AI Is Reshaping Cybersecurity Careers. Are You Ready?

Why Is Cybersecurity “In Demand”… But You Still Can’t Get Hired?

You’ve got the certs. You’ve done the labs. Maybe you're just starting—or maybe you’ve been in cyber for years.

Either way, you’re stuck. Ghosted. Underpaid. Overlooked.

And all while the headlines scream: “Cyber talent shortage!”

So what gives?

The truth is, you’re not the problem.
You’re just following a roadmap that stopped working five years ago.

Meanwhile, the industry moved on—quietly.
Fake job listings. Broken hiring systems. Roles vanishing before you even apply.

In this newsletter, I’m going to show you the new cybersecurity playbook:

🔹 Why traditional job advice is failing in the age of AI
🔹 How to build visibility and credibility without burning out
🔹 And how to set yourself up for a sovereign cyber career—whether you're new or already in the field

This isn’t about working harder. It’s about becoming unignorable.

Stick around—because by the end of this video, you’ll have a system that helps you build skills, stand out, and thrive… no matter what AI disrupts next.

Let’s get into it.

The Hiring System Is Broken—And It’s Screwing Smart People Like You

Here’s how the game really works:

Step 1: You submit a résumé.
Step 2: It hits an Applicant Tracking System—basically a dumb robot that scans for exact keyword matches.
Step 3: It sees your résumé doesn’t mirror the job post word for word.
Step 4: Delete.

You never even reach a human.

And that’s assuming the listing is real.
There are companies posting fake jobs to harvest data or make it look like they’re growing.
Congrats—your résumé just helped them train their AI.

Oh, and the roles that are legit? Already filled internally. Or pulled down by automated systems before the interview queue fills.

Meanwhile, AI is actively replacing the jobs you’re applying to.
Roles that existed six months ago don’t anymore.
The skills they wanted last year are outdated today.

So if you’re still grinding on LeetCode, tweaking your résumé, and applying to anything with “security” in the title—you’re playing the wrong game.

This isn’t about working harder.
It’s about becoming visible, in demand, and unignorable.

And that starts with the one tool they really don’t want you to understand.

Why Are They Trying to Make You Fear the One Tool That Could Save You?

AI just wiped out 150,000+ tech jobs.
That’s not a future problem. That’s this year.

But here’s what no one’s saying out loud: AI isn’t the job threat. You not using it is.

Look around. Whole departments are vanishing.
Companies are automating faster than they’re hiring.
And the people getting replaced are the ones still waiting for permission to adapt.

Meanwhile, the fear campaigns are out in full force.
“AI will steal your job.”

Not because that’s all wrong—but because it’s convenient.

Keeping you scared keeps you small. Keeps you silent. Keeps you working twice as hard for half the recognition.

Because while they warn you about AI, they’re quietly using it to scale operations, boost output, and lower headcount. And if you’re not using it? You’re their competitive advantage.

AI is a power multiplier. You either wield it—or you get pushed out by the people who do.
This is your shot to use it to build your own thing.

So how do you build a career that doesn’t crumble every time a new AI model drops?

What If the Only Job Security Is Becoming Sovereign?

Let’s stop pretending any of this is stable.

You’re not retiring from a company. You’re not climbing a ladder.
You’re a line item in a spreadsheet—and you’re gone the second someone higher up needs to hit a quarterly goal.

For decades, the roadmap was simple:
Work hard. Get promoted. Retire with a pension.
That playbook is dead.

So what do you do when the system that promised security is built to extract and discard?

You stop building their empire—and start using your job to quietly build your own.

This is where the one-person cyber business comes in.
It’s a long-term transition plan that gives you control of your time, your tools, and your income.

You’re not managing anyone.
You’re not raising money or scaling a team.
You’re scaling yourself.

Here’s what that looks like:

• You use your normie job to collect real-world skills

• You document everything you’re learning

• You publish the things you wish someone had told you

• You build tools or tutorials that solve the problems people keep asking about

• And over time, you turn that into leverage—skills, frameworks, and eventually income

It’s a system you build while you’re still employed.
You’re just trading the fantasy of “someday stability” for something real—something yours.

And if you're neurodivergent?
Forcing yourself to play by systems that erase your autonomy will grind you down.
This path gives you room to build a life that fits your wiring.

Sovereignty isn’t a fantasy. It’s a direction.
Control over your time. Ownership of your output. Clarity on your path.

If you’re done waiting for permission—
Start laying the foundation now.
From exactly where you are.

How Do You Actually Get Visibility—And Start Today?

If résumés are getting shredded by AI before a human ever sees them—what’s your alternative?

You make them come to you.

You want real opportunities. Referrals. Clients. Recruiters who already trust your thinking before you say a word.
But that only happens if people know you exist.

In 2025, visibility is leverage.

And here’s the secret no one tells you:
Posting content is modern-day bulk applying—except 100x more efficient.
One post can do what 50 applications never will.

You show your thinking.
You prove your communication skills.
You attract the people who actually want what you bring to the table.

You just need a system that makes your learning visible.
A loop that builds credibility while you’re still gaining experience.

Here’s the path I created for maximum visibility and thought leadership.

Step One: Start a Weekly Newsletter (Even If It’s Just for You)

Forget audience growth for now. Your newsletter is your discipline builder.
It’s your thinking gym.

Once a week, solve one problem or synthesize what you learned. That’s it.
Doesn’t have to be long or polished. It just has to be real.

This builds two things:

• You start thinking like a creator

• You start documenting your learning in a way that compounds over time

Most people never get past this step.
They wait until they “know enough” or “have something worth sharing.”
But the audience comes because you start now.

You want to be taken seriously in cyber?
Start publishing every Friday. Pick a lane and commit.

Your brain will sharpen. Your voice will emerge.
And you’ll have actual proof-of-work to point to when people finally ask, “What do you know?”

I stayed in this phase for a full year.
Quietly writing. Figuring out what I cared about. Building clarity through repetition.

And once that was baked in?

Step Two: Add Instagram When You’re Ready to Learn Hooks and Get Eyes

Once your writing habit is locked in, it’s time to practice attention.

Instagram is your crash course in fast feedback.
It’s where you learn how to:

• Craft hooks that stop scrolling

• Say something useful in under 60 seconds

• Package ideas visually, simply, clearly

Use your newsletter as your content seed.
Turn one insight into a reel. Break a paragraph into a carousel. Drop a single quote with context.

This is how you learn to translate thinking into visibility.
You’ll start slow. You’ll suck a bit. But if you’re consistent, people will notice.

And when they start asking the same question over and over again?

That’s your greenlight.

Step Three: When People Keep Asking for the Same Thing—Build It

Visibility isn’t just about being seen. It’s about listening.

Once you know what people keep asking for, you build the damn thing.
That’s your first product.
Could be a guide. A private workshop. A tutorial. A mini-course. Doesn’t matter.

The only rule: it solves a specific problem people already care about.

You don’t need to guess. The audience will literally hand it to you.

You build it. You validate it. You make it better.
And now you’re not just visible—you’re valuable.

Step Four: Graduate to YouTube for Deep Influence

Now you know what you care about.
Now you know what people want from you.
Now you’ve learned storytelling, hooks, and content pacing.

YouTube is where it all compounds.

This is where you go deeper.
Longer-form tutorials. Career advice. In-depth breakdowns. Thought leadership.
It’s where you anchor your expertise—and finally get to say the stuff that’s too real for social media.

And here’s the kicker:
I don’t write YouTube scripts from scratch.
I use the exact same newsletters I’ve been writing since Step One.

That weekly writing habit gave me years of material.
It gave me clarity on my message. It gave me rhythm.
All I had to do was turn on the camera and bring it to life.

This is how you build a visibility pipeline that actually works:

• Newsletter: for clarity and proof-of-work

• Instagram: for reach and feedback

• Product: for value and income

• YouTube: for depth, legacy, and scale

This is what I did—and it works.

But none of it means anything if you can’t keep going when the dopamine dies.

So how do you keep this machine running without burning out?

What Systems Let You Scale Without Burning Out?

When people say “don’t burn out,” what they usually mean is: “slow down.”
That’s not the answer.

The answer is to build systems that scale with you.
Systems that turn effort into assets.
Systems that make your thinking reusable, your content evergreen, and your expertise impossible to ignore.

Because if you're building a one-person cyber business—especially in the middle of an AI revolution—you need to stop spending all your time on things that vanish.

You need a leverage bank.

That means every time you solve a problem, explain a concept, or figure something out—you store it in a way that your future self (or your audience) can use again and again.

Here’s how that looks in practice:

1. Evergreen Frameworks = Infinite Reuse

Every time you figure something out at work or in a lab, you document it like it’s going in a playbook.

Not just notes. Not just a brain dump.
You turn it into a system.

• A checklist

• A tutorial

• A walkthrough

• A script you can repurpose 10 different ways

That becomes leverage—something you spend once and reuse forever.
It goes in your leverage bank.

2. Newsletter → Instagram → YouTube (The Loop That Builds You)

Your content isn’t just marketing—it’s a proof-of-work engine.
Each layer of visibility builds more value on top of what you’ve already created.

• Newsletter trains your thinking and sharpens your message

• Instagram teaches you speed, hooks, and feedback

• YouTube gives your ideas depth, authority, and longevity

You’re not starting from scratch each time.
You’re compounding.

That’s the power of the leverage bank:
One insight → multiple assets → infinite returns.

3. Second Brain = Idea Vault + Career Engine

Your second brain is the vault where you store your leverage bank.

Every SOC playbook you rewrote.
Every config that fixed something critical.
Every mental model you used to solve a problem.

That’s not just knowledge.
That’s future IP.

You’ll use it to teach, to build products, to land clients, to consult, to create content that scales—and you’ll never waste that time again.

This is how you stay consistent without burning out.
How you keep your ideas from disappearing.
How you grow more valuable with every lesson you learn.

Your leverage bank is your runway.
It’s what makes you resilient.
It’s what lets you outpace the churn—even when everything else is changing.

So once your systems are working for you…
What’s the bigger picture?

Why go through all of this in the first place?

What If Cybersecurity Wasn’t a Job—But a Path to Self-Actualization?

Let’s zoom out.

You didn’t start in cyber because you love job applications.
You started because something in you refused to settle.
You want freedom. Skill. Purpose. The ability to walk into a room and know you belong.

Cybersecurity is more than just “a job with good pay.”
It’s a path where curiosity becomes currency.
Where your weird interests, your obsessive learning, your late-night rabbit holes—finally matter.

Especially if you’re neurodivergent? This isn’t optional.
This is one of the only fields where deep focus and nonlinear thinking are actual superpowers.

You’re not trying to squeeze yourself into some corporate mold.
You’re trying to build a life that fits how your brain actually works.

That’s what this path gives you—if you know how to start.

You don’t need to be perfect.
You need a system that helps you test, explore, and get real reps without wasting years.

The Career Isn’t Dead—Just the Map

The cybersecurity career isn’t broken.
The old map is.

The days of following instructions, submitting résumés, and waiting your turn are gone.

You’re not here to blend in.
You’re here to build something real.
Something sovereign.
Something sustainable.

You’ve seen what happens when you wait.
When you rely on gatekeepers.
When you give your best energy to systems designed to forget you.

Now you have a different way forward.

Stay Curious,

Addie LaMarr