Fired in Sixty Days for Where I'm From, and Why I Didn't Quit
Earlier in this series
How I got in
I started in sales. That is not the path most people expect into cybersecurity, and I do not hide it. From sales I made a deliberate choice: learn the technical side for real, not the version that just sounds credible in a meeting. I went and got the engineering training, and I committed to actually mastering the fundamentals.
The job that should have proven it
Eventually I landed a role at a telecommunications company, and for a while it felt like validation — proof I could move from theory into the real thing. Then I was let go within sixty days. Not for performance. Not for conduct. For a policy tied to my nationality. Competence and dedication had nothing to do with it.
What that forced me to see
I had to sit with an uncomfortable truth: cybersecurity, and the governance systems built around it, carry barriers against people from where I am from — barriers built into policy, not into anything about me personally. I could have taken that as a reason to leave the field. Instead I asked myself a different question: how do I keep learning what I love while also outgrowing that limitation?
The answer came down to three things I still hold onto.
- Personal resilience. Proving to myself that I will not let something others gatekeep from me decide who I become.
- A vision for my country. When it is free, I want to go back and help build modern, secure infrastructure with everything I have learned.
- A genuine love of the field. My curiosity about this work is real. It does not depend on anyone's permission.
Where I actually stand
What I realized is that my real strength was never purely technical — it is that I have both the technical grounding and a genuine love of people. I did not want to become a robotic mind stuck behind diodes. I wanted to work at the intersection of technology and human connection, and that is exactly where cybersecurity sales put me: helping businesses secure what they have built, while building something of my own alongside people I trust.
What I want to be known for
I want to be known as someone who brings technology and people together, not just someone with the right certifications. That means helping businesses actually secure themselves, building something real under my own name, and one day bringing what I have learned back to the people and the country I come from.
None of this was about escaping the technical side, or chasing prestige. It was about refusing to let one policy, one company, one bad sixty days decide whether I belonged in this field.
I did not give up. This is what came after.