Slashdot Mirror
Are IT Security Professionals Less Happy?
zentanu writes "It's said that if you want to be happy, be a gardener. What about IT security professionals?
Having worked as an IT security consultant for several years, I now wonder if my job has a negative influence on my happiness, because it constantly teaches me to focus on the negative side of life: I always have to think about risks and identify all sorts of things that could go wrong.
As an auditor I search for errors that others have made and haughtily tell them. As a penetration tester I break systems that system engineers and administrators have laboriously built. I assume inside threats and have to be professionally suspicious. The security mindset surely helps me in my job, but is it good for me on the long run? What kind of influence has being an IT security professional had on your general attitude towards life? What helps you stay out of pessimism and cynicism? Is protecting existing things really as good as building new ones?"
1) Make another comparison of IT to another profession
2) Believe you've come up with something new and whitty
Most jobs tend to have the same basic principals, if you break it down enough.
"IT is like flipping burgers. The burgers represent data, and the customers are the users. You have to find the best way to provide burders (data) to the customers (users) for the lowest cost!"
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Maybe you should find a way of doing your IT security job properly, i.e., such that you don't hinder other people and don't lock everything down.
'Fraid it isn't bullshit really but I'm guessing you've not been in the field for long or at all and are probably speaking from an end-user perspective.
'Fraid you're wrong on that one, too. Sounds like you have been in the business only for a decade or so and really still don't have a clue what's going on. Dilettantes like you are responsible for many security problems.