Jumping in at the deep end
Learning new things
Patricia Aas, 11 July 2018
I’ve had a secret dream for years of starting my own company. Being my own boss, making something cool and building a great team to do it with. I didn’t tell anyone, but I have mentally refurbished our basement to be a cool office space maybe a hundred times.
So one morning over breakfast, back in February, I brought up the subject with my husband. I didn’t expect him to like the idea, but I thought he might change his mind given a year to think it over. I was thinking maybe spring of 2019, at least to start the company. He went real quiet and got me worried; I asked him what he thought and he said he was thinking. Then suddenly he says: “I think that’s a great idea. I’m going to quit my job and work for your company.”
Whoa. What?
My husband is also a programmer, working mostly with Java and web frontend, most recently with a big Norwegian company called FINN. Apparently he had been thinking the same without telling me. And within just a couple of weeks, we had started a company, he had quit his job and gotten a client to consult for. Whoa, again. My slow timeline of thinking for a year was right out the window.
The thing is, I’ve become progressively more interested in security. I have been listening in on “security twitter” for over a year. I really want to learn more and figure out how I can use what I already know to help the community and the profession. But the day only has so many hours. I had decided I wanted to take at least one security certification, and had my heart set on the OSCP, but I knew that I needed a break from work to focus on it.
Suddenly, with my husband working and the company already bootstrapped, the opportunity was practically hitting me over the head. So here I am, jumping in at the deep end. My last day working at Vivaldi was yesterday. My plans for the next few months is learning, coding and speaking. I don’t know what I will do next, but I am very excited to find out. The plan is to have a plan by December first. Until then I will study, try to pass my OSCP and try to figure out where I belong in this community. While a lot of my C++ friends will be in Berlin attending Meeting C++, I will also be in Berlin, but attending BlackHoodie, hoping to learn reverse engineering. I hope that bridging these two worlds will be good for both communities and a fun challenge for me.
My company’s fledgling website is up, and it’s called TurtleSec.
Wish me luck!