| I am currently a senior director in the security industry, managing both an offensive and defensive security team. For a decade before moving into this position, I worked almost exclusively in offensive security, red teaming, LOTS of exploit development etc. and also did some malware forensics work to help out various teams during IR engagements (also taught a course on this at a college as a guest lecturer of sorts). The issue I am having, is I am currently in this position for a small company (50ish people), and I feel as though I am spread too thin. I run the business side of things, including designing services, pricing, budgeting, managing, hiring etc. but because I have such a small team, I also do a lot of the technical work including a lot of the engineering. I regularly help out on red team engagements and pentests (when not in meetings etc.), I design and architect MDR solutions, and I write most of the code for our shop. The problem is, this is burning me out in a serious way, as I am pulling 60-80 hour weeks all the time. I am everything to all the teams at all the times, and am constantly bombarded by everyone. Sales, senior leadership, juniors, intermediates, seniors, clients, etc. I wear all the hats. I don't have the budget to hire people to fill a lot of these roles at the moment because we are a boot strapped company, and our CEO won't take outside investors despite interest from several places. I am therefore thinking of leaving and finding another job, but I feel like because I have spent the last two years wearing all the hats, I may not be an expert in any one thing anymore. Has anyone found success pivoting from this sort of jack-of-all-trades role, and what did you pivot into? Lately I am having some serious imposter syndrome because I can't stay an expert in any one discipline, and worry if I went to market, I wouldn't have the MBA level knowledge for a strictly director/business role, the pure technical knowledge (at the moment) for a purely technical role, and may not even have parties interested in me for those roles because of the title. How do people pivot and handle this sort of thing? Are there larger companies that hire these types of profiles for director roles expecting a jack-of-all-trades sort of profile or are they looking for strictly focused profiles? My previous roles were often with larger international companies, but I was doing extremely focused work. Any advice is welcome. |
