---
title: "Magen Wu -- Hustle and Flow: Dealing With Burnout in Security"
url: https://appsecpodcast.com/magen-wu-hustle-and-flow-dealing-with-burnout-in-security/
date: 2018-03-02
duration_seconds: 1950
guests: ["Magen Wu"]
topics: ["Security Culture"]
audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1730684/episodes/8122694-magen-wu-hustle-and-flow-dealing-with-burnout-in-security.mp3
transcript: true
---

# Magen Wu -- Hustle and Flow: Dealing With Burnout in Security

*March 2, 2018 · 33 min*

with [Magen Wu](https://appsecpodcast.com/guests/magen-wu/)

on [Security Culture](https://appsecpodcast.com/topics/security-culture/)

[Audio](https://www.buzzsprout.com/1730684/episodes/8122694-magen-wu-hustle-and-flow-dealing-with-burnout-in-security.mp3)

## Show notes

In a profession that rewards constant vigilance, how do you recognize when dedication has become burnout? Magen Wu joins Chris and Robert to discuss chronic stress, workplace expectations, and the pressure security practitioners can put on themselves. Drawing on her personal experience and interest in psychology, she explains why always being available can become a team norm and why taking a real break can feel surprisingly difficult. The conversation explores boundaries around phones and email, sleep, hobbies away from computers, and the importance of recovery after intense work. Magen also describes changes that friends and colleagues might notice and ways to start a more useful conversation than simply asking whether someone is fine. It is a candid discussion about sustaining a career without sacrificing the person doing the work.

The Application Security Podcast is brought to you by [Security Journey](https://www.securityjourney.com/).

About Security Journey  
Security Journey provides application security education for developers and everyone in the software development lifecycle.  
→ [Learn more about Security Journey](https://www.securityjourney.com/)

Connect with Magen Wu:  
→ [Magen Wu on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/magenhughes)

Mentioned in this episode:  
→ [DEF CON](https://defcon.org/)  
→ [Tim Ferriss’s blog](https://tim.blog/)

Chapters:  
00:00 Burnout in security with Magen Wu  
02:00 Magen’s security origin story  
04:35 What burnout can feel like  
07:05 Why security work can amplify chronic stress  
10:50 How company culture sets unhealthy expectations  
12:39 Taking a real break from work  
13:41 The pressure to feel indispensable  
15:16 Sleep, boundaries, and recovery  
18:12 Phones, social media, and attention  
21:57 Hobbies and time away from computers  
23:28 Recognizing changes in friends and coworkers  
25:42 Starting a supportive conversation  
29:48 Knowing when to hustle and when to recover

## Transcript

*5,728 words · assemblyai*

**0:00 Chris Romeo:** Hey folks, this is season 3, episode 7 of the Application Security Podcast. On this episode, we speak with Megan Wu on the topic of mental health and burnout in the world of security. This is a serious issue that a lot of folks in our industry deal with, and so we hope that there's some advice and some, maybe some encouragement you can take away from this episode that'll help you. And if you are dealing with this type of a problem, please reach out and talk to somebody. As an industry, we have to work together. We have to take care of each other. And that's what I'll say right from the beginning. Reach out to somebody and ask for help. The Application Security Podcast. Here we go.

**1:07 Robert Hurlbut:** Hello folks, welcome to another episode of Application Security Podcast. Chris and I are joined by Megan Wu today. Thanks Megan for joining us.

**1:17 Magen Wu:** Yeah, thanks for having me.

**1:19 Robert Hurlbut:** You know, when I met you, I met you at Application Security— AppSec Cali rather. just a few weeks ago in California, sunny California. And I remember that you were part of a group. It was essentially a women in security group. It was a great experience just listening to the stories, seeing what's going on. And I really liked that conference. And that's how we met. That was a great opportunity, I think.

**1:49 Magen Wu:** Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I usually don't do application security conferences, so it was kind of a fresh— a breath of fresh air. It was really nice.

**2:00 Robert Hurlbut:** Great. So again, welcome to the podcast today. As we get started, usually what we ask everyone who is a part of the, the episode is to give us your security origin story. So I know you mentioned it at the conference, but for those who were not able to attend, could you tell us a little about How did you get into security?

**2:20 Magen Wu:** Sure. So from a young age, my dad was a communications specialist in the Army, first of all. And then when he retired, I was about 7 years old or so. And he started working in the IT department at the Veterans Hospital down here in St. Petersburg, Florida. And whenever there was a school holiday, I would be there volunteering. usually within his department. So I would help break down and repair computers, and they would have me do a lot of the asset inventory stuff, stuff that they didn't want to do, and sit on help desk calls. And then one day they had a security incident. I think it was a virus or something happened where it knocked out almost the entire network. And that was really my first experience with security because Before then, I didn't realize that, oh, you could actually impact a huge network like this one and manipulate files and do all that kind of stuff.

**3:25 Chris Romeo:** Megan, I'm curious, how old were you at that point when you had that first incident?

**3:28 Magen Wu:** I think I was like 13 or 14. Oh, that is so awesome. Yeah. So from there, I was just like really interested in, okay, well, how does this work? You know, what happened? You know, the very famous, you know, what happens when I do this? And from there, it just kind of grew and grew until I went to my first DEF CON when I was 20. And that was like DEF CON 15. And then I was hooked. And that's how I got into information security.

**4:00 Robert Hurlbut:** Great. Fantastic. So today, we're going to talk about, I think, a topic that's been pretty forefront for you and certainly been a topic I've seen a great deal of information, probably not enough information, to be honest. I mean, I see it, start seeing it, but I don't think maybe enough is out there on it just yet. And that's out on burnout and mental health issues. I know myself, I've seen Jack speak on this at some conferences, B-Sides and so forth. But tell us about it.

**4:35 Magen Wu:** Yeah.

**4:35 Robert Hurlbut:** You know, what is it, this idea of burnout, mental health issues, and how they can impact you and so forth? So tell us a little bit about what is it?

**4:44 Magen Wu:** Yeah, so just like anything really, as far as mental health goes, it's kind of a spectrum, right? It can go from something that's very light and kind of manageable to something very overwhelming. So basically what it is is a chronic state of stress. You know, we all experience stress, but it's usually characterized by things like chronic fatigue, insomnia, physical symptoms like dizziness or like upset stomach, increased illness. A lot of signs of depression and anxiety can be a sign that you're burned out or on your way to becoming burned out. Just like a huge psychological shift in like your mindset and how you view things. It's easy to feel overwhelmed. Like things that might be a bump in the road before all of a sudden become like these insurmountable mountains. So I guess from a more like textbook definition, it's chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion.

**5:55 Chris Romeo:** Yeah.

**5:56 Magen Wu:** Cynicism and detachment, and also feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.

**6:01 Robert Hurlbut:** Okay.

**6:05 Magen Wu:** Yeah.

**6:05 Robert Hurlbut:** Excellent. And so, yeah, I mean, I can, again, I've seen some studies or some people talking about it. And it does seem to be something that is at least starting to be talked about. It may have been something that wasn't for a while. I mean, is it something that's maybe been there for some time, but now all of a sudden we're hearing about it, or it's just that we just didn't talk about it before, now we're starting to?

**6:29 Magen Wu:** So I think it's a little bit mixture of both. So I think Jack Daniel was the first one to start talking about this at BSides a couple of years ago. And since then, there have been maybe one or two other folks who shared their story about burnout. Overall, though, we InfoSec in general seems to be kind of guilty of trying to tough it out or not really admit that there's a problem until it's too late. So it could have been a problem all the while. We just weren't talking about it or felt comfortable talking about it.

**7:05 Robert Hurlbut:** And why do you think in particular InfoSec or security people, why is it maybe they're impacted by this, maybe more than other industries? Not sure. Why in particular do you think?

**7:18 Magen Wu:** So, that's kind of difficult. So, usually when academically people talk about burnout, so just like as a caveat, I'm not a mental health professional or licensed or anything like that. My field of study is research-based psychology. So, I just nerd out in the library a lot in pursuit of my psychology degree. What usually when folks talk about burnout in an academic sense, it's about fields where there's a lot of caregiving. So think things like nurses, right? Usually these folks get burned out because they're just giving so much of themselves to their jobs. And I think there's a lot of overlap with information security because a lot of us are so passionate about security. not just as a day job, but it's also our hobby. So whereas people would go home and pick up like photography or something like that, well, what most of us do is go home and we code a little bit more, or we dig a little bit deeper into our malware analysis research or stuff like that. So we don't really get that break.

**8:31 Robert Hurlbut:** Yeah, I agree on that. I can remember early on in my own career as a developer, One of the things that was encouraged, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but certainly encouraged was that you go beyond the 5 PM and learn some more on your own. And certainly as a consultant for many years, as I was a consultant, you had to do that as well. You had to keep up to date on what's going on. So you did spend a lot of time outside of regular working hours learning, keeping up to date, and not just because you had to, but also because you loved it.

**9:06 Magen Wu:** Yeah.

**9:06 Robert Hurlbut:** This is a field that if you're not in it because you love it or don't love it, you know, you're in the wrong one. You need to love it. You need to love it.

**9:13 Magen Wu:** Exactly.

**9:14 Robert Hurlbut:** And I think the same thing with security, you know, that you love it and you spend all your time, a lot of time rather, on it. And certainly you do a lot of it non-paid. I mean, you do this even if you got paid. Paid is a bonus, it seems. You enjoy doing it. Then there's that question about how much is too much and when does it potentially impact your health. I think that's one thing, but maybe even also beyond what you also said is I think some of the requirements to do this beyond what is normally expected because it's also part of the job. I know there are certainly some instances I've seen where if you have a major security issue happen and now you're round the clock trying to track it, that can certainly have an impact on you as well.

**10:05 Chris Romeo:** Yeah, I was going to ask a question about the impact of, I guess, company culture on— and this is a security podcast, so specifically from the security professionals that work in that company. But I'm curious, Megan, if you've had any experience with kind of how company culture impacts the overall kind of workaholic nature. And I'll just give you an example. I mean, I worked at a big technology company and people didn't take vacations. It was not unheard of for people to be always— you know, you'd get an email response from people at 10 o'clock at night, midnight. People were just— it was a workaholic culture. And I don't think it was a positive thing now that I'm kind of looking back at it because people didn't take vacation, they didn't take breaks. But what's been your experience from the—

**10:50 Robert Hurlbut:** Yeah.

**10:50 Magen Wu:** How company culture impacts I think it's a huge impact because usually, like, I myself, right, the way that I know if I'm doing enough or not enough is I look at my coworkers and I try to see, okay, what are they doing? Oh, well, you know, so-and-so isn't taking a vacation or a break. So maybe, you know, I can go a little bit longer without a vacation, kind of, you know, that kind of mentality.

**11:19 Robert Hurlbut:** Yeah.

**11:21 Magen Wu:** That's pretty dangerous, right? And it's a slippery slope. So that's something that I personally have had to work with. And then when you have organizations where, like one of my first jobs, I remember starting work and they were like, the first thing you do before you go, before you drink your coffee in the morning, and the last thing you do before you go to bed is you check your email and you respond to anything that either I or the customer says.

**11:46 Robert Hurlbut:** Yeah.

**11:47 Magen Wu:** And that's not really healthy, right? And then I'm really lucky now, here at Rapid7, they have a very relaxed vacation policy. They're like, if you need time, take it. And then also something I'm starting to see more and more, but people might not be aware of it or taking advantage of it, is the insurance benefits include mental health. So, they encourage you to go see a therapist if you need it. Yeah.

**12:18 Chris Romeo:** And on the vacation side, I mean, I can talk to that a little bit because my approach to that working at this big technology company really changed over time. So, when I first started in my first, I'd say, 5 or 6 years there, I was very much ingrained in the company culture of you're always checking email even if you're on vacation, you're never really on vacation.

**12:39 Magen Wu:** Yeah.

**12:39 Chris Romeo:** I hit a point where I realized, I said, you know what? Life is too short to work all the time. I just took a stand. I said, listen, when I go on vacation, you won't find me. I don't have my cell phone. I don't have my laptop. What I would do is I would just tell people, listen, if this company can't continue— this is a multi-billion-dollar company. If this company can't continue without me for a week, Shame on everybody that's running it because—

**13:08 Magen Wu:** Absolutely.

**13:09 Chris Romeo:** I'm not that important in the grand scheme of things. And I just— when I realized that, it was like, you know, I was just overwhelmed with happiness because I started going on vacation and I just disappeared and I was gone off the grid. And you know what? It didn't hurt my career at all. It didn't hurt anything I was doing. If anything, I came back more fired up and more excited about what was next. Because I really had been away from it for— I started taking 2, 3 weeks at a time.

**13:36 Magen Wu:** Nice.

**13:37 Chris Romeo:** Because you know what, I could and it didn't— it wasn't hurting me at all.

**13:41 Magen Wu:** Yeah, and that actually brings up a really good point. I wonder if— and I actually haven't stopped and thought about this yet, actually. Do you think a lot of this is brought upon ourselves because of our egos? Like we think, oh, you know, if I'm incommunicado for a week, we're gonna have a major incident and nobody will know how to respond, and etc., etc. You know, I wonder if that's a component of it too, like if we're making the problem ourselves.

**14:09 Chris Romeo:** I think we are. I think, I think as an industry, and, um, you know, I mean, just like both of you, I have many friends across the industry, and I would say most people are going to fit into that category even if they won't admit it. And I think I hit that. Part of my realization when I, when I made this change is I realized You know what? You don't— I'm not the only person that can solve this. I'm not the only person that can make this thing work. And, you know, other people are going to have a chance to step up if something falls apart while I'm gone. And so be it. You know, that's good for their career development as well to have to deal with something they didn't understand. So yeah, I think it's— I think we bring it upon ourselves and I think it's because we like to save the day. That's why everybody at Thanksgiving, it's why they're all asking us, hey, I got this problem with my email. Take a look at this laptop for me, right? We all do it because we're that person and I think we got to—

**15:01 Magen Wu:** We want to help.

**15:01 Chris Romeo:** We do. We want to help. We want to make the world a better place. That's why we do this, but we got to find better strategies to ensure that we don't all completely burn out and just disappear because we just can't deal with the issues involved.

**15:16 Robert Hurlbut:** Right. And speaking of that, next question we have here I think is, Knowing about some of the problems here, how do we deal with it? How do we effectively deal with this issue?

**15:28 Magen Wu:** So that's actually kind of hard. And I think it's going to really depend on the person and how they respond to different things. So I think first and foremost is more sleep, right? Try to get that full 7 to 8 hours. Which a lot of us have a hard problem with. A lot of us are insomniacs or night owls. So, probably getting sufficient sleep is going to be a huge part of it. And then also, just move around a little bit. We're stuck at our desks, maybe, heaven forbid, put your phone on airplane mode. I try to do that at least during meals. Just put my phone in airplane mode and don't worry about emails or texts. Yeah.

**16:18 Chris Romeo:** That's actually an interesting one, Megan. I heard Tim Ferriss, who's behind The 4-Hour Workweek and has a gigantic podcast that millions of people listen to, he actually puts his phone on airplane mode during working hours when he's in the office, when he's working on writing something or creating something or doing podcasts and things. So, he's even taken it a step further than what you're prescribing here, and he's actually switching to airplane mode for large blocks of the day so that he can focus in. Oh, man. And, I think I like that idea of even taking your idea further and saying, hey, how do we get disconnected from all the interruptions that drive us crazy throughout the day? I think that just adds. I didn't mean to interrupt, but I just was thinking about—

**17:00 Magen Wu:** No, yeah.

**17:00 Chris Romeo:** His take on that was even a step further.

**17:02 Magen Wu:** That's actually really interesting. I don't know if I could go that long knowing that my phone was off, especially as you you get older and your parents get older. And there's that worry in the back of your mind, like, oh gosh, I'm out of contact for that long. But I still, I still like that idea a lot. I also think things like, so it's a little touchy-feely, which gets like mixed responses from a lot of folks in our industry. But I would say try to do something like journaling, or maybe even like a gratification journal where like every morning or night, you pick 3 things that you're grateful for that day. That kind of helps you get out of that cynical, I can't accomplish anything, nothing's good kind of mindset. Also, therapy. Therapy is awesome. If there's quote unquote nothing wrong with you, therapy is still great because it gets you out of our— out of your head. And so many of us We spend most of our days trapped inside of our own heads, just thinking and overanalyzing things. So getting that out is really good.

**18:12 Chris Romeo:** Yeah, I want to throw back, I want to jump back to that phone one real quick because I saw something on Twitter, which is a giant, you know, it's a great way to communicate with friends and keep up, but it also can be a giant time waster. I don't know if you both know Laura Bell. She's on Twitter @LauraBell. @lady_nerd. And I just connected. She's an author, big player in the AppSec world. I just saw this. She just had a tweet. The latest tweet she posted was about burnout. And she said basically she's switching to a feature phone. So she's leaving her smartphone behind.

**18:46 Robert Hurlbut:** Oh.

**18:46 Chris Romeo:** And I'm thinking, that's brilliant.

**18:49 Robert Hurlbut:** Yeah.

**18:50 Chris Romeo:** Like my smartphone, I really want to throw it out the window most of the time. And it's because it's got so much junk on it that's so distracting.

**18:58 Magen Wu:** Yeah.

**18:58 Chris Romeo:** Wow, that's a big step. And Megan, to your point, it does— it allows you to still keep that communication when you've got aging parents, you got kids, you want that crucial communication to always be able to get through. But if you did it without a smartphone, imagine how much better your life would be 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks into the future when you've kind of removed that dependence on it.

**19:22 Magen Wu:** Yeah. Absolutely. And there's even a couple of studies that suggest that smartphones are actually really bad for our creativity because most creative ideas and brainstorming sessions happen when we're bored. But if you have a smartphone, you're gonna never be bored because you have Twitter, you have Instagram, you can just browse Reddit, you know, what have you. So, we're never really bored.

**19:47 Robert Hurlbut:** Yeah, interesting. Going back to sleep, you mentioned 7, 8 hours of sleep. I know at DEF CON they say 3-2-1, right? 3 hours of sleep, 2 actual meals, and maybe 1 shower. Of course, it's kind of tongue-in-cheek to give you an idea to say, hey, don't just spend all your time doing this. So it's really 3 hours is supposed to be actually an increase in the amount of sleep that you might be getting. And we can chuckle at that, but I think it is really crucial to talk about getting enough rest. You know, some things are still going to be there the next time you wake up. But, you know, if you're not alert, if you're just completely out whenever you're trying to focus, it will be difficult to focus. And I think that's where, again, we talked about bringing this on ourselves. And so we do owe it to ourselves to focus.

**20:42 Chris Romeo:** Yeah. Yeah.

**20:42 Robert Hurlbut:** And take some time to rest and recharge.

**20:45 Chris Romeo:** Yeah, and I'll throw another one out here, another kind of recommendation that I'm thinking about, and I do practice this as well, so I practice what I preach. But I think, you know, you mentioned, Megan, about how a lot of folks in the security world, we end up having our hobbies are the same as our day job. And so I think that's another big recommendation we can make here is you got to get— you got to do something away from the computer. To just give you something, a different type of problem to solve. And in my example, so I have 4 teenagers. One of them plays high school basketball right now. I coach her high school basketball team.

**21:23 Robert Hurlbut:** Nice.

**21:24 Chris Romeo:** And believe me, that is night and day difference from working at a computer all day long. I'm running practices, I'm coaching games, I'm interacting with the kids, I'm teaching. It's something I mean, I love to teach. That's what really drives me in life. And so, I'm a teacher in that role and I can do something I love, but I'm completely disconnected from the world of security in that realm. And I think that's what we have to do to really fight this problem is folks got to start finding things to do. And if you need ideas of things to do, I mean, there's a million different things you can go and just volunteer that will get you—

**21:57 Magen Wu:** Oh, yeah.

**21:57 Chris Romeo:** Completely out of your comfort zone and completely away from your computer. And you might be shoveling dirt into a wheelbarrow for the day, but you know what? So what? That is a break for your brain, it gets you some exercise, and it's just a different approach. So I don't know if you guys have particular things you do, hobbies that are away from the computer, but that's kind of what I try to do to really make my life better.

**22:21 Magen Wu:** Yep, I love to cook, so I've been trying different recipes and then sharing them online. That's a big thing that I do to get away from the computer. And then also recently started working out more, which helps with like dopamine, helps me sleep better, all that kind of stuff. So even if you don't like join a gym or anything crazy, just take a walk around the block without your phone.

**22:48 Robert Hurlbut:** As I say, I did— I like going walking, hiking, just getting out, just away from everything. I enjoy that myself. Always helps.

**22:57 Magen Wu:** Yep. And I think there was another study that said just spending half an hour or so walking outside in nature, outside of a city setting, is like supposed to be super restorative for you. So even if you can't stop working 8 to 10 hours or, you know, like 10+ hour days or what have you, just take a break every once in a while to go outside, just breathe, take in nature, get some vitamin D. And it'll help.

**23:28 Robert Hurlbut:** So we talked about how you deal with it. But what about those who do have this issue? They're burned out. They don't know where to go next. They don't know what to do. But they're not really saying anything. We don't, you know, they're not just screaming it out to say, hey, I've got a problem here. What are some of the signs of these problems and others that we might be able to spot friends, colleagues, And try to help. What can we do? What can we— how can we see this and what can we do to help them?

**23:59 Magen Wu:** That's kind of the hard thing because a lot of us are really good at compartmentalizing and trying to hide it. So I think the biggest thing to do is kind of keep an eye out on your friends and coworkers for when they start acting outside of what they normally normally act like. So if all of a sudden they're a lot more forgetful than usual, or one of my telltale signs is that I'm like close to burning out or I'm getting overworked or overstressed is I start getting more and more late for things. Like maybe 10, 15 minutes late. Usually I'm really on time. I'm one of those, if you're 5 minutes late, I'm like, what the fuck?

**24:45 Chris Romeo:** Yeah.

**24:45 Magen Wu:** Or if you're on time, you're late kind of people, right?

**24:49 Robert Hurlbut:** Yeah.

**24:49 Magen Wu:** So that's like one of my strongest signs. And my husband's just like, hey, you might need to take a step back or, you know, take a few things off your plate because I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Or if all of a sudden something that I'm really interested in, all of a sudden I just drop it. Like if I was— so for example, volunteering and mentorship is really big for me. But if I get to the point where, oh, I don't see the point of this anymore, that's another huge warning sign. If someone's like, oh, well, I do like this, but I don't know if I'm going to keep doing it anymore, just because, without any kind of real reason. Also lack of productivity, or if they're usually really high performing and their performance starts slipping, that's a good way to be like, oh, hey, do you need help? Do you need to take a break? know, what's going on.

**25:42 Robert Hurlbut:** Okay. And then so in terms of— so that's good. So you see different things that are out of the ordinary. So you kind of watch for those things and see something that's different and along those lines of being late or just doing something very different than what they normally do or enthusiasm for a project or something that they usually have is not there and so forth. Okay. And then what would you say? I mean, how would you approach it without, you know, you don't want to offend them, obviously, but at the same time, you want to show care, you want to show concern. You know, what's a good way to just open that conversation? Do you have some thoughts on that?

**26:21 Magen Wu:** So everybody's going to be a little bit different. Because if you're just like, hey, are you okay? Our reflex is just to be like, oh yeah, I'm fine.

**26:29 Chris Romeo:** Yeah, how are you doing?

**26:31 Magen Wu:** Good.

**26:31 Chris Romeo:** We all answer good, right?

**26:33 Robert Hurlbut:** They always answer, yeah, fine. Right.

**26:35 Magen Wu:** So maybe just like dig a little bit deeper, like kind of more probing questions instead of things that can be answered with like a yes or no or, oh, they're good. So things like, oh, hey, you know, I noticed that you were online at 10 PM. Do you need help with anything? Or, hey, I noticed that things seem a little bit strained in this area. Is there something I can do to help? Or Do you want to talk about it? That's a huge thing because also I think a lot of us don't want to be a burden to other people. A huge problem that I used to have was I would kind of tell myself, well, you know, other people are going through this too. What makes your problems so big or so special? And that's kind of a dangerous way of thinking, but a lot of us tend to do that. So having someone constantly kind of touch base, maybe not every day or every couple of hours, but maybe at least once or twice a week, like, hey man, you doing all right? Is there anything I can do to help you? Or do you just want to grab a coffee and talk about it?

**27:41 Chris Romeo:** I think a lot of people fall into that withdrawal kind of perspective. And I guess what I mean by that is they, they pull themselves away from the people who could potentially see that there's— they might have some type of problem going on. I think that's a really early step for a lot of us, is to say, you know, I'm just going to pull back even more than I may have been in the past. And so I think that's another sign we can be looking for. I know that's my go-to.

**28:08 Magen Wu:** Yep.

**28:10 Chris Romeo:** And just pull further and further away from anybody who, you know, could potentially Shine a ray of sunshine into my existence. And, you know, from my perspective, I mean, I've been out on my own with my own startup here for 2 years. And, you know, the startup world and having a company and the stress that goes with that, that takes this like it almost doubles the problem size.

**28:36 Magen Wu:** Yeah.

**28:37 Chris Romeo:** Because now I got to think about, you know, hey, how are my kids going to eat? They really like to eat and I like to feed them and, you know, we just got to have some money to be able to to make that transfer so they can eat.

**28:47 Robert Hurlbut:** Yeah.

**28:48 Chris Romeo:** So, I mean, in my experience, that's something that I've, you know, I've kind of dealt with this kind of burnout thing in the last, I don't know, maybe in the last 6 months or so, really leading right up until the first of this year. And it really was just a— it was a combination of the roller coaster that working at a startup actually does for you and trying to run a startup where, you know, it's like a sine wave. That's how I like to describe the startup world. And the security world can be like this too. And, you put the two together and it's like double whammy. Double whammy, yeah. But, it's like that sine wave of— yeah, you're heading upwards, things are looking great, and then all of a sudden things start to go downhill and then things start to look great and it's just a constant cycle. And so, I really struggled with that kind of leading up into Christmas here and really had to make some changes to say, you know what, I'm going to do some things differently here that are going to help me to kind of get past this. And, I'm feeling a lot better right now. You know, I think it's a result of kind of making some specific and dedicated changes.

**29:48 Magen Wu:** Yeah. And I think one of the hardest things is trying to figure out when you need to hustle versus when you need to flow and just go with things. Because, you know, there's always going to be that time like, okay, well, it's very high stress, but I know it's only going to last a month or two. And then after that, I need to take a break, disengage, You know, go on vacation, what have you. And then I'll be able to go back to like a normal working cycle until I need to hustle through things again. And just kind of recognize when it's okay to do both. Because to say, you know, things are never going to be stressful or frustrating, or you're never going to feel ineffective, or like you're accomplishing nothing, it's just not going to happen, right? You know, we're all going to feel that way, especially For those of us in, like, incident response, or working with users and user awareness, it's very easy to feel like the work I'm doing doesn't matter. And they're just going to click this link, and it's worthless. So, just kind of trying to find a balance. And I hate using balance because it's overused. And it's a balancing act more than the actual, you know, Yeah. equal balance. You're constantly adjusting. I don't know.

**31:07 Robert Hurlbut:** No, it makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. Well, Megan, we're coming towards the end here.

**31:14 Magen Wu:** All right.

**31:14 Robert Hurlbut:** Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. I think this is a topic we really haven't covered, but I'm so glad that we did today. I think it will be really helpful to those who are listening to the podcast. As we wrap up, do you have any other last comments that maybe you would like to provide for listeners? Maybe a summary of some of the things we talked about?

**31:35 Magen Wu:** Well, first of all, thank you again for having me. And then I guess the big things would be notice, kind of like make a list of things to keep an eye out for when you know you're overworked or overstressed. And don't be afraid to reach out to people, either friends or, you know, if you need a therapist, that's okay. It's okay to get help.

**31:59 Robert Hurlbut:** Absolutely. Okay, well, thank you again, Megan, for joining us.

**32:02 Magen Wu:** Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Application Security Podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, please do us a favor and visit the iTunes Store and give us a 5-star rating. Our intro music is 8-Bit Kung Fu by Born and TJ, and the outro is Southern Delight by Stefan Cartenberg. You can find us on Twitter @AppSecPodcast or on the web at www.appsecpodcast.com. .appsecpodcast.org.

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Source: https://appsecpodcast.com/magen-wu-hustle-and-flow-dealing-with-burnout-in-security/