Before I was a programmer. Before I was a network expert. Before I was an educator. I was a car guy. Due to all these other things in my life I never got as deep into auto mechanics as others. Reading about and working on my cars has always been a great distraction from Internet and network technology. And then I read this really great essay that I found in the Hagerty (Auto Insurance) Media titled “Avoidable Contact #92: Gates and ladders—all the ways old people kill young enthusiasm” by Jack Baruth.

Baruth describes gates like this “Your neighbor’s kid tells you that he just bought a sports car. When you walk out, it’s a V-6 Mustang. You frown and start talking about the Shelby GT350 or Fox 5.0 you had at his age. By the time you’re done talking, that kid really knows where he stands.”. Think about that and look at minimum requirements many employers are seeking for Tier 1 Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts. Consider how many entry level job descriptions list certifications such as ISC2 CISSP; which requires 5 years of experience as required.

Ladders are changes in the members of our community that change our community. Baruth says “Ladders are what we pull up behind us after we’ve used them to climb to a desired place, in the hopes that the people behind us will therefore be prevented from doing what we’ve done.”. In the cybersecurity community, where there is a shortage of qualified candidates for most positions we should be extending ladders in order to train the next generation of SOC analysts. Analysts who will be working in multiple cloud based environments with a significant remote access user community.

While Baruth wrote about young and old car enthusiasts; the conditions and behaviors he describes are far more reaching.