If i tell you that introverted people are flooding the cybersecurity industry, would you believe me ? I hope you will, because it’s true. Yes, there is always the odd ball of an extroverted individual joining a cyber team, but from my experiences, they don’t last long and they almost always end up in marketing, pre-sales, sales or ultimately, in management. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that almost all cyber pros are introverted ? I guess it’s a good thing to have like-minded individuals grouped together, share ideas at their own pace, work in a constant flow of concentration and being able to be in a state of acute sense of attention to details.

Do extroverted leaders like this mentality and state of mind ? Probably not. They surely see us (yes i count myself in) as a nuisance to the corporate world, a weird species i would say. Who knows ! My last question to you is this one : is it a good thing that almost all extroverted people end up in management roles ? We can start the debate here, but since it’s my blog post and i’m only arguing with myself, I’ll drop my opinion there : no, it’s fucking bad. Let’s unwrap this.

Extroverted Leader

The classic extroverted leader will lead loudly, with a semi-clear strategic vision that is high level enough so that anyone with a room temperature IQ level can believe in it. But they don’t fool us, we see the details. They led by talking, in fact, they talk so much that you sometime stare at them, asking yourself “are they about to pass out from saying so many words (let’s call it “WpM” - for words by minute), and by making so much noise (let’s call it “ElD” - for Extroverted Leader Decibel)?” I guess you read through this post and, at least one of the extroverted corporate leaders that you worked with in the past, or in the present moment, comes to your mind. Don’t deny it, i know you do. We all do.

Anyone who had the “chance” of working with an extroverted leader knows that it’s 80% of the times a real pain in the ass. They want us to behave the way they behave and they always try to put us in an extroverted position. I don’t particularly like the idea of segregating two types of individuals, but i think i can make the case on that one. In simple form, introverted people recharge their batteries alone. Extroverted people recharge their batteries around people. Simple as that. We recharge in silence, they recharge in noise, attention from others and chaos (at least from my perspective).

The Corporate World

It’s nothing new, in the corporate world you either climb the ladder, or you move laterally. Simple as that. You either go up the chain of command or you move around the links of the chain. By moving laterally, you’ll keep perfecting those technical skills, you’ll learn more about individual contributor roles in the organization, you will be the “go to guy” for any problems related to your specialty. You’ll eventually feel like most extroverted managers are draining the hell out of you, you’ll now know that you have become the Subject Matter Expert (SME), but at least, you are walking the right-hand path.

If you are going up the chain of command, you’ll start to learn more about power, influence, diplomacy & how to make people do what you want them to do. You will also realize that you are not the boss. You have a boss above you and your ultimate fantasy of “being the boss” was a lie. Your boss will have a higher standard regarding your performance, you will automatically be seen with a magnifying glass. People will even start to talk behind your back, you have become a manager. Welcome to the left-hand path.

Forgive me if i generalize a bit, i know you can’t read sarcasm, but believe me there’s some of it in that text. Ultimately, the point I’m trying to make is that, the corporate world is made for people wanting to go up the chain of command. It’s not made for people navigating through the chain. So it’s 99,9999% of the time framed in a way so that extroverted people will succeed and introverted people will fail at climbing.

Introverted options ?

I believe that it’s time to have a systemic change in the corporate world. The world we know is moving digitally in every possible way, cyber threats are evolving and threat actor is fine-tuning their attack e-v-e-r-y d-a-y. The cyber industry needs weird people. More than ever. I know that many cyber professionals are not particularly looking up to “corporate political leaders,” they look up at someone like them, who’s been in the trenches, who get what their job is and let them work the way they work best. We need MORE introverted leaders. The 9 to 5 jobs is not about showing KPI and strategic planning anymore, the 9 to 5 jobs is about getting the work done. Period. Getting the work done involve a performing team that work in their own term and get it done. No need to parade in corporate meeting; you have a task to complete, you plan, you execute, you report the win, you report the fail and that’s it.

Introverted leaders are probably the less understood breed of managers. They get shit done with the help of their team. They are just simply not fit for the corporate world, because their main goal is not to give the impression that “everything is under control”, but to act on a given problems and report once the issue has been taken care of. That is the kind of manager cyber pro are looking up to.

Corporate Nostradamus

According to all the resources i read before writing this post, there is a 50/50 repartition of extroverted and introverted in the world. I fact, no research had the same repartition, so my guess is that there is no real consensus on the statistics. My big “guest-timate” with my field of knowledge is that there is an 80% introverted range of people in the cybersecurity industry, at least in my country. With that in mind, what is gonna happen when the 20% of extroverted people are being promoted as managers and are dealing with the 80% of introverted ?

My pretty big guess is that if the corporate world keeps going the way it’s going, there will be a major exodus of talent somewhere else in the industry. Corporate is biting his own tail without even realizing it.

In the end, who cares ? What’s more important than looking sharp in the board room and getting that nice fat bonus ? Cybersecurity is only dealing with systemic industries, finance, healthcare, government, natural resources, energy & so on…

Stay humble