Homeless security guard to CCIE: You can't train ambition: Katherine McNamara shares her story

[Music] hey everyone it's David bumble coming to you from Cisco live in Barcelona really happy to introduce you to Catherine now it's the first time I've met Catherine I in person yes that's a good point I am I saw her post something on LinkedIn and she's got a really nice story that I'd like to share but Catherine you introduce yourself properly hi I'm Katherine McNamara I'm I work at Cisco as a cyber security systems engineer and I also run co-organized a large study group for Cisco Cisco student study group called router gods so if you ever look on meetup.com it's on there as well and I have a blog called network node calm our network - no calm yeah I mean I've seen some of your articles they're really good eyes but the one I want to start with today is you've got to tell me the story because I saw you post on LinkedIn that that tenure thing where 10 years ago and I don't want to spoil it you'll have to go through this through you know a detailed explanation of how you end from where you were 10 years ago to where you are today yeah no problem so I was in my mid-20s at the time and I was working entry-level customer service type jobs and I always knew I wanted to get in tight T computers were a thing I was really into like all through a high school but I always thought that you'd have to get a computer science degree I was horrible math and it was one of those things that like life got in the way and I just didn't go to school and sometime around time I was like 25 like 26 the 2008 you know crash happened and I was kind of at the end of my limit as far as life was concerned like I I was a didn't have a place to live I was couch crashing I I didn't have a car at first ended up working like a you know $12 an hour job to you know to get the crappiest car possible that would break down like every other week and yeah pretty much I didn't have I like a couple weeks actually homeless but then I you know I found a friend who would like me couch crash and then I went in for a customer service job interview and I had mentioned that I wanted to get into school for for IT and the owner of this company small company was like okay I'm not gonna hire you for customer service I'm gonna hire you to help our our IT manager and it wasn't a great great paying job was like $12.50 an hour yeah I live in California which is one of the most expense and LA area so it's one of the most expensive places in the US and so 1215 hour was basically like you barely get a rent to pay and like a room for rent and I had no extra money so what I ended up doing is I was like okay if I'm getting this experience and I'm gonna have the chance to do something and like get into the career I want obviously I can't move up that far here so I need to study and learn more so the only way to do that was to get a second job and I ended up getting a second job as a security guard which which offers somewhat flexible hours at nighttime so I was literally working 8:00 to 5:00 going driving home to crashing from 6:00 to you know 10:00 going back to work from 11:00 to 7:00 and as a security guard yeah but the good thing was even though it wasn't oh sorry it was wasn't a high paying job it was gave me time to study so I I got through my a plus my network plus and my security plus all all through that year and I ended up saying okay I've learned everything I can at this this day job and it's just getting exhausting working 80 hours a week so I'm gonna try to see if I can get to the next level so I ended up applying for like a contract position that was opening up at a hospital system near me and I ended up getting like doubling my pay instantly and and they would actually offer tuition reimbursement so I was I just the three I mentioned but I was starting a study like my MCSE and and since they offered tuition reimbursement I was like I found a an online school that basically was below the tuition reimbursement amount and they offered free certifications with their degree so I started studying and it was like an IT security degree so I had a lot of like security centric sort of certifications so while I was studying in school like one of the last classes was a net CCNA class which also included getting certified at the end and I fell in love with networking at that point I was like I was like gung-ho on security but I also fell in love with networking so I was like ok I'll give this a try I'm actually pretty good at it and like at least labbing it up and so the next job after I was done with my degree I got done it with it in record time I was basically like let's find a contracting job they'll just give me expirience like with solid networking so I jumped into that job that also doubled my salary at that point so it was even better and I got my hands on everything I got my hands on security wireless like I you know the amazing thing was it was an all-you-can-eat buffet of learning as long as like you're willing to do it and that company was just like oh somebody wants to take over our wireless ok um you want to learn ice ok so I kind of jumped into the deep end of the pool and even though like I felt like I had impostor syndrome the whole entire like the whole sick first 6 months you know just I think that uh the reason why they hired me and the reason why I did so well is not because I sat there and tried to inflate my credentials I didn't say oh I'm going into this knowing everything but I was like look you give me something to learn I will study I will take the extra time and learn and I think that in my time since then it's been a lot of years but since then when it comes to like interviewing people because I'm at the exact opposite where I actually help my boss interview people for technical roles now I look at I don't look at as much an experience anymore I look at is that person willing to learn because you can't train ambition you and and that that's what I'm my first you know network engineer boss saw in me and then every job I've taken since then until it you know even to the network security role that I'm in now with as a cyber security engineer I think that the fact that I've always been willing to learn it's always something that kind of makes anyone stand out and for anyone who is actually watching this that's the thing like if you get into a job interview don't try to inflate flate what you know I would always say look I mean this is how much I know if if someone asked me a quite like a technical question that I didn't know I would go home after the interview and email them after I like researched it because it shows that I'm actually willing to take that extra step yeah and if you show that you're actually just like look I this is how far I've gotten so far I just need experience you'd be amazed how many employers would be willing to give a chance that's amazing so I'm a bit slow so let me get this right you were you were working a day job then you were doing security at night I think you said in your post you were sleeping four hours a night or something crazy and you were losing a lot of weight because you weren't eating properly stuff like that at that point in time I was only able to afford probably like two meals a day so it was always like the the dollar menu at Del Taco and a few I don't know if you guys have del Taco out here it's like it's like the cheaper version of Taco Bell so it's pretty bad and so I was I was uh barely barely making it but like it was like a rough year but it was worth it in the end because sometimes you have to kind of put some sacrifice forward to get what you want out life and I know that some people don't have that option of working two jobs honestly you know I I feel for people who have like kids or spouse and they're not able to put the do the same thing at that point I would say you know I kind of like try to be smote and do as much as much as I could and consolidate a period of time but if you don't have that opportunity to work extra hours what I would say is get involved in communities like like study online study groups you know it's not always easy if you're working a non IT job or even sometimes when you're working an IT job to find people who are ill who will encourage you to study more and learn even get certified and the the reality is if you if you kind of put yourself around the kind of Pete if you surround yourself with the people it's people that will motivate you you'll you'll you find you work harder and you you get more motivated and that's kind of what I always try to do in any in both my steel business social life and you know even when I'm working I try to surround myself like by positive influences and you know I honestly I love it when I work with people smarter than me because always there's always something like I can learn off of them you've got it you've got to give me that tagline again you can't train and bishan I think is what you said yeah you definitely can't train ambition I I've met a lot of people who have been like in the industry for like 20 years and they've they think they know everything or they've they've learned as much as they want and they they're at this point they're on cruise control and then I've met people who have been you know they're basically at that point they're they're there they don't have 20 years of experience they have one year of experience 20 times then I've met people who have five years of experience but they're they've learned so much more than the people I've met you know who are ten who have had experience for ten years so really you know experiences is important having that on your resume but at the same time it's not everything it's what you did with that experience yeah I really like that I did a video about experience is overrated I mean I've been in this game a long time I remember learning about ISDN circuits you know all the old stuff it's kind of irrelevant today and I like what you said that's five five years of experience could be one year repeated did you want to say something sorry no I was gonna say it's not only that technology changes but it's the fact that like in our industry even job titles are so fluid like I've seen people who do like like they architect be like great networks and build them and they have like a network admin role and then I've seen people sometimes with network at architect roles who do nothing but paperwork all day you know so it really don't like it's not as much as important with job title it's what you're doing it your day job and how much you're learning with it and if you're actually willing to learn that's why I like somebody who's eager to learn and willing to like hit the ground running even if they have no like if they're just a CCNA if I feel like that they they have that that kind of ambition that they're just gonna take as much like they're gonna eat they're gonna learn as much as they can then I'm more willing to give them a chance than somebody who's like yeah I know everything I don't need to learn anything else so I mean that's brilliant so I wanted to I wanted to ask you two things and let's I hopefully hopefully we'll have enough time is like you hiring people and you gave some tips for hiring do you have any more tips for someone who you know if they want to go for a job interview what are you looking for you know what would you advise so I only do the technical part of the interviews I'm not a technically manager but I'm I help out with my management for that but the last like couple jobs I honestly look for someone who looks like that they're gonna enjoy the job not someone who thinks that it's like slave labor and something that they have to to do someone who feels passionate about technology that then ambition that they love learning that they got into this because this is something they truly wanted to do not just because they're trying to to I mean it pay is important and obviously you would hope if you you respect your employees you pay them a good salary but not somebody who's just kind of like looking for to make $1 more an hour and that's the only reason they're making the jump and honestly you don't see it as much you usually see people who have a lot of credentials but maybe they you know when you start quizzing on it or you like start white boarding like you see very quickly that there's huge gaps in their their knowledge and then I meet some other people who have like like less certifications and those legs senior folks but they've retained it all because they're always practicing and they're always labbing they're they're always trying to keep it fresh in their mind that's something that's something else I saw on one of your I think on your on your on your blog I think well you see keep on laughing you know keep laughing because you do a lot of labs yeah partly because it's actually important for my job but even then like but even when I made this jump to like Cisco I kind of told myself like I don't want to get rusty technically like I always find ways to to get pans on and put myself in front of the technologies because to me it's you know you know I'm not looking to get into a management position and and for me it's like it gives me the most options to keep keep that stuff fresh in my head but even if I wasn't at Cisco like I don't necessarily need to lab the stuff that's like antiquated or out-of-date but like it's good to unleash have that understanding of the technology because you never know when you're gonna it's like a Swiss Army knife you never know when you're gonna need that technology to you know pull out of your pocket and fix a problem or solve a business objective I think that's I mean it's fantastic advice I mean to me like just listening to you it's amazing I think you could to CC II's now see CIA security and see CIA just data center one day probably round switch as well but I promised my spouse I would take a break so it was like four years of like solid studying for both us for both to get both of the CCS but when it comes to like studying like I like any certification I got I just kind of dug in and lab dit up try it and if I could apply it to my job I would but I wouldn't just arbitrarily try to fit a square peg in a round hole but as I found like myself studying it made me a better engineer I got that first networking job I can think of like I went in as a CCNA and I studied for my ccmp during during the while I was studying for the job and you know I learned about AM applets and there was like ended up being a problem that I could solve with it and I was like oh this is great like here's how I would do it i lapped it up I use like gns3 or anyone likes using eve ng that's also another free emulator out there that you can use as well but like just being able to replicate it or you know yeah like physical labs as well dmvpn is also unlike where like I was learning about it saying about on the on the side and then suddenly like you know our CIO came to us that we needed like redundancy at every site and how would we achieve this and like DMV APN actually fit the objectives so it you know just being able to like learn and pick up pick things up like that and seeing how it could how could how it can work to fix a business or technical problem is pretty fascinating and always was fun to me I'm so glad to be able to speak to you man it's just great to hear stories like this and I hear a lot of them this is a fantastic story so let's switch gears I had a lot of questions about security and I'm not as CCIE in security I'm rod switch so a lot of you were asking about you know is security a good job if their future being a security engineer how should you study for security so do you want to just talk about that you know what would you recommend so as far as security is concerned yes it's a really good job to get right now there's a lot of avenues and security though it should be aware this everything from like reg the regulatory audit perspective there's pen testing there's network security there's a lot of avenues that whole cybersecurity broad field is it covers like you know multiple career paths now the thing is I know about the the United States a little bit more but with the u.s. there's a negative negative unemployment rate in terms of like jobs cybersecurity jobs and in most in most of IT hubs so there's a lot of growth in there and I think that with more regulation and the cost of breaches and you know more bad actors out there that that feels gonna grow now the thing I would say is there's not just one way to jump into it like it's you know you don't have to go get a computer science degree and learn programming and like disseminate malware to get into the cybersecurity you could also get into network security you can get into pen testing it just varies wildly what I would say is to look into the different IT security jobs that are out there like what what branch you that seems most interesting that you could see yourself doing for 20 years and then start chasing after the things that would get you in there there's a lot of also conflict like security conferences out there where you can meet like-minded folks if you wanted to go to like more the professional one there's professional ones there's like RSA there's security meetups like all around the country like if you look at meetup comm you can just look for like if you know InfoSec or like security you know IT security meetings yep I find them in any major city near you if you're looking for like some of more of the you know black hat type of stuff like Def Con is really cheap to go to if you can get too big Las Vegas is one of the biggest hacker conventions in the world and and there's both professionals and bad people there it's a mix the only advice I'd say is if you're gonna go there turn off your cell phone don't turn on Wi-Fi on your laptop turn off all Bluetooth items and and if you have any pacemakers or insulin pumps that have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth mm steer clear of the biome by a hacking village but it's there's a lot of good professionals there the funny thing is the guy who introduced me to Cisco wanted to get get me hired I met him at Def Con originally yeah he was in line with me for like the badge and I was like oh I saw his black line yeah I saw his black half bag and I was like oh that's really cool like weird you know it was like a really cool in that year and he ended up giving me his card and I I added him on LinkedIn and we stayed in touch over the years that's amazing that's amazing I mean if you just network opportunities come even if you're not at a company I would say have print out business cards and like distribute them at those meetings because you know like add people on LinkedIn use those professional social medias to try to you know increase your reach try to interact with them and like or comment on their posts like you know appropriately of course but it's a good way to kind of get your name out there and get people you know when they have openings show up you know but also chart your progress like hey I just passed the CCI or CCNA security things like that so people get to see that you're you're progressing and and those people that you meet up with if they have an opening that they might have they might need someone to fill they'll see that you've been progressing and that you're looking I mean that's great advice I mean like you talking about like updating your LinkedIn profile stuff like that so people know that you you're getting ahead you're not just stagnant okay so let's talk about Cisco I believe the CCI security exam changed about a year ago or something yep so can you talk us through the certification sorry with the one mic story but can you talk us through the certifications and how would you do have any recommendations of how someone should tackle that like CCNA CCNP CCIE very hard questions but so I believe the CCNA security has a book out for it now so they updated it recently when I took the CCI security or when I started studying for it the CCNA security was actually still out of date so I was like I'm skipping this whatever but actually they actually updated it while I was studying for the ie security so I don't know if there's books out there for for the seat all the CCNA security unfortunately so it's it's a it's you might have to like kind of mix and my advice is when studying for certifications in general try to mix mix vendors or mix mix a content because like for me I've never read one book and just had like was able to pass an exam I've had to use videos udemy videos ie like I had to mix my my content up because there's no way that like one book had at all even if it's the official one I've seen that like it doesn't usually cover everything yeah it's it's true I mean like I couldn't even if I had to read like three different books for CCNA route so or ccmp route so it's true it and it's kind of like how they separate duties like they have the people that are writing the content and they have the people producing the exams and there's certain regulatory reasons why they can't mix because they can't so they only see the objectives that as they're laid out and sometimes it's kind of up to the author how much they're gonna dig into it notebook so my advice is if you're trying to really learn it try to reinforce with like some some other material whether it's like a video or like a really in-depth video series or another book it that usually worked for me and as far as CCI is security is concerned and well actually any CCIE if you do decide to go into to get a CCI a just going to tell you right now and one vendor or one book is not going to cut it it's it's CCA's look kind of like it there here's the CCNA and then that here's the CCMP then here's the CCIE of how much studying you you have to do so it's usually like anywhere from like 10 to 20 books videos thousand hours of laughing so just be prepared for that if you decide to go for a CCIE and if you have a spouse you spouse buy-in is like required and expect that probably every day it's gonna be like three to five hours of studying at least so I mean a fantastic story and thanks so much for sharing advice with all of us it's no not at all I think it's your advice is brilliant so you know in your journey have you got any like parting thoughts or wisdom or things that you've learned that you wish you'd known ten years ago I wish actually I do wish I had known where I was I mean I think this is everybody wishes like they'd started earlier I wish I had known that like I could have gotten an IT degree or worked my way up on certifications instead of like sitting and from like the age of 18 to like 26 25 and you know do it not really progressing I think I was really discouraged because I you know I grew up in the 90s in Silicon Valley and like CS degrees were like pretty much the big thing and I I I got really discouraged thinking that I had to have a computer science degree and since I suck at math I was pretty much like Sol but yeah I wish I had started earlier and I think there's a lot of certifications I took along the way part of it was her school part of it was because like I arbitrarily thought that like you had to know this stuff and I realized that like if I had I could have probably saved myself a lot of effort and money if I've been a little bit more concise and like new errors going but it's kind of like asking a kid like or somebody like and expecting them to know what they wanted to be when they grow up sometimes career paths change and you can't really predict it's I don't beat myself up so so much for that but I do wish I had like started earlier but you know I've wonder where I would have been if I'd like had 10 more year on this so Catherine tell me about router gods because you're quite heavily involved in that what is it and like what is it about and you I think there's some interesting things that you do there yeah absolutely it's not the group that I started actually it was started by a Humphrey Cheung he's in the the group anis our benevolent dictator as we call him but we it's a Kree community basically like a large study group and everything from Cisco certifications Microsoft VMware whatever it's all you know it's just a community that we try to give back to train people as much as we can but we also do job advice if someone goes into our job and career chat and basically post their resume with you know personal information redacted we'll go ahead and like review and give advice we also do mock interviews if anyone has the job open at their company that they're looking for they'll put will post in there as well so a lot of people have gotten jobs through router gods we also like you know we've also try to network between each other so if you know there's a lot of like cross cross-training and cross jobs in there like we've had people leave from what like one members company to another so it's it's pretty interesting but if anyone wanted to join this never a a cost or anything associated and we also tried to do like things to give back to like newer people in the industry so one of the things we started doing like a couple years ago is we started GoFundMe every year and we basically say okay we're gonna let the community vote for somebody who doesn't have a CCIE and doesn't work at Cisco and they're gonna donate to this and and basically someone give someone the opportunity who's never been to Cisco live and new in the field to go there and it's it's optional but we we've sent a couple people to Cisco live in the last over the last couple years who've just a network and like try to to get a job in the field so just kind of things that we we do as part of router gods it's we do it on our free time but since we have like over 2000 members a lot of people jump in and help each other out we have everything from like people who are still working helpdesk to like people who have like three or four CCS that's brilliant thanks so much for sharing that how can people connect with you or follow you have you got Twitter you know can you just list you know social media or you know where people can find you yeah if you got a network - node calm my Twitter's linked on there my LinkedIn as well and then if you go to meetup.com ford slash router gods we have a study group it's for everyone from like pre CCNA to CCIE we do meetups we have sometimes have trainers do like free boot camps we have a youtube video and we also have a chat where where we all like interact and do like hang out and like labbing and stuff Karen I want to really thank you so much this was done really quickly so everyone I again just want to thank Catherine for sharing her wisdom and I mean what a story you know no it was great it was great it's you know stories like this is so inspirational so again thanks so much all the very best [Music] you 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Channel: David Bombal

Views: 180,693

Keywords: CCNA, CCNP, CCIE, Cisco, cisco, Security, Katherine McNamara, CCNA Security, CCNP Security, CCIE Security, what should i study, what to study in 2019, 2019 careers, 2019 career, 2019 career advice, career advice, CCNA Training, MCSE, cisco ccna, ICND1, planning for 2019, CCENT, CCNP Training, CCENT Study, Cisco Certifications, Cisco Training, CCNA Study, comptia A+, it certifications 2019, ccna 2019, CCNP Study, david bombal, jeremy cioara, osi model, ambition, #homeless, homeless

Id: hCRjDwuuQOA

Length: 27min 14sec (1634 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 02 2019