As of the last day of September, I am now officially and a hundred percent unemployed. I spent three years with my previous employer, $MSP where I bounced around in different roles. I was initially brought in to grow into a role of a software developer and was then redirected to “Helpdesk” because “We don’t really develop things…”. I was then asked to take on a role of the Jr. Pentester and ended up in job limbo where nobody really knew what my job role was or was going to be in the near future.
Looking back, I gained some useful experience and knowledge which I’m hoping to apply in some capacity in the future. During my time there I landed an eJPT certificate and doubled down by passing for the Pentest+ certificate (after a failed attempt at a cert which I won’t name). I also spent a good chunk of time developing applications in Laravel, something I plan to continue doing in the future.
All in all I have added some tools and certificates to my belt but I still feel I am mostly a hack of all trades, which makes it hard to paint a clear picture of where my career is going to head next. My autism, which has become Official™ during this period, complicates things and restricts my options when it comes to jobs, locations and what not where I can be comfortable and excel.
You know what makes it even harder? I can’t choose what route to take from here. I am interested in going down the development route and actually “get good” at it, but Security has also always been something that I’m very interested in. And there’s always the temptation to start playing and tinkering with the networking and server side of things again (although calling that a passion of mine would be a stretch).
I am trying not to be too pessimistic in this blog post, but I am not the type of person who writes an entire blog post about how this is the best think to ever happen to them on LinkedIn. It’s a change which means there’ll be more changes in the future, and I’m not a fan of change. However, the game of cards has ended and it’s time to start a new game of “Career Poker” and see what cards I’m deal this time and take things from there.
Onwards to the next chapter, Employment 4.0!