InfoSec Job Market: Living in the Chaotic Age

Welcome to the Security Cocktail Hour. I'm Joe Patti.

I'm a bruised Adam Roth.

Adam, you are looking tougher than ever for people listening on audio. Adam has a Band-Aid right below his left eye. And we're going to have to hear this story, but it's probably a long one. So let's introduce the guest first. What do you think of that? Sure. Absolutely. Today we have someone really interesting. As always, we have Alexandra Nikolai. Alex, welcome to the show.

Thank you, guys. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. And Alex is a recruiter and a tech and security recruiter. You might have heard that that's a really hot topic and an area in a lot of turmoil these days. So if you're looking for resume tips, you're not going to get them here. But you are going to get what's really going on these days, especially in the security job market. So we're going to have some fun. But first, we better talk about the drinks, because Adam, you look like you need a drink at this point. You're so drunk.

I need a drink.

You do. Well, cheers to you, though. We're having some white wine. That's Alex's favorite.

Cheers.

Yes. Yeah.

I didn't conform.

You didn't conform, right? I had red wine. Red wine. In a martini glass. Yeah, well, I just realized something. Adam has it in our official Security Cocktail Hour martini glasses we got made up.

I want one of those.

But the glass is clear. Yeah, but the wine is so dark, you can't see the logo. Sorry. So cheers, everyone. Cheers.

Lovely. I'm drinking a nice Sauvignon Blanc from Eagle Creek Winery, which is one of the oldest wineries in Leavenworth, Washington, which is this little town in Washington. And we went there for a weekend, Leavenworth, And it's like in this little house. It was crazy cozy, but really good wine.

Well, I was at the second oldest winery in that town. And you know, I'm sure yours is better. I'm kidding.

Isn't Leavenworth where soldiers go to jail? Oh, God.

That's in Kansas, isn't it, or something?

That's a different Leavenworth than the sweet one.

I'm just saying Leavenworth sounds like in the Alps. I got hit in the head today. I don't know what's going on.

So what happened?

Do you want the fake stories or the real stories? Yeah, you should have seen the other guy.

No? Yeah, exactly.

You should have seen the turkey.

Our regular listeners know that Adam is a boxer and does a lot of boxing and trains. Well, you've been a corner man. Looks like you need a corner man today. But was that a boxing injury? I wish I could say I was in a fight, but I wasn't.

Um, do you really want me? Okay. I'll tell you what happened. Joe Patti was a little bit upset.

We want the real, we want the real story.

Joe Patti hit me in the head because I didn't conform to the right amount of wine. And he was upset and he said, you know, this podcast is going to break up, but no. Um, so we're cleaning up the backyard. We're getting it ready for the summer. I know it's already summer. We have a TV that we put outdoors. There's a cover that goes on the TV. I couldn't find the cover. I looked everywhere. I went into my closet. I reached behind to see if there was a cover behind there. And the, uh, an iron that you iron clothes with hit me in the face. So rule of thumb rule of thumb now is don't ever put something heavier than you're with, with, um, Eye sight or in line with your eyes, because you can get hurt.

Yeah. Why don't you just store some bricks up there, too, to make it extra safe?

Ironing is dangerous, I tell you.

Seriously, God. Go to the cleaners. They'll be a lot safer.

I guess. But, you know, whatever. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

Right. I guess so. Well, you made it to the show. You're a trooper. The show must go on. So good for you. Well done. Okay, so I know we're all raring to go here and Alex in particular. I mean you I think you might be our most excited guest to be on because I got to tell everyone but before we do a show we have like a little. prep call, whatever, we have a, we have a zoom where we talk about the show and plan for it and everything. You know, Alex, isn't just having a cocktail for the show. She was drinking on the prep show too. That's a first for a guest. So that is like seriously in the spirit of the security cocktail hour. So, so well done.

Yes. Cocktail hour. It was four o'clock my time.

Oh, that's right. You're on the West Coast. Yeah.

So this is the first time we're probably going to do a follow-up call so we can all drink together on the follow-up call as well. Oh, great.

I'll have to, I guess. All right. Okay. So actually talking about some business. So Alex, you've been a recruiter for a while, but you know, I like to talk about people who've gone through and had an interesting arc and had an interesting path. You haven't always been a recruiter. You were actually in technology beforehand, right?

Right, right. Since I was 12, I knew I wanted to mess with computers. I was passionate about it. I had a straight line. Like I didn't even want to go to all those college courses. I was on the raised floor data center working full time as a, as a TSO operator on an old IBM mainframe. Yeah. By the time I was 17, I was working full time. And, uh, I, I loved it. I, I got to do a lot of things at that company. I was there for five years and I had like five different jobs. I, uh, eventually became a COBOL programmer. I was the IBM token ring system administrator.

Oh my God. I was the token ring, 16 megabits per second with the mouth. The people who don't know.

Yeah, this is old school stuff. I haven't heard about that for a long time.

That's crazy. Yeah. And at that company, they had wine and cheese parties once a month for the employees. And I was too young. I couldn't even drink then because I was under 25.

So they like flagged it. They didn't say like, it's okay, whatever. No one's going to know.

I think that they wouldn't have cared, but I was always a rule follower and wanted to, you know, do right.

How bad.

Yeah. All right.

Don't follow the rules.

Not anymore. Adam, I've grown. I was young. I didn't want to lose my job.

Alex, don't make me take that A away from you behind you.

The big A?

That's right. You're the big A. All right.

Yes. Well, I'm the other big A.

Yes, you are, Adam.

See, I don't want to. We have that conformity to the big A, though, that we do. We conform to big A.

Yes, I like it. Adam, do you want to get a big A, too? Do we have to get you on for the show?

He needs a big A.

I want a big A, but I want it with the Security Cocktail Owl logo on the back.

All right. We can do that. That would be cool. We can do that. OK. We can make you a costume, too, if you want. You can be like a superhero. Oh, yeah. We already tried that, remember? We already tried that. Oh, God, the baddest of all.

That was the Gap Smash episode.

Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah, that got a little weird. Oh, well. So, so Alex, with this technology background, you are a recruiter, then you are somewhat unique in that you're a recruiter who, I'm not going to insult all the recruiters there, who actually understands the jobs that you're recruiting for and what people are doing. Yeah, I definitely, refreshing, you know?

Yeah. I wouldn't be able to be a job of a developer these days, but I definitely conceptually understand the technical industry being 20 years in operations and then seven years as a developer and I worked as a PeopleSoft consultant and I was independent. So I had to get contracts and I interfaced with recruiters like me for these PeopleSoft contracts. And so I really lived on both sides of the fence at that point. I never knew I'd be a recruiter, but I also knew what my experience was like being a candidate on a contract or trying to get a contract with these recruiters and how they treated me. And some of them were great and some of them weren't. So when I had thumb surgery and I had to kind of reinvent myself and I couldn't continue coding all day, I had a conversation with a bad recruiter and thought I could do that job better.

So you said, even with a bad thumb, I can do this job better than this guy. Well done.

And so that's how I got into recruiting in 2007.

So you went in in 2007, right before it got weird.

Oh yeah, because I was working for a dot-com company earlier in like the early 2000s when the dot-bomb crash happened. I was still on the technical side when, you know, people were abandoning San Francisco and it was crazy. But 2007, I just started to do recruiting full time. And then 2009 was the first recession I went through as a recruiter.

Wow. And, and back then, were you, uh, were you independent? Were you on your own from then?

No, I was working for a company back then.

Yeah.

And I mean, we didn't have large salaries. We, we, count a lot on, you know, commissions, which is an external recruiter. And, um, we, you know, I had good leadership and they said, we've been through recessions before and it's going to be okay. We're just going to circle wagons and, uh, we'll get through it because it can't last forever. And that's kind of what we did. We dropped fees for a while. We did some special deals for a while. We counted on our. local, you know, loyal clients and gave them a deal so that they would still use us. So we worked it out.

I have a question, Alex. So how long have you been a recruiter again, or since 2007? So since 2007 to now 2024, 17 years.

Yeah.

When do you think, thanks for helping Adam.

That's good.

Yeah. It's complicated math. Um, This is why I have issues. So from that, from the beginning of your time as a recruiter to now, what year or years were the worst years for people to find jobs? Is it now? Is it then? Is it the beginning, the middle?

Okay. 2009.

Because the market's bad.

Yeah. 2009 was, was really, really bad. But this is, I would say this is worse and this has gone on longer because this has been a year and a half. And just to give weird perspective, juxtaposition 2022 was the best year for my company. The most revenue.

Wow. The best.

And then we just fell off a cliff in January, 2023. So what are the companies saying? So 2023 was my worst year. Worse than my first year of business.

Wow. What are these companies saying? What are they waiting for?

Well, I have a lot of perspective on what I think is happening. Um, there's a lot of chaos in the market and there's several things at play. I think, you know, the election year here makes people nervous and pull back the high interest rates means that they're, they're putting on hold a lot of their special projects because they don't, they can't get the funds to, you know, at a low rate to go ahead with these projects. So they're pulling back on that. Then you throw in AI and they think they're going to do more with less. And in some cases they can, but in other places they might need to, you know, That's a whole other issue, the AI topic. But there's a lot of different moving parts that I think are contributing to this real slowdown. Within the security industry specifically, I've seen a lot of offshoring and outsourcing and companies... Of security? Of their security team, yeah. They don't, and a lot with midsize companies who don't seem to want the responsibility of having an in-house security team.

Well, when you say people are, you know, offshoring it and outsourcing it, are they to the traditional kind of managed services providers? Because a lot of security organizations, so people know, you know, use a managed security provider to have like your security operations center cover the 24 by seven stuff. And it's really hard to do if you're not a big organization. Right. So are they doing that or like just taking everyone and saying, give the whole security operation to someone else?

I've seen both. I've seen people using MSSPs to do their stock and to, you know, to be their security team and some MSSPs offshore, some of the work and some don't. But then I've also seen like, for example, Wells Fargo that just totally whacked their entire security team that was down in Arizona. And just whacked them all and offshored it to the Philippines.

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I'm going to bring something up. And I'm going to tell you why I'm saying this. We lost a friend the other day. His name is Freddie Chambers. He passed away. He's a great guy. But it's funny how this comes full circle. Freddie and I used to talk a lot about these offshore recruiters. And I'm not going to say which country, but there's a country that predominantly has a lot of offshore recruiters. And Freddie and I went back and forth. We laughed. We laughed because we get these calls from these offshore recruiters about jobs that we don't even think they have. Like we would look and we'd say, how do you have that job? And I'll tell you this, one time, one of my wife's cousin's husband called my wife and said, oh, I heard that you guys are hiring over at this bank. And I was like, we don't even outsource. So what it looks like is a lot of these offshore recruiters are either being inappropriate, or maybe they're engaging in, in, in, uh, some kind of deceit, but they go out and they grab these other people's job descriptions. And they say, would you be interested in this? And then you said your resume and nothing ever happens with it. What's going on with these ultra recruiters with these jobs? It looks like they never have.

There, there are some serious scams going on. I just saw a gentleman on LinkedIn who posted about, um, a scam where he's a project manager, trying to find a project management job. And so I ran down the rabbit hole a little bit with him and went and investigated the website. Cause he put up the website of the supposed company that was hiring for this project manager position. And you could easily Google that position and track it back to original company that that position truly was for that's in the U S but the scam was. He was a project manager and they said, you need to have a PMP sort of certification. and you need to buy it through us right now. You need to go ahead and do this right now. And so they had an angle of trying to funnel people to get it, to sign up for a certification course through, I don't know, their wife's cousin's husband. I don't know who they were supporting it back to, but it was a scam.

That's awful. Cause there are a lot of people who are, you know, frankly, they're desperate. They're, They're looking to do anything to get to get a leg up, like, you know, to get another certification so they can get past that, that job screening things, those AI systems and everything. So that is really nasty. It is.

It's one country. Again, I'm not going to say, because then it makes me look like I'm biased. And that one country calls, calls me two, three, four, five times a day, sometimes. And I, and what I keep on doing is I play whack-a-mole. I keep on blocking them. And when they call me, it's always the same thing. When they call me, it's always the same thing. Is this blah, blah, blah. And I hang up. If you're a recruiter calling me about a cybersecurity job, and the first thing you do. is ask me if this is the person without introducing yourself. And I know that could be long line also, but Hey, this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm looking to hire for a position. Can I talk to you about it? They never do that. It's always high. Is this Adam blah, blah, blah.

Generally, we don't even call people to be honest. I mean, the first touch point is generally a message like a LinkedIn message or an email. Because people don't answer their phone because of this. Right.

I checked the addresses. They're all like these mailboxes and these office buildings have 36,000 companies there with a mailbox.

Right, right. Adam, he's just a scam magnet sometimes. I don't know how you get these things.

I had a conversation with one of them the other day. I go, let me ask you a question. Do people hang up on you all the time? They go, a lot. I go, don't you think you should be a little bit more professional and say, Hey, my name is blah, blah, blah. I'm with blah, blah, blah. Because the first thing somebody's insecurity is going to say, I've never given up my name without finding out who it is. And even if they know who it is, it's still going to be apprehensive. It's like, I got a call from, I got a call from Ed the other day. Hi, this is Edna. I'm going to say the company we wanted to talk to you about, because they always want to counsel you and help you. I go, are you going to ask you PI questions? Uh, yeah, I need to validate you. Yeah, that's not happening. Goodbye.

No, exactly. You're security minded. That's true. Yeah.

I hope so. That's what I do for a living. But stop telling the scammers why you're hanging up on them.

Just hang up on them. No, if I'm not part of the solution, I'm part of the problem.

Well, anyway, back to this current market.

Yes. The market.

So one of the things that I want, one of the important points that I would like to get out there is that companies, employers, and large corporations understand that the market is in chaos. And they're also understanding because they're trying to do more with less people. And maybe they, you know, wish they had more budget to hire. I know CISOs are always complaining. They don't have enough budget and. I just want people to know that gaps in your resume is not going to be a really big deal during this time, just as during the pandemic. And even during 2009, uh, corporations and employers are aware of the fact that people have been out of work for a year, maybe a year and a half at this point. And it doesn't mean that they're not. good employees or that they're not talented or have skills. A lot of it has to do with the market and the different things that are going on. So I've heard a lot of talk on LinkedIn about people worried that they're going to show now a year gap on their resume and I don't want them to worry. It's all going to be okay.

Well, you know, it's been funny because I've, you know, over the years, gone through a lot of resumes and all, and yeah, after 2009, you see that thing there, someone left their thing, they got laid off, you're like, hey, it happens, whatever, it was an industry thing. But I have talked to a lot of people who are job hunting, and they say that one of the most frustrating things they run into is like, yes, they have the gap, they're not working, they're looking, they're doing all this stuff, and the question that's so bizarre is that they have to feel, they go like, so what have you been doing? And it's like, you want to say like, well, what the hell do you think I've been doing? I've been looking for a job.

Well, no. OK, so you if you face that, if you face that question really defensive because you're worried somebody's judging you for it, then you might feel defensive. But that question is a fair question. So if you've been off, Why have you been off? Oh, well, I've just been looking for a job. Okay, fine. Fair enough. It's the market, right? But I talked to people who say, oh, I had a family member that was terminally ill and I went and took care of that. And I'm like, okay, so that's called a sabbatical and we're going to put that on your resume and you can help fill that gap with a little. I talked to one guy and he said, oh, well, I just rode my bicycle across the United States from like New York to California. And I said, Dude, put that on your resume. That is so interesting. That's the one thing that will set you apart from all these other technical guys. So that's why we ask.

You bring up a good point, Alex, right? And this is a conversation Joe and I have had with many people that are looking for jobs. How do you get noticed? Is it you email the recruiter? Is you show up at the recruiter's house at 2 a.m. with a bottle of alcohol? Yes, please. Or an iron. Or an iron. Do you bring a box of donuts? Do you find the way of using AI to figure out all the keywords? I've heard stories where people embed the keywords hidden, and they put 10 million keywords, all clear text, so you can't see it. So when the computer triggers it, they're like, It was like, oh, what are you doing?

I say bravo to that. I mean, you're tech people, you're tech folks. If, if you know that it's about a bucket of keywords and you want to get high hits in the database. and be leveled up over your competition, bravo, put in a bunch of keywords in transparent form.

Imagine that at the bottom of the page, you put it in two font, you put it in like clear text and you put every single keyword pretzel, you know, CSSP, you know, security plus, you know, uh, you know, uh, DLP.

I mean, you put the, you put the words that are relevant to you, but that's, you know, Your LinkedIn profile is just a bucket of keywords. And I always tell people that you, you really need to put in the tech stack. You're working with the keywords, the brand names of things, whether it's Cisco or rapid seven or whatever you've been working with. You want to list those things in your LinkedIn profile, because when we do a search to try and find you, we're going to find you based on listing keywords and, and based on your titles.

Okay. Cause I had someone, I heard that the other day that they say, look, someone said like, you know, LinkedIn, you think it's this, it's a search engine and that's what recruiters do. They sit there and search on it all day for everything. So that's, that's really true. That's how it's done.

That's how we find you. That's how we find you.

I see these jobs posted and people tell me this all the time. We had a conversation with somebody else about this. They'll get, it says over a hundred applicants. And then two weeks later, They sent me a screenshot reposted. How do you repost it after a hundred applicants?

Okay.

Let's talk about this.

That's, this is a good point. Let's talk about this. Um, there is a really big push pull going on in the market right now. And it has to deal with work from home or return to the office. I said it, people, it's a dirty word work on site. People get so angry with me, like candidates get so angry with me, but what, what we have to understand here is there's. Employers that want people to work in the office and employees that are absolutely refusing to that's everybody's prerogative. Everybody gets to do what they want to do. But if the employer says, I would like to pay someone X number of dollars, and I would like them to come into my office building three times a week. or even five days a week, that's also their prerogative. And you can say no, but people are like online angry and really cranky about it. And, um, Really?

Yeah. I'll throw a curve ball at that. The last two organizations I worked for didn't even have presence in New York City. So I had no other choice but to work from home. Don't get me wrong. I've gone in the field.

But that was the organization, the way it was.

Those were two big organizations too.

And it's fine if the employer is fine with it. Look, I don't think any one way suits everyone. And I think everybody has the choice. But the reality of it is there's not as many remote jobs. And again, don't shoot the messenger because people get really mad when I say that, but the jobs are dropping.

I have no problem going to the office, but I want a limo to pick me up. I'm sorry. Yeah. Good luck with that.

So, so Alex, so let me ask you, okay, so you got an employer who says we want someone in the office five days a week, traditional job, whatever. Yeah. That's their thing. If they, if they like it. Um, do they realize that they're limiting the pool of applicants, not even so much in terms of people who are willing to not do remote work, but even they're now old school and they, by definition, have to be in their local area. And that's it, because a lot of places got accustomed to recruiting from a much, much wider audience, right?

Okay, well then let me pose this question to you because that's the first bit of chaos that started in the pandemic. I am a regional, like I've been a regional recruiter in the Pacific Northwest plus Denver and Austin. And so I know those areas and I know the salary ranges in those cities and areas. Now the pandemic happened and suddenly everybody in Portland is working for a California company in the Silicon Valley. And now I have an employer that wants people on site. And sometimes they have valid reasons for wanting people on site. Maybe they have some on-prem servers. They also may have weekly meetings that they want everyone in a conference room together to kind of bond and bring in lunch and what have you. So they have their reasons, but now this was during the pandemic. I couldn't find anybody living in Portland that was willing to work in Portland because they were working for California wages. So it was driving up the price because now you don't have a regional salary rate of the Portland price because they're working for California wages. And now you've got people, you know, in the Midwest making West coast or East coast salaries. It's just not sustainable. It's just not. And so the, the salary ranges and the market was in total chaos as far as what was being paid. And that's why January, 2023 came around. And major layoffs happened because they were like, we can't do this anymore. We've done the pandemic prices. We're cutting everybody who was last in and who's most highly paid, highly compensated. And they cut everyone. And I think the employers are squeezing. They're squeezing us out. They're waiting for people to give up this idea of fully remote and give up this idea of the higher salary. They're waiting for people to get desperate, I think.

So let me throw another curve ball. When COVID came, organizations did the opposite in New York City from what I remember. They said, wow, real estate's expensive. Let's shed some of our infrastructure, some of our buildings. And for those who don't know, in New York City, every time you flush a toilet, it costs money. You know, sewage, water, electricity, air conditioning.

There's parking downtown.

Well, no one's parking in New York City. If you're taking, if you're, if you're driving into Manhattan, you are at another whole level. I don't care how much money.

But the trains were empty for a long time. Yeah.

I mean, they got noticeably light. So organizations literally got rid. They might have three buildings near each other. They went down to two. They got rid of their internet. They got rid of, they saved money on water. They saved money on electricity. They saved money on heat and air conditioning. So it was actually cheaper for them because guess what? If you were using your own internet and your own bathroom and your own heat and your own air conditioning and your own water and everything else, you saved the companies millions of dollars. I get it.

Yeah. But that's, but that sentiment isn't universal, is it? A lot of companies want people to come in no matter what.

And let me give you an example, because your world is different in New York than out here on the West Coast. So we have Nike.

It is? I thought the whole world was like New York. No. Oh my God.

So we have Nike. Wait, wait, wait, wait. The blue pill, the red pill, because now we're in the matrix, because I thought the whole world revolved around us. Go ahead.

Really? So Nike's out in Beaverton, outside of Portland, and they have several campuses and their campuses, and they do what they can to make them a really fun place to work. And a lot of them have big food courts inside where you can get all different kinds of food fair every day. They have a sports bar on campus. They have a gym, a rock climbing wall. They have a track that goes around the entire outside. of the campus if you want to go jogging, soccer fields on campus. So they have soccer teams and they go and play during the day. So Nike's a whole culture, right? And they have, I don't know, five or six campuses. I've never worked actually for them, but I have been on different campuses doing business. And they're a whole culture and they employ people like the security guards at the front door who do the badging, the people who are cooking the food in the food courts, the facilities folks. There's a lot of jobs that they create from having this physical campus is what I am leaning towards. So when it was the pandemic, actually there was less people employed because they weren't using their facilities. And I'm not sure what Nike would do with those facilities. I mean, maybe it saves some money, but maybe it's really, it's downgrading their culture because they're all about culture and playing together and having soccer teams together and working out and going to the sports bar on campus together after work or, you know.

Yeah. But you know, when I hear that. I mean, what pops into my head is, you know, I know, you know, the whole thing. I know that the younger people think, oh, it's cool. They got a coffee bar. They got all this stuff. Guys, it's designed to keep you in the office, okay, to make you work more. And maybe that's what it's about. And to tell the truth, I never worked at Nike. I never worked at one of those places. But here, like, you know, They got the whole thing there, like it's a company town. I mean, and a soccer team and all these things. I mean, it sounds like a cult. I'll tell you this. Seriously.

What about friends?

Other people love it.

One of our friends works for a company. I'm not going to say who, but you can guess who it is. And he's like, yeah, when I go in there, You can get a massage, you can get a haircut. He goes, and he goes, you can even bring your dog to the doggie babysitting. Yeah, doggie daycare. So it's in Lower Manhattan. It's like in between Midtown and Downtown.

It's in the Meatpacking District, right? I'm not saying who it is. I don't know who it is, please.

Hey, hey. So the point I'm making is they throw all these benefits at you. Like you can play full court basketball. You can do this. You can do that. I like it. I mean, I wouldn't mind it. I mean, but, um, you know, uh, I'll tell you what I wanted to get at. There's one thing I want to say before I forget when COVID came around, one of the things we learned. is that either it was a conspiracy or really good organization. Because every company that we spoke to said, everybody's returning back to work on, I'm making the date up, June 12th. Or we're going from three days a week to five days a week. Every major company in New York City All was organized with the same stuff. I'll be talking to my wife and my wife's like, did you get an email today? And I was working for a different company that, yeah, I got the same email. So it was so weird how all these companies in Manhattan all passed around the same information about what the next step was, whether New York City organized it or I don't know. But do you remember that Joe or no?

Yeah, I remember that. And you know, I don't know if it was so much a conspiracy. I mean, my kind of speculation on that is having worked a little bit on like, you know, business continuity. I mean, the city does have some office or something like when there's a storm or they try to coordinate, encourage people to not come in that day or do things, you know, to control the commute and everything. I wouldn't be surprised if they can't order stuff. But I would not be surprised if the city had a little bit of a hand Influence? Yeah, everyone, COVID's over. Please bring people back into the office. Because, you know, New York is dead now. I mean, you walk around. It's not dead, dead. But compared to pre-COVID, I mean, you walk by, it's like, you know, it used to be, you know, you couldn't swing a dead cat without finding five places to, like, you know, have lunch. Why would you even swing a dead cat? Oh, God. It's better than throwing an iron at someone. I don't know. But now they're like, you know, there's not many things are gone. A lot of the shops, the clothing stores, you know, you duck into because you need a shirt or you need that. They're closed. It really is a lot emptier.

Alex, during COVID, I was getting texts from every business within a mile that I used to use. If you come in today, we'll clean your shoes for free. Or if you come in, we'll give you two meals, buy five meals, we'll give you two free. Everybody was texting me. Oh, the guy that fixed the belts, the shoes, everything, every place I ever went. Like Dunkin' Donuts, that was down the block.

Just trying to survive.

Oh yeah, I felt bad for them. Listen, listen, it's a cascading effect. It's a cascading effect.

It has been a total cascading effect because why would 2022 be our best year? When 2020 things were like shut down in 2021, but then 2022 was this year that everybody was making more money and they were making higher salaries. And then 2023 came around and. You know, it's the big guys like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, that start saying, that's it. We're cutting these guys. These guys were people we hired normally at 130. We hired them at 170 and now we're cutting them. And then they cut them. They gave them a severance package. And I talked to a lot of these people who were laid off, particularly from Microsoft. And they said, well, you know, I made the best money I've ever made last year, 2022. And I got a sweet severance package from Microsoft and there's still six months of unemployment that I could take. So I'm going to wait it out a little bit. And that is how we got to the end of 2023 with lots of people who were unemployed and unwilling to even consider an onsite role. Even if they lived in Portland, I would call them and they're like, Nope, I'm going to hold, I'm going to wait it out. I either want something remote or I want something at 170 K a year.

Oh, so that's it. Those good packages, not only stretch it out, but made people think they could have more leverage and what they want, but they're not finding stuff.

Organ pays really. quite generous unemployment. They pay more unemployment than California does, and it's more expensive to live in California.

And I thought in Portland, like if he didn't work, you've made more money than someone who did work. But I might've heard that on Fox.

Well, I don't know that you make more money. I mean, we're talking about professionals that most, most professionals are six figures, right? Um, so I don't, you don't make more money, but I'm just saying that their unemployment is better than California. And I think a lot of people held out and now January, 2024 came along and we're all like, okay, come on, let's start hiring. And the corporations are like, nope, it's an election year. We're going to see what happens. There's AI we can maybe utilize, maybe we'll offshore. And so people are starting to become a little bit more angry and desperate. And the reality for recruiters like myself is. We don't get a lot of remote jobs to fill because they post it once. And to Adam's point, it's over a hundred applicants within two days. They take it down because there's overwhelmed. They're trying to sift through a hundred people and, you know, not all of them are quality. Then they repost it and they get flooded with applicants again. So for that reason, generally we're being called to help fill the onsite positions that are either hybrid or fully on site, because that's where they post it and you get seven applicants. And so now we have to go out and head hunt, but people are angry. I mean, I've had people say, you shouldn't even work for clients who require being on site any percentage of the time. And I'm like, okay, right.

You know, that's the company's prerogative.

Yeah. But you know what that sounds like to me? I mean, you know, I hear all these things, people like, you know, I need a job. There's too many people looking. How do I, how do I do this? You know, they see the things on, on LinkedIn that like a hundred people apply. It sounds like from what you're saying, your best strategy might be to simply apply for stuff that's on site, willing to be willing to work on site. I know.

I mean, there's people I talked to who are unemployed and they refuse to even consider a role. We just talked to a guy last week. We have a current opening for a software engineer position, like a C sharp.net software engineer for a local company here. And it's a, it's a smaller company, but a very nice company, good culture. And they're like, ah, we're hybrid, but you know, like maybe one day a week is what we require, but we're flexible. Maybe one day a week, maybe one day. They don't really have a super set thing, but maybe one day a week. We call the candidate, he's like, no, I need it to be fully remote. It's like, you know, and he lives in the same town.

That's crazy. He lives in the same town?

Yes, he lives in that town and it's not a downtown company. So there's no paying for parking. There's no bridge. He just drives in, parks in their parking lot and walks into the office. I mean, it's an easy.

The only time I feel bad for the people who need to do fully remote are those single mothers or single fathers that are taking care of their kids. And I get it, I get it. A company's entitled to do whatever they want. Well, not whatever they want, whatever they want legally. And that being said, one of the issues in New York state that a lot of recruiters that don't understand, I'm talking about onshore recruiters, I'm talking about American recruiters. They don't understand in New York state, you can't ask for salary information. In New York State, you're not allowed to, you have to post a salary range, a reasonable range. So what's up?

Same here in Oregon and Washington, yeah.

So I've seen people- Between 50 and 500,000.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just gonna say that.

I've seen the craziest stuff, you know?

So every once in a while, a recruiter will call me and say, hey, are you interested in this opportunity? I go, you didn't even tell me the range. Well, let's talk about it first. I go, no, what's the range? They go, no, we have to have a conversation. And then what I usually do is if they end up calling me, I said, let me email you just New York state law in case you're interested. And I never hear from them again, but that's fine. But what I'm getting at is I understand people want to vet people, but the law is still the law. And, and people like, oh, can you demonstrate how much you make? I go, no, I don't have to, I don't want to, you know, just people, people saying to me about demonstrating how much you make.

That's insane. We're not even supposed to ask, like, how much did you make at a previous job? I mean, it's just, it doesn't matter if you're underpaid now, there's nothing more I'd like than to level set you and get you into. a good market rate. Besides we get paid on what you get paid, right? So we're on your side as outside agency recruiters, we get paid based on how much salary you get offered. And so we want you to have the best salary possible, but within the budget of our client.

You know what I also find ridiculous. you know, people are people. You should be, you should, you know, be hired based on just your capabilities. But now what everyone's doing is, and I've seen some crazy ones. Are you straight? Are you gay? Are you something queer, this queer, that queer? Are you this? I'm like, I saw one, I showed the Joe. I go, come on. I always put down. It was complicated.

You know what that is about? It's about this diversity, Yeah, I mean, it's about them trying to hire diverse and I think that the. The intention and the sentiment is in the right place, but. I mean, we've been dealing with this for a long time, right?

I mean, I've had this conversation. with my child, and my child is very open about it. My child is trans. And I would bring them in and I'll say, look at this. They go, it shouldn't even be there. It's just hire me based on who I am and my capabilities and what I do. But this one, some of them are going beyond. Some of them are like- No, I get it. It wasn't just are you gay? Are you straight? Are you bisexual?

It was none of their business. Honestly, it doesn't matter. Yes, they're trying to they're trying to win a point for diversity. But do you remember the EEO reports of the 80s? Yeah, equal employment opportunity EEO. We have to report on those. I know this because as a developer doing PeopleSoft, we had to produce EEO reports for

Oh, you were the one who had to cook it for your company?

Is that? Oh, yeah, I mean, it was, it was the same fight back then history always repeats itself. And I feel like an old dog in this world now. But remember when offshoring The IT department was the big thing in the early 2000s, and then it went terribly and everybody said, Oh my God, let's onshore. Well, that's what's happening with security now. We're offshoring security departments and everything's going to go terribly for a while. And then everybody's going to try and onshore again. So it's just history repeating itself. EEO is old school and people ask, act like DEI is something new. It's not new other than they've included more categories.

And they made it, I guess they've made it more complicated.

Yeah. They just included more categories for corporations to go check, check. Oh, I've got one of those. Oh, I've got one of those. And it's just, you know.

Yeah. I just want to, I just want to say one thing though. I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying you shouldn't hire this. You shouldn't hire that. I'm saying the right candidate with the right capabilities for the right job. It doesn't matter your race, your religion. your gender, who you love, just hire the right person for the right job. It shouldn't matter.

Yeah, I agree. But you're talking to a woman who started in the eighties in IT. I had nobody to whine to about being the only woman in IT. Okay. I'm kind of like, it is what it is. And when clients are like, Oh, I would really love to get some diversity on my team. It's like, I'm certainly not holding them back, Mr. Client. I am very happy to present women in other ways, so.

That's true. OK, so there's one more thing we got to cover as we head towards the end. We have to talk a little bit about AI because we need to get an AI hashtag into this so we get more views.

Okay. I don't know about AI, but I will tell you what I know.

Well, how's it impacting you as a recruiter or what do you see happening with what's your perspective?

I think AI is affecting the security community because I feel like C-level folks who don't have a real grasp on AI and what it can do. They're just thinking, oh, AI is going to make things so much easier. And then we're going to be able to do more with less. And it is true that AI can help. insecurity and maybe Adam can speak to ways that AI can help monitor. And so that maybe reduces security analysts or, you know, a security engineer, but there's also more security risk now that hackers and, you know, uh, even doers are using AI to find more ways to hack. So. My feeling is that AI is creating more jobs in other areas while we're maybe losing some jobs in monitoring or sock, you know, tasks, which I agree a hundred percent with that.

I do believe that. Yeah. AI is going to create some jobs with the more advanced and heavy requirements. Cause we, we, we've had several people on, on the podcast about AI and we do have actually. We spoke about it earlier. We will have a panel discussing about AI. I think it's going to be called to error is human. But, you know, we're going to talk about how AI is an issue, but you're right. AI is going to help in a lot of ways and it's going to hurt in other ways. But the problem I think is the people who are going to get those jobs in AI are going to have to be a lot more advanced, a lot more sophisticated. And the jobs that are going to be eliminated are the jobs that are Going to be things that can be automated, repetitive, but that creates another whole class of security people who can detect AI being used for nefarious reasons.

Yes. What he said.

What he said. Big A over there. Adam knows the stuff, the two big A's. I mean, it's going to be interesting. It still needs to shake out. I mean, a lot of the people we've talked to have said, it makes you do what you do better and faster. It's like, okay, that will inevitably cause some people some jobs and maybe escalate the arms race a bit. I don't know. How effective it's going to be in security is really weird because you know, there's actually been AI in security for a very long time, machine learning. So you're really asking how is the generative AI going to affect it? And, you know, on the one hand, it may be really good at monitoring and detecting problems. On the other hand, you know, the people who do a lot of the work that they already can use a command line and write a query and stuff.

I mean, and, and don't you need some human reasoning sometimes, because I know, you know, even with with my friend, the other AI gal back there, who I will leave unnamed because she'll start talking. She, there's a lot to be desired on, you know, the AI, the ability to reason, for example. And that's where I think the humans, AI's getting better at that, but please tell me it's not better than a human.

I don't, I don't think so. And, and I don't, I mean, I keep hearing about these things where they say it reasons and then you hear what it does. I'm like, I don't know if it's reasoning. It's like figuring out problems and stuff, you know, is it really, is it really reasoning or is it just figuring out the same steps that it's seen someone else do? It's like, I'll do this too.

Yes and no. Yes and no. I mean, AI has its place. And what I, what I mean by that is there, AI gets interchanged with robots. It gets interchanged with automation. If you look at it from an AI standpoint is, if you use a robot that knows AI, and you can send it into a fire, like one of those rescue hounds that are robots, and it can find people and save people as it identifies them, and it learns, it learns, it goes, oh, this is what this person is. This is what that person is. Oh, the way they're breathing, my handler said, that type of breathing really is evident of somebody having a problem. But where AI becomes an issue is when that person goes to buy a car and they go to that car dealership and they end up compromising the AI bot through reasoning to give the car to them for a dollar. That just happened. Good luck.

Yeah, it just happened.

Somebody had a chat with an AI bot, an AI salesperson, and they were able to get a car for a dollar. Oh, God.

Google it. There's no car dealership that's going to let that happen. I think they had to. Come on. I think they had to. I can see the robot salesman.

No, not a robot. Not a robot. This was an AI online thing. Excuse me.

I need to ask my sales manager, and then he goes in the back and charges for five minutes. I'm sorry. He says he can't do that. It was an online bot. For example,

I'll name the company that, not about the car. Have you ever gone to Amazon and you start talking to their bots, and then you say, I want to return something, and then they turn around and they do all the work for you? Like, oh, I want to return this. Yeah. Is this the item? Yes. We're going to do this, this, this, this, this, and this, and they do it for you. But you can actually shop for things online, not Amazon. Other places where they have an AI bot, and they actually do the deal for you. And this person was able to manipulate them into getting a car for a dollar. When I say manipulate, I'm not saying hacking. I'm saying use reasoning.

Yeah, but they're going to solve that. I'll tell you what I do think is coming. You're talking about robots. I mean, yes, you can have robot firemen and robots doing dangerous things and whatever. I think Elon Musk is totally right. He's like he can sell a billion robots or something. if there's a robot that'll come to your house and vacuum it, oh, they already have vacuums, but do your laundry and clean the dishes and dust and put your iron away where you're not gonna get hurt, those things will sell off the shelves. That's the AI I want.

I just want a robot to hug me.

To hug you, oh, Adam.

I want to come home every day, have a robot wait for me, because my wife threw an iron at me.

Don't start telling people that.

Actually, his wife is tough. She smacks him in the head all the time.

That's what happens out on Staten Island.

Yeah, you got to be tough to live here. All right, so I think we're getting to the end of the road here. This has been really fascinating. And Alex, I'll tell you, I learned a few things. Actually, I've seen some of the things that's going on, but hearing a lot more perspective and kind of the progression of how we got here is really, really interesting. And I think I was thinking employers need to get more realistic. I think a lot of people need to get more realistic and, you know, just the, the world is not the way you want it to be. It's not going to be.

We all have to just compromise and have some kindness.

We missed one question. We missed one question, Alex. Since we're wrapping up, is there hope out there for finding a job? And when? You think?

Yeah, okay, I do think that there's there is hope out there and I know that people get really freaked out because they see 100 applicants doesn't mean they're good. And I think that. being flexible to work on site if you, if you can. And I know that people have situations, whether it's a handicap or, uh, you know, children at home or certain circumstances that they can't. But if you can at all apply for local onsite roles as well, that would increase your chances. And I think that everybody should buckle up and hold on until the end of the year. people call me and say, Oh, I'm thinking of making a job change and I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but if you're in a stable job and you can stay in it until 2025, I would recommend that you do that. And anybody who's unemployed, just keep job searching and understand it's not you. It's the market. Don't take it as a reflection of rejection on you. It's just the market and we're all going through this together. And so I'm starting to see a little bit more kindness out there on LinkedIn and people trying to really help people if they can. And that's where we all need to just kind of remain compassionate and kind and understand we're all going through this together.

I was going to say, that's right. There are a lot of people who are hurting out there and have a tough time. We're hurting.

Yeah, we're hurting. We're matchmakers. Let's help each other out. And if nobody wants to be matched, we can't, you know, so it is universal. And I think just keeping that in mind and just being a little bit like, take a breath. We're all in this together. It can't stay the same forever. It just can't. So I'm expecting it to change. around election once we know which way the election is going, I think corporations will make decisions based off that.

All right. Well, this has been pretty intense. You're right. There is chaos. I guess chaos makes for good podcasting. But it is tough for everyone. And the other thing I would encourage people to do is You know, talk to people, listen to podcasts, listen to stuff. You know, every time I talk to someone like you, Alex, or whoever, I get another perspective and learn something new. And it is chaotic out there. No one has all the answers. And it's changing, too. It's kind of like working in security, believe it or not, the way things are going now, it seems, which is kind of crazy.

Yep.

Adam, are you making a toast?

Well, I was going to say, if anybody wants to, if you want to support our podcast, you can get a pair of these glasses for $500.

When are you going to make some wine glasses?

We can make wine glasses too. You want a wine glass? We'll get you a wine glass. No problem. Yep. We can make wine glasses, shirts, uh, you know, flasks. Flasks. Yeah. Flasks.

I like the cocktail hour. You've got some good guests coming up. When you have Mike Pedrick on the show, you can ask him about AI. He's pretty handy on that subject.

That was what I was kind of talking about. Error is human.

I like it. Error is human. Can't wait to see that one. Thanks, guys.

Thank you very much for joining. This has been a lot of fun. We learned a lot.

I'm looking forward to the next podcast where I won't have a bandaid in my face.

Oh, and everyone, I always forget, I gotta put something, I gotta start doing this at the beginning. Please, like, subscribe, follow, share, tell your friends. Feedback. Put it on a billboard. Yes, give us feedback. We love to talk to you. We'll even take hate mail. I love hate mail. We'll read it on the show.

Well, we had that conversation. We know we made it when we get a lot of real good hate mail.

That's right. When we start getting hate mail, we know we made it. Yeah, exactly. All right. Okay. Thanks everyone. Thanks, Alex. Thank you, Adam. Always good. Okay. Take care, everyone.