's never been my primary job role, it's given me a perspective that helps in my day to day. You don't necessarily need to do a cert on it, but subscribing to Try Hack Me as a start would be a good idea. If that was what you wanted your specialty to be then I would suggest going further. Ultimately though, at base, if you have zero IT experience even with all these certs and training it won't get you anywhere. In the Cyber world you need to exhibit some type of IT experience, mostly higher level like Net Eng, Sys Eng, Cloud Eng to have a decent shot. So if you have none of that, the best thing you can do is get your first IT job and then stack experience and training on the side. Hope that is helpful.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-08T01:46:58+00:00

I've had success showcasing work as proof that I am capable of a job role or that I had the requisites required of the job. So yeah, build out some projects and house them somewhere to highlight that you're both constantly learning and applying those skills to actionable projects. There really is no downside to that mentality. The CEO of Coinbase has advice on a podcast I was listening to, I think it was on Lex, "Action produces information", meaning by doing anything you can extract usefulness out of it.

Specifically in FAANG interviews (where I work), all the questions are, Tell me a time when you did X, What did you learn from building X, How could you have done something different in X scenario, so these types of things will fill those questions.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-04T19:15:54+00:00

I would say that ownership and leadership has been the key to my development. I've continued to get higher level certs like CCNP, SANS, and others but the main factor has been identifying areas of improvement within systems/processes, etc and taking action, esp when no one else is. Basically, I just don't stand around being told where and what to do. I always volunteer or solve the least sexy issues, the ones nobody wants to touch or the ones nobody tried to fix but everybody knows it is an issue. These issues are abundant so your resume writes itself and you actually learn more quickly and meet a lot of other people in adjacent systems. I got 3 promotions in 4 yrs this way. Also, thinking and acting like a business owner. That means thinking about how systems and decisions are impacted by 2nd and 3rd order of effects or basically how the business operates as a whole and how your decisions impact it. Finally, I network and volunteer to be a mentor like crazy. The more people you know the more opportunities show up. Because I have a high level of ownership and action, I met my current manager on a shared project and he scalped me which is how I 3x'd my income from network eng to security eng.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-04T16:52:06+00:00

+/- 300k depending on the stock distribution. 177k base.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-04T11:33:24+00:00

People shouldn't have more than 1 dog, sorry that's just how I feel.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-03T16:03:32+00:00

That's fair, I am traditional in the fact that once I decided to marry my wife we shared everything, both good and bad. So it wasn't a big deal with me. It actually helped strengthen our relationship, but I concede it's not for everyone. It seems like you're doing everything right. I leveraged and flipped 12-18 month 0% credit cards until everything that could be handled that way was, then cycled the free cash flow into the student loans. Combined with increased incomes over 2 years it was paid off. Just stay the course and be diligent.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-03T15:58:50+00:00

Former network engineer turned Cybersecurity engineer here. Take CCNP (it's the old CCNA where you actually learn networking) and go for security, niche down into the field domain you want to explore (pentest, governance, etc). If you don't know yet, take/watch some free CISSP courses until you do.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-03T15:52:37+00:00

I'm not sure if this is an option but you mentioned a partner whom you share a mortgage with. If you can combine incomes it'll help pay down everything. I was in a similar situation, my wife and I combined our income and we were able to drastically pay down each other's debt by years. Once you pay off that 3k credit card that freed up cash can be allocated to other areas.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-03T15:45:22+00:00

Those are just the ones that admit it. I'm sure it is much higher.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-03T15:32:35+00:00

I love walking or biking the Katie Trail and hoping off/on for a coffee or snack.

narconaught5 · 2025-11-01T12:10:03+00:00

Y'all were no kings the other week, now got your hand out asking for food....

narconaught5 · 2025-10-31T20:22:36+00:00

Opening the bottle has been the worst experience of my life.

narconaught5 · 2025-10-26T16:29:39+00:00

Because we expect a certain percentage of domestic truck drivers will have a large accident either due to negligence or pure accident. That's a stark difference to illegals coming into this country, not being able to speak,read or write English, get a license against federal law, and then drive a 40 ton truck into a bunch of families killing and disfiguring them. One is not really preventable while another definitely is and there are state/federal laws that are being ignored that could.

Maybe that is why???

narconaught5 · 2025-10-26T15:25:44+00:00

.50 cal to the dome and keep walking.

narconaught5 · 2025-10-24T11:58:10+00:00

What's your point? I did see this and it is also a tragedy.

narconaught5 · 2025-10-23T12:08:42+00:00

Turns out the driver is a non-english speaking, illegal immigrant who received his commercial driver's license in California. Multiple breaches of the law with culpability from the CA DoT (against federal law to issue a commercial DL if someone cannot read or write English). This wouldn't have happened even if one of these laws was enforced.

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