Cybersecurity isn’t running out of jobs.

Cybersecurity isn’t running out of jobs. It’s running out of illusions.

Every week my feed fills with security professionals wondering why an industry with a “talent shortage” somehow has thousands of people unemployed.

The answer is uncomfortable, but liberating once you see it clearly:
We trained an entire generation for a threat model that no longer exists —
and then automated the parts that did.

For years, companies hired security people the way anxious parents buy baby monitors: not because they understood the device, but because it made them feel like responsible adults.

Then budgets tightened.
Automation matured.
AI became the new get-out-of-headcount-free card.
And suddenly the question shifted from:
“Do we have security?”to “Do we need all these humans clicking through dashboards?”

Cyber never had a skills shortage.
It had a cognition shortage — a shortage of people who could think in systems, incentives, and adversary psychology rather than tools, tickets, and templates.

And now the market is correcting.
Roles based on repetition? Automated.
Roles based on compliance theater? Consolidated.
Roles based on pushing buttons in someone else’s platform? Eliminated.

But the roles that remain — and are quietly multiplying — belong to people who:
Understand identity, architecture, and cloud like second languages
Design detections, not just tune rules
Think like adversaries instead of talking about them
Translate chaos into board-level decisions
Build strategies that don’t crumble the moment an AI agent gets bored and improvises.

The industry isn’t shrinking.
It’s migrating — away from tool operators and toward cognitive athletes.
People who can map reality as it is, not as the job description imagined it.

So yes, many security people are out of work.

Not because cybersecurity is dying, but because the job called “cybersecurity” is becoming something far more psychologically demanding and philosophically interesting.

The future belongs to those who treat security not as a checklist, but as a living system of adversaries, incentives, and entropy — a discipline that evolves every time a machine decides it no longer needs our permission.
If that sounds daunting, good.
It means you’re awake.
And in this field, consciousness is still the rarest skill of all.

— Scott G.

But please: if you are in the market and want to send your CV to me, I am banking them at the moment and running a virtual bench. I do see roles coming up from time to time, and will help wherever I can if something does comes up.

If you are in that sitch keep your chin up. I know how tough it is out there at the moment.