I was in IT security for many years and got out largely because of the sheer attitudes of many of the people I encountered. Some of them were genuinely very nic

I was in IT security for many years and got out largely because of the sheer attitudes of many of the people I encountered. Some of them were genuinely very nice, very smart people, but these gentlemen were few and far between. Sadly. I started off as an abuse investigator for a very large East Coast ISP, moved into firewalls, then penetration testing once I knew what I was doing. All along this path, the vast majority of guys I worked with, for, and around (on contracts) were sheer jerks of the highest order. Everyone seemed to be angry, upset, on edge. I can understand this. IT security--especially abuse investigations--necessitates seeing the seedy side of the Internet. Ditto IT security in general. You're not working for or with people who are "creatives". You're working for and with people whose sole job is to minimize threats and vulnerabilities. The most stressful time was being a firewall engineer. Having to deal--on the fly--with impatient customers wanting a six-spoke VPN "right now!" and them being jerks about it was annoying. I hated the calls that involved my placing a "tap" on some poor sod whose boss wanted an 8-hour tcpdump on him to see where he went when online. They wanted a gzipped log file placed on the server where they could SSH in and retrieve it. I hated the double standards where executives were given static IP addresses on their machines and special rules created to allow them carte blanche access to the Internet at large--no filtering. They also avoided the proxy. These special executives were &^%#$@ and everyone knew it. When you spend your life seeing nothing but evil, you take on a different view of life and the world around you. I saw this happening and I got out in favor of being a sysadmin. I'm much happier, and the IT security roles I do have are much smaller in scope and I know how to handle them quickly and quietly.