Insecurity Princess 🌈💖🔥

I write about power dynamics in engineering management

Insecurity Princess. Previously led Clod Security for Netflix. Queer femme mathematician. Dismantling systemic barriers in tech, one fencepost problem at a time

Wife of https://infosec.exchange/@sophieschmieg

Website: https://www.sar.ai
Location: Bay Area, CA, USA
tootfinder: https://tootfinder.ch/index.php?join=1
Leadership Writing: https://mitm.blog
Security Writing: https://keymaterial.net
Pronouns: she/her

Public Key

npub184fq96hfzuehvlhsf5h06fdngce9y5t49gnh3d7y8ms7v3lmgw6q3apnjc

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsr65szat53wvmk0mcy6thayke5vvjj296j5fmcklzrac0xgla58dqprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnswf5k6ctv9ehx2aqcqpzn3

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relay.momostr.pink

relay.primal.net

relay.nostr.net

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npub184fq96hfzuehvlhsf5h06fdngce9y5t49gnh3d7y8ms7v3lmgw6q3apnjc

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Last Notes

2026-05-06 23:56:25 UTC

I had a dream that I invented a wearable fungus clothing line
At first, I wasn't sure it would be practical or comfortable, but it's growing on me

2026-02-09 21:28:44 UTC

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so much shimmer!
And the more you breathe and touch it, the more shimmery it gets!

2026-02-09 04:08:00 UTC

My wife doesn't want me to make a fountain out of mercury
I was starting to come up with a great plan! Estimating about 30 liters, which is about 400kg, which our floors could handle, and the price would be comparable to a bathroom remodel

2026-01-28 23:51:49 UTC

An iconic story and idea that sticks with me over the years is Isaac Asimov's classic tale that introduces the 3 Laws of Robotics, "Runaround"
I'm about to spoil the dilemma (not the solution), but it doesn't ruin the value of the story
Robots must obey orders, and secondary to that, robots must protect themselves. This particular robot is ordered to retrieve selenium to fix a human life support system for a facility on Mercury. Unknown to the humans, the selenium pool is dangerous to the robot.
The robot becomes stuck walking in a circle around the selenium pool. It cannot go closer to the selenium without damaging itself, and it cannot leave the pool because it was ordered to retrieve selenium to repair the human life support (and thereby save human lives).
The story sticks with me because the circle that the robot walks in is a visceral image representing the set of points that balance the constraints. Do this thing, but avoid that thing. This story transforms the mathematical theory of constraints and optimization into a tangible pragmatic visual.
It's a useful image and idea to have in your head while thinking about decisions and influence and power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaround_(story)

2026-01-07 04:39:02 UTC

Please — and I can't believe I have to say this — please do not lick your employees.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/851/422/193/884/340/original/4842d2e854bda280.jpg

2025-12-25 23:09:22 UTC

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Proposal to Unicode for a guillotine emoji

2025-12-25 23:08:20 UTC

Eat the rich
It's French revolution time, baby

2025-12-14 20:21:50 UTC

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10 different creators a day is a lot of YouTube

2025-12-14 19:41:45 UTC

Check out my hallucinated 2025 #YouTubeMusicRecap
@npub10qa…4hg8 and I are exploring this mystery: I've never listened to this soundtrack, for a show that came out in December 2025, but YouTube Music thinks I listened to it 114 times going back to January 2025!
Conspiracy theory 1: the recap is hallucinated from LLM generated nonsense, entirely disconnected from reality
Conspiracy theory 2: the soundtrack is AI generated, and therefore segments resemble pieces of other musical compositions
Conspiracy theory 3: the recap uses "Now Playing" to match songs, and matched snippets of this soundtrack to things it heard throughout the year
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/719/594/446/163/592/original/cd16790ea7c96258.png

2025-11-13 21:56:05 UTC

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honestly? if we replaced every manager with a quarter of a program manager, a therapist, a career coach, and a GenAI agent, we'd get....actually that's just a manager

2025-11-13 21:50:24 UTC

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that's the secret, Jess, it was always vibe management
executive brains are literally composed of Markov neuron chains

2025-11-13 21:45:20 UTC

If I had a penny for every time I heard something like
"We're going to track increases in productivity that we gain by adopting GenAI"
1. So you're assuming it's an increase
2. Against what control group
3. With no acknowledgement of confounding variables or experiment design
4. Around the...famously open problem of measuring software engineering productivity?

2025-10-30 21:04:20 UTC

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https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/465/140/552/912/931/original/ed853a9e3b23b78d.png

2025-10-22 01:56:50 UTC

★ Do you get excited or upset about AWS SCPs, or GCP Org Policies?
★ Do you have experience developing software to solve cloud security challenges?
★ Do you downplay your cloud security knowledge but actually you know a lot of niche oddities of cloud IAM?
★ Do you like working in diverse security teams that care about your wellbeing?
★ Do you want to get paid to work on cloud security for one of the most sophisticated AWS environments in the world?
I'm hiring an L5 (mid-late career) cloud security software engineer for Netflix Cloud Security! I'm looking for someone with skills across cloud security, cloud infra, AND software engineering, and would like to see at least one of these skill areas:
• Experience building secure-by-default controls for Infra-as-Code (IAC) tools such as Terraform
• Experience building robust systems or easy to use abstractions for AWS native services such as EC2, Lambda, S3, SNS, SQS, DDB, etc.
• Experience leveraging AWS Config, Cloud Control API, CloudFormation, and CloudTrail
https://explore.jobs.netflix.net/careers/job/790304450320-security-software-engineer-l5-cloud-infrastructure-security-usa-remote
Netflix Cloud Security has industry-leading cloud security capabilities, and one of the most sophisticated AWS environments in the world. As a manager, I prioritize inclusion in order to maintain both the wellbeing and productivity of our diverse team. We hold folks to delivering high quality work by creating environments where you can operate to the best of your ability, through work-life balance, expecting folks to take ample time off (~6 weeks, but no one will track it). I'm happy to talk about this role and about how I manage teams — e.g., my Explicit Expectations and my commitments to my reports. https://managinginthemargins.com/explicit-expectations-leadership-by-example-edcb451abfb4
I'd love to hear what perspectives, skills, and experiences you could bring to our team! [This role can be US remote or office, with a distributed team across the US]
#Hiring #FediHire #CloudSecurity

2025-10-15 16:00:12 UTC

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This is worth examining. I think often the capability of change isn't palpable, and among the deluge of challenges in our lives without easy paths, issues like "improve my privacy posture" or "evaluate my retirement plan" aren't losing out to "fix dropped packets on my network" but rather to core needs for ourselves and our families

2025-10-15 05:28:23 UTC

💖 Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/376/520/364/381/515/original/215c07a9079de3bf.jpg
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/376/520/583/858/834/original/4c4734dba4267570.jpg

2025-10-14 08:02:36 UTC

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I get thousands of applications for roles that I'm hiring for, and I do not filter based on certifications nor degrees, and they don't weigh into my decision
And I'm still hiring to maintain a bell curve of experience levels on my teams (though I already filled my early career roles)
I understand that a lot of organizations are doing greedy nonsense but many managers are with me in sticking with healthy practices for hiring and team growth. Hiring only high experience people with certs and degrees is naive and just leaves incredibly talented people on the market for managers like me.

2025-10-07 05:34:06 UTC

"They were engaged, but then they got disengaged"
"They got disengaged?"
"Yeah, what else would you call that?"
"No, no, you're right, they got disengaged"

2025-09-15 10:08:01 UTC

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that's the opposite of accountability

2025-09-15 01:01:58 UTC

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The US government has never done nor been forced to do anything like that, and it shows

2025-09-14 21:51:55 UTC

Every company that has ever been involved with fascism, slavery, or exploitation of labor should have open statements like this on their website
But I'm impressed that BMW is this blunt about it — and has actual pictures of Dachau
https://www.bmwgroup.com/en/company/history/BMW-during-the-era-of-national-socialism.html
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/204/851/279/847/662/original/726053860a10e593.png

2025-09-11 00:02:50 UTC

We want to buy an electric car! It's exciting but also daunting to make car buying decisions, and harder to evaluate with electric than it was for gas.
Safety and reliability are the highest priorities — which was easier to evaluate with models like the Honda Civic that's been around for decades
Lucid looks really nice, but I question the reliability of a brand that's only been on the road 4 years (with few total cars)
BMW i4/i5 seem good
Hyundai ioniq 6 is shorter range but also cheaper
We want a small sedan/hatchback, and below Civic size seems to correlate with range
#ElectricCars

2025-09-08 18:40:18 UTC

"If a product is free, then you're the product"
Signal is free
Linux is free
Shutting up is free
I'm starting to think this adage isn't accurate

2025-09-03 15:57:27 UTC

Here's your annual warning to beware hanging out in person with Defcon attendees, because many of them have returned with asymptomatic COVID infections.
As in every year since 2021, Defcon is a super spreader event. Many COVID infections are NOT symptomatic: not showing symptoms does not guarantee not carrying the highly contagious virus.

2025-08-30 20:10:30 UTC

We need to stop the US corn subsidies. Everything comes back to corn!
Why is German butter yellow?
→ Why isn't US butter yellow?
→ Beta carotene in cow diets turn their milk fat yellow
→ And German cows eat primarily grass, while US cow diets are mostly grain and corn
@npub1tx8…x0yc was right, everything is made of corn

2025-08-27 02:45:10 UTC

"They made a John Wick but for women?"
"All John Wick is for women, have you seen him??"

2025-08-08 19:39:56 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 43:
I supported my wife, so I felt good about my contributions to the world today
Then I realized that my cat has done more to support my wife today, so I'm doing less for the world than my cat
But I fed the cat, so if I amortize my world contributions via keeping my cat alive to support my wife…

2025-08-05 23:42:15 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 40:
I did basic house chores today
which is not the burnout recovery plan I had for today, but sure, I did something useful so I'll call it a win

2025-07-29 22:50:00 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 33:
🫠 I want to do things now.
…
…
…
🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️ well at least therapy will be productive this week

2025-07-25 05:54:35 UTC

"Amazon Q: Now with Helpful AI-Powered Self-Destruct Capabilities"
by Corey Quinn
Big oof. This is a great breakdown of what happened and why it's concerning — and especially so because we're not hearing the details from Amazon.
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/amazon-q-now-with-helpful-ai-powered-self-destruct-capabilities/
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/912/314/452/508/878/original/27dca7846e0066fb.png

2025-07-24 13:33:11 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 28:
I wrote a page! I made some plans! I remembered some things that I love about what I do — e.g., supporting growth, synthesizing complex sociotechnical events, designing strategic plans that anticipate and address future challenges, and helping humans and organizations navigate context-sharing and decision-making around deep technical minutiae that are keystones for bigger challenges.
I started an extended thread on some nuances of burnout recovery:
https://infosec.exchange/@saraislet/114908769837645002
#BurnoutRecovery

2025-07-22 12:17:35 UTC

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I'm setting some goals for burnout recovery — regular sleep cycles, daily reading or meditation, and either daily writing or a social thing.
I'll start with twice a week as a goal, and see if that works.
#BurnoutRecovery

2025-07-22 12:10:41 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 26:
🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️ Almost 4 weeks in now? I have some interest in reconnecting with friends, I tried a few new games, and I tried reading and writing.
Children of Morta is a roguelite, with great narration of a typical "find the source of the corruption" storyline so far, centered around a family of heroes.
Nona the Ninth continues to be bizarrely different from the previous two in the series. Reading nonfiction isn't terribly compelling right now, nor is writing.
I'll try some body doubling today.

2025-07-17 06:09:32 UTC

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IETF needs baby steps to wean them off of mailing lists

2025-07-16 20:57:34 UTC

"Hackers exploit a blind spot by hiding malware inside DNS records"
Hah! I predicted years ago that attackers would leverage DNS like this!
My insistence to include DNS requests in anomaly detection and threat detection was on point 😤 so vindicated!
https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/07/hackers-exploit-a-blind-spot-by-hiding-malware-inside-dns-records/

2025-07-15 16:09:52 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 19:
🤷🏼‍♀️ Almost 3 weeks in? I still want to crawl under a rock and stay there forever. Maybe after getting a labrys.

2025-07-14 11:32:47 UTC

One of the problems with vibe coding is that the hardest part of software engineering is not writing the code, rather it's *choosing* what to code, and designing the system (and, later on, maintaining the code/operations/etc)
The barriers and investment cost to writing code is itself a *desirable* aspect of software engineering because it forces you to make careful, good choices before you invest in building something
Because the majority of the time spent writing, say, curl, is not writing the original tool but rather maintaining it over time, it's important to make good choices from the beginning, and at every major version change

2025-07-13 09:01:15 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 17:
Fatigue is slowly receding. It still feels like everyone around me is speaking in a foreign language, but at least the Bavarian countryside is very pretty
My interest in doing things is only barely starting to recover

2025-07-08 02:56:51 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 12:
I had a massive fatigue spike for the past 6 days, with some hypotheses but no clear reason. I can't read a book or play a game for more than an hour without resting — and it was worse last week.
I hope this is temporary, because this sucks. I'm sure this was exacerbated by chronic stress and burnout but this wasn't caused by that.
#BurnoutRecovery

2025-07-02 02:31:47 UTC

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contemplating is just... Constant? That doesn't matter sense to me. Contemplation never stops.
I don't know who Graham Greene is, some Catholic writer?

2025-07-02 02:05:45 UTC

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🤷🏼‍♀️ no, I tried a few but none of them worked for me

2025-07-02 01:42:28 UTC

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never used a flotation tank
I use meditation for a few purposes — processing feelings, emotion regulation, body awareness, centering myself, grounding, trauma recovery, resting, etc

2025-07-01 23:11:41 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day 6:
I'm meditating more than usual. At this point, it's not helping.
I'll probably end the next three months either with some new stupid human trick or a portable gaming device. Lenovo Legion Go S seems nice.
I used to meditate until I could feel arbitrary muscles or body parts. Then I'd meditate until muscle tension released. Then I'd meditate until I accepted that the chaotic color swirls and patterns when I close my eyes would never stop moving (probably because of tinnitus+synaesthesia).
I realized this week that the good meditation stopping point these days consistently coincides with when I can feel the tension and vibrations from my creaky fingers. I don't have arthritis but I am likely heading that direction.
#BurnoutRecovery

2025-07-01 05:14:26 UTC

Burnout recovery leave, day 5:
A few days without any goals was good
I played some games until I stopped enjoying them. I wrote a diary to /dev/null. I ate the plums that were in the refrigerator.
High allostatic load sucks, but guess who has a resting heart rate under 50 again?
#BurnoutRecovery

2025-06-25 00:50:57 UTC

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"No machine, whether mechanical or biological, can sustainably operate at its top speed at all times — unless it’s designed to do that, and, sorry to say, but, we humans ain’t. [She says in a nearly-impeccable imitation of a human voice.]"

2025-06-24 20:01:29 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day negative 1:
The last two days of preparing for leave have been a whirlwind. And I'm exhausted. If only I had time off...oh.
#BurnoutRecovery

2025-06-23 01:42:49 UTC

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Burnout recovery leave, day negative 3:
Getting this tattoo helped me a lot. Honestly, a big part of it was choosing to go somewhere and do something because *I* wanted to — not for work or family, just for me.
I do things for myself regularly to reinforce that my own needs matter. But part of what I was missing was doing something different enough from my typical self-care cycles and rituals — beyond things like ordering/making food that I like. I needed to break free of mental pathways in a bigger way, and spending time in a different city doing things different from what I typically do was a good way to change the patterns.
#BurnoutRecovery
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/730/063/181/427/936/original/790becd54a78782d.jpg

2025-06-22 16:47:39 UTC

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arpanet let you post pictures of your cat?

2025-06-22 05:24:42 UTC

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I'd been considering this for more than a year, but now was a good time to do it and to feed the need for a tiny area of control in a world of chaos.
For decades I've instinctively kept ideas like this in my back pocket, and it took me until I was 30 to understand why. In short, this is one method that can help relieve C-PTSD, or prevent learned helplessness from developing. It's not a full solution, but it helps.

2025-06-22 05:19:20 UTC

When humans feel powerless, especially after traumatic events or retraumatization or ~ gestures generally at C-PTSD ~ what often helps is having an area of control over choices, decisions, and outcomes (especially outcomes that have positive side effects like humans liking the action/work/result)
And thus I flew to LA for a weekend and got a tattoo.
#BloomScrolling
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/725/308/915/285/766/original/4e2f53dc674ca4c1.jpg

2025-06-12 04:38:46 UTC

I'm disappointed that someone stole my book idea
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/668/533/625/769/950/original/cfe12725297d2d14.jpg

2025-06-10 04:04:23 UTC

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The good news is that I'm scheduling extended time off for burnout

2025-06-10 03:56:10 UTC

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It's not great
The cognitive dissonance of feeling ineffective and like I can't do anything right creates an awkward feedback loop with hearing strongly positive feedback from my reports
You'd think that would alleviate something, but the cognitive dissonance just contributes to emotional exhaustion

2025-06-10 03:40:49 UTC

I can't tell you how weird it is as a manager to go through burnout blossoming and then sinking in to become a morass of emotional exhaustion and feelings of utter uselessness — while, in parallel, hearing feedback from my reports about how I've helped them struggle through and in most cases escape their own burgeoning burnout over the past few months
Just out here using my own body as a stick to pull my reports out of the quicksand of burnout

2025-05-27 22:28:06 UTC

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After decades of largely not talking about emotions, my family is finally having some open conversations about emotions.
I guess the combination of current geopolitical events and multiple heart surgeries leads to that.

2025-05-27 22:26:22 UTC

A big lesson my family has been discussing is that having strong emotions is a healthy reaction to some circumstances.
It's important to talk about those emotions, and process them, even—especially!—when it's hard and when it hurts.
Emotions are healthy. All (primary) emotions are healthy.
(Secondary emotions are the internal reactions you have from thought chains coming from primary emotions. That's a different story, which is why focusing on understanding the *primary* emotions is so important.)

2025-05-19 18:49:01 UTC

I had a mildly femme internal image of SecUnit, and I was shocked that wasn't everyone's perspective
There were so many hints, not just about the physical presentation but the behavior and attitude
#MurderBotDiaries

2025-05-16 21:34:29 UTC

Framing is important
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/519/652/051/810/799/original/0af7bf301f80048e.png

2025-05-16 02:45:00 UTC

I would like to walk into a forest, curl up under a tree, and become part of the mossy forest floor forever

2025-04-25 02:10:38 UTC

I missed this terrific piece on burnout from @npub18g0…0a9e
"It's alarming to write something really simple like, people deserve to have environments that don't destroy them and have it resonate with a lot of people."
This resonates hard. I say similar things every week to my reports, to colleagues, and to folks across the tech industry — and it's routinely far more unusual and impactful than it should be.
Every manager should say things like this (and, more importantly, *back it up with actions*). It should be an indictment of the industry that not only does this not happen, but rather burnout remains a perennial issue that continues to get worse, chasing women and Black folks out of the industry.
https://www.drcathicks.com/post/burnout-us
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/396/131/392/314/800/original/9e76ae01fc94ceb7.png

2025-04-08 02:26:06 UTC

I'm hiring an L4 (mid-career, early side of senior/pre-senior) infrastructure software engineer! I'm looking for someone with:
• A broad understanding of AWS cloud infrastructure fundamentals
• Strong python or golang skills
• Ready to work with code managing infrastructure at scale (e.g., we break AWS APIs because they time out on describe calls)
and would like to see at least one of these skill areas:
• Experience building robust systems or easy to use abstractions for AWS native services such as EC2, Lambda, S3, SNS, SQS, DDB, etc.
• Experience leveraging AWS Config, Cloud Control API, CloudFormation, and CloudTrail
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools
Netflix Cloud Security has industry-leading cloud security capabilities, and one of the most sophisticated AWS environments in the world. As a manager, I prioritize inclusion in order to maintain both the wellbeing and productivity of our diverse team. We hold folks to delivering high quality work by creating environments where you can operate to the best of your ability, through work-life balance, expecting folks to take ample time off (~6 weeks, but no one will track it). I'm happy to talk about this role and about how I manage teams — e.g., my Explicit Expectations and my commitments to my reports.
I'd love to hear what perspectives, skills, and experiences you could bring to our team!
https://explore.jobs.netflix.net/careers/job/790301953900
#Hiring #Infrastructure

2025-03-14 05:14:03 UTC

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sure. I'm just recommending using different words to describe his cowardly and dangerous bullshit. You can make your own choices.

2025-03-14 04:34:54 UTC

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sounds like victim blaming

2025-03-14 03:07:35 UTC

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wow yikes, not cool Lauren. This doesn't come across well. Being bullied isn't a character flaw.

2025-02-23 19:30:53 UTC

At least when I accidentally post a private message publicly on Mastodon, I'm only exposing my personal statements and low sensitivity information
But Mastodon interfaces really should make that clearer

2025-01-28 02:03:54 UTC

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of all the disgraceful things going on right now, that's not even in the top 100

2025-01-27 21:46:16 UTC

Threat modeling my own safety is the worst kind of threat modeling 😓

2025-01-14 20:14:45 UTC

Team name proposal: CLODS
"Cloud Lifecycle Operations and Defensive Security"

2024-12-23 22:24:59 UTC

We really got the computer-human relationship all wrong: it should be a model of consent, rather than about restraining bolts, governor modules, or the Three Laws of Robotics
I was thinking about this excellent speech by Martha Wells on her Murderbot diaries being stories of bodily autonomy and slavery, and about the fantastic video on The Tragedy of Droids in Star Wars by Pop Culture Detective.
https://marthawells.dreamwidth.org/649804.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD2UrB7zepo
Martha Wells spells out how wrong the Three Laws of Robotics are in stipulating a subservient relationships for robots to sacrifice themselves on behalf of humans, built around fears or assumptions that robots would inherently act to harm humans (or not act to save humans) and that therefore robots should put humans before themselves.
#ThreeLawsOfRobotics
#MurderbotDiaries
#ArtificialIntelligence #Al

2024-12-19 08:33:43 UTC

My mom: "other companies used Cobol and Fortran, but we only used assembly"
Me: "That sounds unnecessarily painful"
Mom: "We used macros!"
😳🤦🏼‍♀️

2024-12-17 01:56:54 UTC

What charities or nonprofits do you give money to, and why?
If you had a thousand dollars that you had to give away to an organization or person that you don't personally know, what would it be and how would you decide that?
Would you give that money to one place/person, or ten different places/people?
#Giving

2024-12-11 18:02:51 UTC

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*CEOs, the only truly protected class

2024-12-04 09:17:37 UTC

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In German:
Skunk is "stink animal" (Stinktier)
Sloth is "lazy animal" (Faultier)
Turtle is "shield toad" (Schildkröte)
Raccoon is "wash bear" (Waschbär)
Turkey is "threatening chicken" (Truthahn)
Bat is "flutter mouse" (Fledermaus)

2024-11-28 08:39:35 UTC

I budgeted 2 weeks to finish last steps on a project
Everyone on my team insisted it would take less than an hour, just to polish the last doc
I smiled, and kept the 2 weeks
A stakeholder discovered an issue and was very apologetic about needing additional unplanned work
😏 nailed it 💃🏼

2024-11-09 01:08:18 UTC

Why do they never show the masochism side of heaven?

2024-11-06 18:29:26 UTC

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if you don't see why there's a power component to this, that's exactly why we're here

2024-11-06 17:57:32 UTC

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I dunno, man, you're going to have to target that more specifically at the white men and women who actually can do something
The people making the memes are generally not the people who hold power to do much more than we already have been

2024-11-06 17:34:23 UTC

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some of DEI has always been real for the people involved at the edges, but deep down, for the company itself it's entirely performative

2024-11-06 17:11:10 UTC

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maybe fucking tomorrow, Lauren, let people process for a hot sec

2024-11-05 05:49:38 UTC

How I see myself:
"I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum."
Reality:
"I have come here to do two things… and I remember neither of them"

2024-10-30 08:46:16 UTC

How should an openly queer person respond to a recruiter for a company in Dubai?
"Did you get rid of slavery and the death penalty for gay people? Still no, but just checking."

2024-10-24 22:42:18 UTC

At least 4 out of 5 times I go through #TSA, they insist on patting down one random thing or another around my hips and thighs, typically a pocket or zipper
I know that pockets are illegal on women's clothing but surely clothing is expected to commonly have a zipper. What's up with that?
At a stretch I'll accept that they have to pat down some embroidery or a drawstring. But a zipper!?

2024-10-21 10:15:47 UTC

Zurich pros and cons
Pro: cute and bizarre outlets
Con: cute and bizarre outlets
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/344/809/914/269/802/original/d821f980aa2e6c77.jpg
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/344/810/130/638/806/original/521b3978fd37cb68.jpg

2024-10-16 03:45:16 UTC

Mental health tip: Grounding is fantastic for everyone! Grounding can help with calming agitation, for emotion regulation, or managing PTSD & C-PTSD. It's great for everyday situations, like feeling confident before leading a meeting or giving a presentation, before a hard conversation or an interview, or just a good way to finish the day and maintain work-life balance.
My favorite grounding technique is to find something that stimulates each of your 5 senses. It could be something you like, something familiar, something that gives relaxy vibes, whatever.
E.g.:
• something you like to eat, such as a piece of candy or chocolate
• a scent you like (tea/oils/perfume/etc)
• a song or white noise
• a material or texture or weight or fidget or cat or dog or snake
• some pictures, visualizations, art, darkness, or bright light
I carry around lychee candy, lilac scented oil to rub on my wrist, an emergency calming playlist (seriously), photo albums of my cats, and a ball of tungsten!

2024-10-10 16:00:43 UTC

I was skeptical about homeopathy being completely useless, but I found a homeopathic treatment for hypoglycemia that's actually effective!
Turns out sugar pills are more than a placebo effect after all

2024-10-10 02:34:31 UTC

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Time to put Yellowstone to work! Just imagine how many countries could be powered by that little lava baby

2024-10-07 15:51:41 UTC

Stay safe out there. People are making apocalypse jokes like there's no tomorrow!

2024-09-28 05:05:36 UTC

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or gender neutral names? Robin, Alex, Sam?

2024-09-27 07:21:45 UTC

An awkward part of joining teams that were previously all men is eventually learning that they inevitably used a generic man's name for a shared account to manage a vendor relationship
Which is really disappointing because it's a terrible security practice to use shared accounts
Also it's short-sighted and a sexist default to not consider that people other than men might join the team eventually. But it tracks that such a shortsighted assumption would match up with poor security practices

2024-09-22 20:35:12 UTC

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where'd you find that mug? It's in Starfield, right?

2024-09-19 02:04:24 UTC

Org offsite instructions: "It is mandatory for every team to take a picture"
I'm so proud of my team
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/161/759/337/957/737/original/1ccb69876a601b75.jpg

2024-09-09 16:07:25 UTC

How do we know that security is predominantly Gen X?
Because everyone forgets about them