There's a lot of strong personalities
in cyber security, which often means
people who are a bit arrogant, obnoxious,
and elitist because of their self-perceived
level of skill or knowledge.
All you have to do is read
through some mailing lists, forum threads,
or chat rooms to find some heated argument
laced with insults and profanity.
As you're learning or working
with others in the cyber or tech field,
dealing with people like this
can be quite a challenge,
especially when they say things
to make you feel inferior and beneath them.
In this video, we’re going to go over
some of the most common types of arrogance
you’ll encounter in cyber security,
reasons people act like this,
along with some actionable ways you can use
to deal with and even win over
these kinds of people.
In fields where athleticism
or physical prowess is the primary currency
for respect and reputation,
it’s not uncommon to see stare downs,
muscle flexing, and even fights
occur between participants.
Brawn is a primal form of power
that requires little explanation, reasoning,
or legitimacy to understand.
But as societies shift more towards
a knowledge-based economy,
having a sharp mental prowess
takes more of a center stage,
since knowledge is indeed
another form of power, after all.
And those same “measuring” contests
transform and reappear as trolling
and trash talking in playing fields
for eSports to intellectual arrogance
in the office.
Some common examples you’ll encounter
might include grammar nazis,
cert bragging, mansplaining,
telling people their method isn’t the best,
or arguing about how things work.
There’s also the
“I know someone who’s better than you”
line of reasoning as a last resort.
There’s sexism too,
especially towards women in the tech field,
with guys joking about physical traits
or stereotypes to discredit
their credentials and qualifications.
That’s a nice score for a girl.
For high-arrogance individuals
on the blunt side, they might tell you
to simply shut up and stop talking to them
because you’re a waste of their time.
On the passive-aggressive side,
they might just ignore you,
avoid eye contact, or exclude you
from projects and decision-making processes.
Whatever the style,
they’re all ways of signaling mental superiority
in some shape or form.
In the cyber security world,
knowledge flexes are aggravated even further
by debates over software choices,
technical trivia, and style conventions.
I mean, I do not get why anyone
would use spaces over tabs.
I mean why not just use
Vim over Emacs.
I do use Vim over Emacs.
Oh God, help us.
Since cyber security is one of those fields
that takes a tremendous amount of dedication
to achieve mastery,
it’s easy to develop a big ego as you increase
in actual or self-perceived skill.
Here’s an illustration.
When people see themselves
on the lower side in terms of skill,
they tend to be more humble and malleable
in their views.
Folks like this are just starting off
in their journeys and are eager to learn.
After a few years of experience,
they no longer see themselves as newbies
and start to think of themselves
as leaps and bounds better than others
just starting off.
The truth is that these hotshots
are still a bit junior with a few
minor accomplishments to flex about.
In the upper-reaches of skill,
people may fork off into one of two directions,
depending on the work environment.
For people in a decent developmental environment
surrounded by other capable peers,
it’s easier for egos to balance
each other out within the group.
For people who are used
to being the smartest person in the room,
their ego outpaces their actual skills
and tends to follow them
to other work places too.
Over time, they mellow out into
seasoned professionals who are reliable
and talented although a bit elitist
and hard to work with if they don’t think
you match their level of expertise.
Among the rarest group of people
are experienced masters in the high-skill
but low arrogance zone.
They often will have experience
teaching students at all levels
and interface with non-technical people
on the business side of the house.
People in this zone are extremely comfortable
with what they know and don’t know,
and can communicate and correct others
in a down-to-earth, non-condescending way.
One thing to note is that being skilled
and capable does not necessarily mean
that you’re more or less arrogant,
since there’s other factors at play as well,
which tend to fall into
three general categories:
competitive personalities,
underdeveloped people skills,
and the illusion of knowledge.
Let’s start with the first.
Having a healthy dose of competition
is pretty natural.
And since you’d like to compare
how you rack and stack
against others in the same camp,
it helps you in the learning process
and is a great way to get better at any skill.
It’s just as how having a workout buddy
can challenge and motivate you further
than just exercising going solo.
But for people who like to constantly
compare and compete with others,
“one-upping” and showmanship
can be their way of life.
In cybersecurity, this might be someone
who can’t resist contradicting
or critiquing other people,
particularly on technical matters,
to appear as the smartest
and most knowledgeable person in the room.
It’s over a 150 million million million
possible settings.
Very good.
159 if you want to be exact about it.
1-5-9, with 18 zeros behind it.
Possibilities.
Every single day.
They see everyone else as
intellectual conquests to contend with.
If you're using Windows,
they’ll lecture you for not using Linux.
If you use Ubuntu, they’ll scoff that
it’s not Debian, or Gentoo,
or some flavor of BSD.
If you happen to be very skilled yourself,
they’ll begrudgingly acknowledge you
as a worthy rival but take opportunities
to snipe you on technical facts
and other trivia to discredit you.
A friend once told me that during
a technical interview, he was asked
how the Linux grep command worked.
He said it used regular expressions
to match text patterns, at which the interviewer
straight-up interrupted him saying,
“Wrong answer, it uses globbing.”
My friend responded with,
“Doesn’t it stand for
the GNU Regular Expression Program?”
at which the interviewer immediately
opened up his computer for a few minutes,
then continued to ask him other questions,
completely unwilling to admit his mistake.
With people like this, there’s no winning,
even when you’re right.
A second common source of arrogance in tech
and cyber security is poor people skills.
Most of us are familiar
with the concept of IQ,
or intelligence quotient,
which measures your aptitude for analytical,
abstract, and logical reasoning.
Psychologist Daniel Goleman,
popularized the terms EQ and SQ as well,
referring to your emotional intelligence
and social intelligence.
EQ is more intrapersonal, having to do
with your own emotional self-awareness
and self-confidence.
While SQ is more interpersonal,
having to do with how well you cooperate
in a group, which requires empathy,
kindness, and patience.
How much of these intelligences are formed
by nature or nurture is up for debate,
but I’m in the camp that you can develop
them over time, which is much easier
to do when you’re young.
When I was growing up as a kid,
I really didn’t have any friends
since instead of hanging out
with other kids in the neighborhood,
I preferred to spend time indoors
reading sci-fi books
and tinkering on the computer.
Whether it was hacking games
or configuring Slackware Linux,
where you have to compile all the packages
and dependencies from scratch,
I leveled up my IQ at the expense
of social intelligence and people skills.
When all the other kids
would give class presentations on stories
like their beach vacation,
I would explain how societies
could reorganize into futuristic,
technocratic utopias,
with no clue that doing so
made me come across as the arrogant
social deviant.
I always thought the problem was other people
not being able to understand my ideas,
when in reality it was my inability
to socially contextualize them with others
that was the real problem.
Without regular interaction with other people,
it’s easy to become self-absorbed
in your own ideas and interests.
People lacking interpersonal skills
tend to place their own cares and needs
over those of the group,
and are even blind to this behavior.
When they do want to socialize,
it’s usually on their terms,
which is often in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
Without proper tact,
these folks give off an overall impression
of being haughty and abrasive.
The third and final reason people
can be arrogant in cyber security
is something called “certainty bias.”
In the book, “On Being Certain”,
Dr. Robert Burton describes human thoughts
as having two portions: the thought itself
and an assessment of its accuracy.
When the two aren’t congruent,
like when you look at an optical illusion,
you get a really uncomfortable feeling
of cognitive dissonance.
For instance, in this Müller-Lyer illustion,
the two lines are actually the same length,
or in this checker shadow diagram,
the squares in A and B
are both the same shade of gray,
but the illusion messes with how accurate
you think this conclusion is.
So when it comes to knowledge in general,
we’d much rather take a chance
at knowing something and be wrong
rather than feeling unsure
and looking ignorant.
It’s what causes us to make assumptions
and jump to conclusions.
People abandon nuances in favor of absolutes
because our brain’s reward system activates
when there’s a “feeling of certainty”,
in the same way that it activates
from cocaine, alcohol, exercise, and gambling.
It’s so powerful that rats with an electrode
in the pleasure part of their brain
will continuously press a switch to self-stimulate
to the exclusion of food and water,
or even cross electrified wire
to get a hit of dopamine.
Certainty bias and the illusion of knowing
is something that can transform
the kindest, warmest people
into the most obnoxious arrogant
know-it-alls out there!
As people get older and more experienced,
we become more entrenched
in our pre-existing ways of thinking,
since it’s much easier to dismiss ideas
that don’t align with your own
to save mental energy.
But the same certainty bias
that makes us fall prey to social engineering
and phishing emails also exhibits
in the form of intellectual arrogance
in the cyber world, just like my friend
had experienced with his interviewer.
As Mark Twain says:
“What gets us into trouble
is not what we don't know.
It's what we know for sure
that just ain't so.”
We’ve all experienced this before.
In grade school you take facts about science
as if they were true and universal.
But as you grow more sophisticated
in your education,
you start to learn more and more exceptions
to the rules in cases where they don’t apply.
The best and brightest cyber practitioners
I’ve met in the field have both
the flexibility and intellectual humility
to draw these distinctions.
Because the truth is,
it’s really hard to be certain
until you’ve deeply examined
all the possible considerations.
When you're dealing with intellectual arrogance,
there’s many different approaches
that can help you manage situations better.
For those with hyper-competitive streaks,
take a “Blue Ocean” strategy approach,
which means differentiating yourself
in a tangential area the of expertise
as the competitor.
If someone sees himself as a Linux guru
who knows everything
there is to know about Bash,
you might have a hard time discussing
the command-line together without butting
heads or getting into technical debates
about how things work.
Rather, you could try investing some time
to get dangerous at PowerShell
and Windows administration instead.
Differentiation is one way to earn respect,
and gives you an opportunity to approach
the relationship as a collaborator
rather than a direct competitor.
To diffuse a tense situation,
here’s an easy three-step formula to try:
first, acknowledge that you understand
their opinion or idea,
even if you don’t necessarily agree.
This way you’re not being confrontational
but it also doesn’t weaken your own position.
Second, ask them a probing question
to evaluate the clarity and consistency
of their thinking.
Humble questions full of curiosity
is a great way to disarm any antagonism
and measure the depth
of what they actually know.
And then, just listen.
Intellectually arrogant people often like
to swing facts and opinions around
like a battle axe,
so it’s usually better just to indulge them
with good listening,
then continue to ask questions as needed.
This process allows you to better understand
the other person and keeps you
in a non-reactive mode,
in which you’re the one
with greater maturity and humility.
But best of all, it puts you on the path
towards winning friends and influencing people,
which happens to be a book by Dale Carnegie
which I highly recommend everyone to read.
You can get a lot more done winning over
people rather than compelling others
through debates and “measuring contests.”
Habits like becoming genuinely interested
in people, talking in terms of their interests,
and letting them do most of the talking
are all approaches in this book
that can make you more likeable,
even by those who seem the most tough
to get along with.
Because when you’re dealing
with difficult people,
keep in mind that you might be
just as difficult.
It’s easy to fall victim
to certainty bias yourself,
and always assume the worst in others
based on the tiniest bit of data about them.
So before you judge and criticize
others for being wrong,
take a moment to question
if you might actually be missing
the bigger picture yourself.
When you sense that things might get heated,
it’s usually better to avoid escalating
them into arguments altogether,
since they almost never actually change
anyone’s minds and presuppositions,
especially if in the process you insult
and hurt their dignity.
The last thing I want you to walk away with
is to remember that people are much more
than their beliefs and ideas.
They have hobbies, dreams, and experiences
just like the rest of us.
As soon as you self-identify with an idea
and become part of it,
it’s really hard to then meaningfully discuss
it anymore because any kind of judgment
or critique becomes personal attacks
on your own ego.
So don’t self-identify with the beliefs
and ideas you hold, since they’re only
going to change over time.
Always recognize that people
come from different backgrounds
and are on all sorts of paths
in their cyber journeys.
Treat them as you would want to be treated,
with dignity and respect.
So that’s it for this video
on dealing with arrogance in cyber security.
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Really hope you enjoyed this video
and learned something worth
sharing with others.
Thanks so much for watching,
and I’ll see you soon!