The Burnout Blueprint: How Security Teams Self-Destruct (And Why Leadership Lets It Happen)
- Keith Pachulski
- 4 minutes ago
- 4 min read
I found this list a few months back while doing disaster operations training. I volunteer with the American Red Cross as a State Relations Disaster Liaison; it's what I do when I'm not doing security work. Some of the training material had this piece of dark satire buried in it, probably aimed at disaster responders or emergency workers. I wish I could remember where exactly it came from so I could credit whoever wrote it.
Here's why it stuck with me: I read through it and realized every single line applied to security work. Not just kind of applied, perfectly applied. The exhaustion. The guilt. The impossible standards. The way we destroy ourselves and call it professionalism.
I've lived most of these patterns. If you work in security, physical or cyber, you probably have too.
[Note: Despite searching, I haven't been able to relocate the original source. If you recognize this list, please reach out so I can provide proper attribution.]
The Failure Playbook
"Be a perfectionist; never accept excellence"
We demand flawless detection rates from analysts handling their 400th alert of the shift. Zero false positives from misconfigured tools. Physical security teams get told "good enough" isn't acceptable, then handed legacy cameras and broken access control systems.
Perfection isn't a standard here. It's just another way to feel like you're failing.
"Never exercise"
There's always another incident. Another threat report. Another escalation. I've watched security people go months without seeing daylight during work hours. At some point your body stops being something you live in and becomes something you're just trying to keep functional enough to do the job.
"Remember, the glass is always half full"
Got breached? Learning opportunity. Understaffed? Character building. Equipment failing? Be grateful you have equipment. Nothing gets fixed because we've learned to smile through unacceptable conditions and call it resilience.
"Eat as much fast food as possible"
Drive-throughs at 3 AM during incident response. Vending machines during pentest season. Break rooms full of expired energy drinks. Your body's running on garbage, and you know it, but what else are you supposed to do?
"Blame all your failures on [everyone else]" / "Accept responsibility for everything and everyone"
We actually do both. The breach happened because leadership wouldn't fund MFA? Your fault for not selling it better. Physical security failure because there were three guards covering a facility that needs twelve? Should've written a more compelling justification.
Every failure lands on you. Every success is just you doing your job.
"Engage in an endless process of controlling everything"
You can't control the threat landscape. Can't control when nation-state actors get interested. Can't control whether leadership funds your recommendations. Can't control if that vendor will actually patch their systems.
But you try anyway. And the trying destroys you. And then you blame yourself for not trying harder.
"Strive to sleep as little as possible"
Four hours becomes the new normal. We celebrate people answering Slack at 2 AM. We promote people who never say no. Admitting you're tired feels like admitting you're weak.
Your brain doesn't work right without sleep. You're not making better decisions—you're making faster mistakes with more confidence.
"Feel guilty when leaving"
Alerts still in the queue at end of shift. Client still has vulnerabilities at end of deployment. What if something happens while you're on vacation? They still need help at end of contract.
The guilt isn't dedication. It's what happens when broken systems run on individual martyrdom instead of actual operations.
"Seek out a routine: sleep until you're hungry, eat until you're tired, use alcohol to relax and stimulants to get going"
If this is your life, you're not in a routine. You're in a crisis. The security industry just normalized functioning in permanent crisis mode. Work-life balance became something other people in other industries get to have.
Why This Actually Matters
Burned-out security professionals miss things. Exhausted analysts miss indicators. Sleep-deprived responders make mistakes. You can't think creatively about threats when you're running on fumes, you just react to whatever's screaming loudest.
Meanwhile, the threat actors aren't burned out. They work normal hours in organized teams. They're well-rested and well-funded. We celebrate our grind while they operate like professionals.
We're getting beat, and we're doing it to ourselves.
What Works Instead
Sustainable operations have shift coverage. Redundancy. Processes that don't need heroes to function.
Professionals set boundaries. They sleep. They exercise. They take vacations without guilt.
Not because they're soft, because their effectiveness depends on their health.
If your security posture requires someone working 80-hour weeks indefinitely, you don't have a security program. You have a pending disaster.
Real Talk
That satirical list wasn't supposed to be instructions. But somehow we adopted it as gospel.
If you see yourself in this, you're not weak. You're just honest about what's actually happening.
The threats aren't going away. We need people who can still think when they show up to work. This industry has to stop celebrating burnout and start building places where people can be effective for the long haul.
Keith Pachulski
Red Cell Security, LLC
Red Cell Security provides cybersecurity and physical security services including vulnerability assessments, vCISO support, penetration testing, and threat emulation for organizations that need real-world tested security -- not burnout culture masquerading as expertise.