Ep 8 - How to Avoid Falling for Tech Scams: Tips and Red Flags to Look Out For

00:00
Welcome to the Cables to Clouds podcast.

00:15
Cloud adoption is on the rise and many network infrastructure professionals are being asked to adopt a hybrid approach. As individuals who have already started this journey, we would like to empower those professionals with the tools and the knowledge to bridge the gap. Hello and welcome back to the Cables to Clouds podcast. My name is Alex Perkins. I'm at bumps in the wire on Twitter and I'll be your host for today's episode. Joining me are my two co-hosts, Tim McConaughey.

00:42
at Juan Golbez and Chris Miles at BGP Maine. Chris, what have you been up to lately? Hey, man. Not doing too bad today. I've been up for a while now. It's almost 11 a.m., but I've been up since 5.30 because we had a call earlier today about some exciting content coming for the podcast. It was worth it to wake up that early, but yeah, feeling good. I just finished what is, I think, my favorite Australian snack.

01:10
which is the barbecue shapes. I'm sure there will be many listeners who have never had this and never even heard of it. But I've killed probably like 30 boxes of these, dude. They're so good. It's just like a cracker with like... Yeah, what? It's like a cracker? Yeah, it's like a... Yeah, I don't know how to describe it. It's just like... The name is very stupid. Shapes. Like... Barbecue shapes? Yeah, I love it. But, yeah.

01:40
I'm going on record saying it's the best Australian snack. Do they have a Vegemite flavor? Actually, they do. Of course, they do. They do have a cheesy Vegemite flavor. Yeah, I haven't had that one. Cheesy Vegemite. Okay. My girlfriend tells me it is good. So you know what? I'll send you guys some. I'll send you a box. Oh, excellent. I really need something to fill my trash can, so I appreciate that. Rude. Wow.

02:08
All right, Tim, Tim, how have you been lately? What have you been up to? Uh, I'm doing all right. I'm, uh, I'm studying, uh, I have been for a while now, but I'm studying, uh, Japanese, uh, the language and, uh, I am very bad at it still. Um, I, I, I'm not sure if I will ever be better at it, uh, but I am working with an amazing tutor. She's a very nice lady lives in Nagasaki and she's very, very patient with me, which is probably the most important thing that anyone teach me anything.

02:37
has to be. I'm having fun with it. It's good. She's a good tutor and I'm learning a lot. But man, I tell you, it's one of those things where the more you learn about something, the more you realize how far back you are on the path. So anyway, a little discouraging tonight, but you got to come get back at it. Nice. I don't think I've talked about this since it happened. It was like two weeks ago now.

03:05
I had my trip to the coast, Outer Banks, North Carolina. I went to a star party. So it's pretty awesome. Unfortunately, it rained the entire Saturday to the point where we were on a house that was on pylons. The entire night was just spent with the whole house like blowing back and forth like crazy, man. It was, it was nuts. Big, big storm, big, big storm. That sounds scary, right? Like you're, it's not your house, you're not used to what it should feel like.

03:33
And it's all swaying back and forth. Yeah, it was nuts. I had never been on a house like that, right? You have to walk up the stairs just to get into the house. And then, I mean, they make it like that on purpose, though, for the storm, so. But it was cool. It was a fun time. And then now my kids are sick again, just like they are, it seems, at least once or twice a month ever since we've moved here. Man, yeah, that's rough. Yeah. All right. So today we're gonna talk about something

04:02
a little roundtable discussion about something that we've noticed happening more and more. And that is tech scams. We keep seeing these popping up everywhere, people getting burnt by them. You know, COVID brought in a lot more, it seems like. So we just wanted to have a discussion about the types of things we've seen, what to look for, you know, what to avoid, what good things are actually out there, and just all the different aspects of

04:30
of these scams that seems to be showing up everywhere. Yeah. More and more for sure, like you said, since COVID started. And I mean, they existed before then, right? Like anybody who's been in tech for any period of time knows how long they've been around. But yeah, man, when COVID happened and we started getting more people come into tech, I think it's almost like, you know.

04:56
sharks circling the fish, new fish in the water or something, man, it definitely happened. Yeah, for sure. And it used to be just like dumps all the time, right? Like that was the big thing was everyone was talking about all these dump sites everywhere and how they're just, they're just all over the place. People getting caught everywhere. And then it's like, yeah, COVID happened. Everyone was at home. Everyone was working, you know, had the chance to a lot of extra time stuck in front of their computers. So, you know, time to study and

05:24
skill up on things and that's where they really started coming up and showing up everywhere. Yeah, change careers, right? Like for the people that were in careers that were kind of like killed by COVID, for example, they were, you know, stuck at home and that was the chance, right? Yeah, especially like service industries, right? Like a lot of restaurant workers, people like that. I know a lot of people from those kinds of industries. Yeah, absolutely. I remember when the pandemic hit,

05:54
you know, took quite a high tick after that. Because I've been remote for probably the last like five or six years plus something like that. And so like, it was very common for people to start hitting on me up and like, be like, hey, so you work remote, how do you do this? How do you do that? How do you get one of these jobs? How do you make sure that you have that type of balance? I mean, during the pandemic, it was all from home, right? It wasn't a balance. It actually became

06:24
quite harder to maintain that work-life balance because everything was at home. But yeah, I definitely saw that. And then you start seeing these tech training opportunities. There was money to be made and it's obvious that people were privy to that, right? I hear about it all the time now. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I remember getting hit up on LinkedIn by so many people that were making transitions and, hey, how do I...

06:53
What's my first cert that I should start going for? And how do I get a remote job? Because that was it too, right? For me, I didn't start, I wasn't remote until the pandemic and I have been ever since, but this was really my first foray into remote work was very shortly after all the lockdown started. I had a neighbor who moved in.

07:18
right before COVID, I think, or maybe it was right after. But I remember talking to him at one point and he was not in tech at all. And he had, his old message was basically like, exactly what you guys were saying. He was like, man, I was stuck at home and it was like the perfect time for me to pick up something new. So he actually ended up becoming a sales engineer, I think for a, like a...

07:41
a medical startup of some kind, like medical document startup or something. But like he was like the poster child for this conversation, which is, you know, he was locked down. He was in a, he was in a job that didn't, you know, really do remote work, but he had all this time on his hands. So he was able to just like completely apply himself and do that. So, but I mean, I guess that's the point we're all trying to make is that there were a lot of people with a lot of, you know, sudden free time on their hands and honestly, probably a little scared that.

08:11
what they were doing was either going away or just wasn't going to be available in a while. So they were, you know, they almost hit like the trifecta of, you know, people in trouble. You know, their jobs at risk, they're worried about making rent, they're worried about having a skill that's going to be useful in this new world. And

08:37
And it was like blood in the water, right? For a lot of this, I'm not saying everybody out there saying, hey, I can help you with tech or we can get you into tech was was bad. But the water was just full of blood, you know, of that. There's a lot of that happening. Yeah. I mean, it was the perfect storm. Like you're saying, I mean, it was like you said, there are plenty of people who. Yeah. I mean, of course, they made some money on it. Like, I don't know, some YouTube like I'm sure there are people on YouTube or other course creators that suddenly pumped out a bunch of extra content.

09:06
But it's legit, like they were actually out there to try to help people. It's just that, like you said, people are desperate. They need money, right? They either got completely laid off and had no income and they needed something quickly. So of course these scammers are gonna try to sell, oh, in 90 days you can get a six figure job, right? Of course that sounds appealing to someone who's desperate like that. And we're saying that, I mean, even now.

09:34
It's slowed down a lot. I don't know if you guys still, I mean, I still see it, but I don't see it near as much. But even now, we're still seeing a lot of that kind of six months to six figure stuff. But I don't know if you guys agree or not. You know, Chris, you can chime in as well. But I don't see it as much. But I still so I'm not speaking of something that's just just now happening. I don't think any of us are. But it's still out there. But I do think it has slowed down a little bit. But it's still it's just kind of gone underground and become a little bit more insidious, I think.

10:03
Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, kind of to the point you guys made before, like not not all of it is predatorial, right? It's not going after a quick buck and not putting out, you know, things that actually help people there are there are people that are doing great things and then have hopefully pivoted, maybe their career to make, you know, maybe they want to be a content provider, maybe they want to do that to help people. And that was a perfect opportunity, you know, based on the experience that they've had.

10:32
But yeah, to Tim's point, I am seeing less of it, but there's still definitely enough of it to be concerned. Like Alex pointed out, a lot of these fixed outcome promises that are just like, you know, very red flag to me, probably to you guys as well, just anyone that's been in the industry for a while, we're just like, how can you promise that? And I think that's kind of what we wanna dive into is how to spot these things and...

11:01
kind of how to protect yourself. It's not even unique to cloud, but I think it is, you see it enough for cloud that, I think it needs to be said. So that's kind of the purpose of the topic today. Yeah, I think any industry that suddenly, you see all those reports all the time that are like, oh, there's a shortage in this industry of 500,000 jobs. Suddenly, a couple of days later, you're gonna start seeing.

11:29
All kinds of people coming out and trying to say how you can do it quickly, right? And yeah. Yeah. And again, I mean, tech is more vulnerable than most, I guess, because entry level is so easy to get into. Not so easy, but entry level is much more accessible in the tech field than it is in a lot of others. So I think that's a huge part of the chart. Yeah. A little bit easier to do a Google search and maybe get started than some fields, certainly. Yeah. So.

11:59
Let's talk about some of the different kind of kind of griffs that that we see out there. Tim, you got any that you want to start us off with? So, I mean, there's so many out there and a lot of them follow the same, the same, I guess, cookie cutter recipe, right? And, you know, some of them are so obvious and some of them are not, right? So, I guess we just start off with ones that I think we can all agree don't even...

12:27
you know, they just, they scream grift right off the bat, right? So this is kind of what we were kind of alluding to before, where you see the, um, you see it on Twitter or you see it on, you know, like I said, a Google search or something right there. There are these ideas that, you know, you're going to take 90 days or, you know, six months or three months or whatever, some, some, something, something time bound.

12:52
but it's always quick, right? It's never gonna be three years from now, you'll be an awesome engineer, right? It's always get started now and, you know, get your six figure job in X days. And so, you know, the kind of the implied promise that you're given, the, you know, the ideas that you'll give, you'll do this program, right? Whatever that program is, and then there will be an outcome and it will be bound to some small amount of time. I think that's like the number one.

13:20
red flag would be any one of those three things, right? It's time bound. There's an implied outcome that you're almost promised. And, you know, and of course, if it looks too good to be true, it is right. Yeah, I mean, I agreed on on all of those. The time down things are crazy because I mean, how everybody's different, right? I mean, just look at like CCNA studies. I think even

13:49
study period, right? That's just a simple example, but no one's the same. And some of these people probably are working other jobs too and doing it part-time. It's like, how can you say six months if someone's doing it part-time and someone's doing it full-time? There's just no way to put a timeline on it. Or they'll do something completely unrealistic where they'll be like, you can do this in 90 days if you do it for 10 hours a day.

14:13
you know, like something like that, right? Like that's how they are trying to reach those completely unrealistic goals is they're selling it as, you know, we're giving you all the tools and it's up to you to knuckle down and actually get it done, right? Like, which puts way too much on the people themselves who are already in a desperate situation. And then we get to, and then what they're doing basically is they're shirking accountability by saying, well, if you don't, if you don't do this, this is your fault, you failed to...

14:42
you suck and you failed to produce and you failed to put the time in and put your nose with the grindstone, right? So that's how they kind of get around the responsibility of it for it as well. Yeah. We gave you all the materials that this other person was able to consume in 30 days and they passed it. They got this job, whatever, but you didn't do it. So you can't. It's on you. Right. It's not a proper correlation to draw. Yeah. And that's terrible because

15:11
I mean, you know, there's so much talk already in our industry about imposter syndrome. And I mean, how to starting your career with straight up imposter syndrome immediately is just that's that's just terrible. You're just adding so much more onto something that's already going to happen anyway, to probably 99% of us. Right. So just piling onto that is terrible. Well, actually, that's really good. Because the imposter syndrome piece and the whole that so

15:39
We kind of skipped over this a little bit, but I wanna circle back to it because it's something we had to think about, which is that, you know, tech is a harder, tech in general, right? I say tech in general. I mean, this is a cloud focused, networking focused podcast, but I think this particular statement applies broadly. But tech is a little bit more vulnerable to this kind of messaging because, you know, outside of...

16:07
like certifications or specialized tests or whatever, anybody basically should be able to, in theory, pick up tech and run with it. It's not like a lawyer or a doctor where you have to go to school for so many years and you have to do a residency and all of this. And this is, of course, also why we see such boot camps and scam type, you know, oh, if you just put your effort in, you can do it, right, is this idea,

16:36
there's not this highly regulated and accredited system in place like some of the other high paying fields like law and medicine for example. Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, you know, there is plenty of that in tech. Like a lot of what you put in is what you get out. But not to the point where, yeah, like you guys have been saying, here's all the material. Just all you got to do is study for just 10 hours a day. That's it.

17:02
You know, and you'll get there in a month. You'll have all these certifications and make six figures. And it's funny because it's not even unique to just the technical positions either, because there's plenty of like, I don't know if you've gotten these as well, like you'll get some random connection requests on LinkedIn from someone, a training specialist that, for some reason they're always in India for me, they'll send you a message out of the blue, and it's like, hey, I'm...

17:30
I'm running this training certificate. It's always the exact same wording as well, like so you know it's a scam, but it's like, yeah, it's like, oh yeah, running a training for Scrum Master and PMP certification or something like that. So even the non-technical jobs are getting this kind of treatment as well. It's probably not as much associated with an outcome like compensation and things like that. But yeah, it's like tech as a whole. It's not just the engineering piece of it as well.

18:00
Yeah, I've seen a lot of that. The PM, like the, I've seen the shift from tech focus. Like you said, Alex earlier, like, hey, it started out with like, hey, dump this test and you get your CCNA or whatever, and you'll be on your way to your first networking job. I've seen a lot of exactly what you're saying, Chris, where,

18:22
You know, we're leaving almost like leaving the the engineering stuff behind. Like screw that. We're just going to like work on, you know, other types of of of programs, Scrum Master or PMP or or whatever. I mean, it was just was it just a few a couple of weeks ago. It was not this big scam on our big thing on Twitter about a somebody who was like doctoring PMP certifications, you know, like, hey, just send me your send me your your name and 500 bucks and we'll just like doctor up and.

18:51
and produce a PMP certification for you or something? I think, I mean, that's a lot of those, like, I can see those being much more on the predatorial side, I feel like that because those, I know so, I know a lot of people who have transitioned out of like the service industry and moved over to like project management and things like that. And that seemed like that was the easiest transition for them. And some of them are absolute rock stars, man, because like you in the service industry, you know how to talk to people.

19:18
you know how to organize people and you know how to get shit done for lack of a better way. They can really do well at that. But yeah, you're probably seeing people understanding that when the pandemic hit, a lot of people decided they wanted to move out of the service industry because the tech companies are definitely making all the money. They're giving the best salaries.

19:41
And, you know, so it just makes sense that people want to transition into tech and maybe they aren't going to be the engineer. Maybe they're not going to be the technical person that knows the nuts and bolts, but they know how to organize people. So yeah, it's funny to see that happening as well. It's not just engineering. Yeah. Multiple points here from each of you. So certs, and I'm not trying to start a holy war here, but, you know, as certs, debatably

20:11
have less value in our field, it's shifted away, right? Like it's not, we're not seeing so much of the dump stuff anymore for like networking engineering, right? Like you are seeing it in cloud, right? All like the AWS search or Azure search or anything like that. And then PMP, right? Because now it's transitioning to where the market needs it most, I guess. It's focusing in. Yeah. It's just kind of funny that that's how it moves.

20:40
that the scam companies are smart enough to follow industry trends and move around with it. It's just weird. You're trying to tell me my CSKA is worthless now, Alex? Is that what you're... Oh boy, here we go. Oh no, no, no. No, definitely not. No, but yeah, you see that, I don't know if it's just more so in cloud than it was elsewhere, but it seems like people are taking the Pokemon...

21:09
got to catch them all. Oh my god, yes. The cloud certifications, you'll just see like people with like decked out walls, man, just like not an inch of white space on there. And it's just certification after certification, which is I'm not saying it's bad. Like, yeah, it's crazy. Like, I don't remember seeing that as much. Yeah. It's not. Maybe maybe when Cisco had all the specialties and stuff. But yeah, the amount of like people who have like rows, right? I've seen like pictures on LinkedIn. It's like.

21:37
AWS, here's all my list of certs here, Azure, and it just goes through the whole list. Why are they like, I got 20 certs in one year. What are you doing with that? Like exactly, what is your plan now that you've got all those certifications? Was that to get a job? Was that to perform the job? Cause I wanna know what job it is that requires you have 20 different, like to know everything there is to know about.

22:02
AWS or Azure or something to do the job you were hired to do. That was me. I would be like, yeah, I got 20 certs in one year and I forgot 14 of them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. There's not enough time for the mortar to dry on the first cert before you're on to the next one. Now, don't get me wrong. When I did WGU, there was a few that I did that, but if I'm being honest, there were certs that I needed for the degree and I had no intention of holding on to afterward.

22:29
Like was it the ITILv4? Like I raced through that one as fast as I could, you know? And I'm sorry, I apologize. Apologies to anyone who loves their ITILv4. I fucking hated it. It was, I hated that certification. I hated that test. I'm glad I don't remember half of it, right? So, if you're sprinting through ones that you have to get for another purpose, cool. But if you, you know, in theory, none of the...

22:55
I'm trying to think what purpose you could have to stack up 20 AWS certs or something. What job that is that you're looking for. Unless you literally want to work at AWS and covering everything. Yeah, to your point, if you're gaining it because you want a job.

23:15
doing that specific thing or something around that specific thing, then that makes sense. But if you're just doing it to check the box, maybe you work at a bar, maybe they're like, oh, we need to have so many people hold the certification. So sometimes you're just doing it to do it and it's part of your job. But that's not your selling factor. But I see people like their tagline on LinkedIn is like 10 times AWS certified, six times Google certified, things like that.

23:45
Yeah, I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. I'm not saying people shouldn't do it. It's just like, I don't know how that applies directly to compensation and hiring. I don't know what the correlation is there. Yeah, the hiring maybe, right? Because some of these companies are just searching keywords and they just want to make sure people have certain certs and that's all they search for in resumes, applications. That's a great point. Social media is very much a skill. I don't think they're searching for that many of them. Yeah.

24:14
Well, and that's actually getting back to the topic, though, that's another thing to look out. You know, if you've got a, if you see a tech bootcamp or something like that, and they're like, you know, you're gonna come out of our tech bootcamp with three high power certs that would normally take you six months each to study for, that's probably a pretty big red flag that you're gonna go in there and they're just kind of like handing you the answers, you know, and then how useful would that cert actually be?

24:41
you know, if you were called to use any of that knowledge. So, you know, it's another red flag to look for. Yeah. And let's, I mean, continuing on this trend of the red flag. So how about funding options? Right. Cause there's so many that you see here with boot camps. Um, you guys want to chime in on this? Like I know there's, uh, you know, diff deferred, uh, like take it out of your salary when you get a job, there's all kinds of different things here. Yeah.

25:08
I mean, I get the, so here's the thing. I'm of, I won't say I'm necessarily of two minds about it, but like I understand the point if, at least on paper, right? On paper, the idea is that here's a person, they're desperate, they need to get a job. You know, they need to, basically they're the ICP, the ideal customer profile of a tech boot scam, boot camp scam or something like this, where, you know, they don't have a ton of money.

25:34
They're trying to make things better for themselves and in quickly, right? To get that job, to get that money. And so, you know, in true classic fashion, we're going to offer them, you know, a loan shark type of deal, almost like a loan shark type of deal, right? Like a payday loan type of, of, of setup, right? Like to me, that's a big red flag is if the thing you're trying to do has these incredibly

26:02
creative funding options like that, like you're saying, like the deferred payment or deferred interest or you'll pay us X number of your salary when you get a job. Yeah, I don't know. I see the point, but it just doesn't, I don't know. What do you guys think? To me, it doesn't feel right and it feels like they're doing anything they can to get your money, basically, like even upfront. Yeah. I mean, I imagine with that kind of stuff, there's probably so much fine print.

26:32
Are you going to read through all that? Because man, like X, X percent of your salary up, up to what point, right? Like that sounds, there's just so many things to think about in some kind of contract like that, that's terrifying. Like you said, it makes you think of loan shark and I'm sure there are legit companies that use that model and it's, it's like, it's not bad for her, for the other party, but it's just, it doesn't come off as something that's valuable for them. Yeah. I mean, it can be potentially like when you get a credit card when you're 18 years old, right? Like it's like.

27:01
You don't understand the repercussions until they've come to ask for payment. But like it's, I lost my train of thought. I would say that it's not always a red flag if they have something creative because I mean, let's be honest, at some point someone is going to come up with something new that works. It's not going to be just a complete transactional thing. So I wouldn't say a creative.

27:29
funding option is an immediate red flag and immediately turn away. I think it's more, you know, just be more like a yellow flag. Just be weary. Make sure you look into it. Make sure you read the fine print as fucking boring as it's going to be. Make sure that you are advocating for yourself and make sure you're not, you know, getting yourself into a hole. You're not, you know, buying a lemon, so to speak, right? So just, make sure you protect yourself. But, you know.

27:57
That's their worded in these ways to sound creative. Yeah, exactly. The other, the main reason to me why I think creative funding tends to be skeevy is that because you can get creative with the funding, you'll find that the actual price tends to go up like, hey, what do you care? It's like you said with the credit card thing, right? Like

28:21
You know, they've given a kid fresh out of high school, you know, $5,000 limit on a credit card. They have no idea what they're getting into. You know, when you see the creative funding options, it tends to be, you know, that, oh, well, you know, we're getting, we're allowing you to creatively fund this because, and you shouldn't care how much we're funding because, you know, when you get your job, you're going to be making six figures, you'll be able to pay it back in a month or something, right? And so, you know, a place that's charging you $20,000.

28:50
to essentially get you your CCNA is still an absolute fucking joke. It's an absolute scam. Yeah, that is a good point. No matter how creatively funded they do it. Yeah, that is a good point. Some of them will be creative, but they're also very short-sighted, I feel like. They only really make you play it out for the next couple of years. You never know how the market's going to be. You never know how life's going to...

29:17
life's going to happen, right? So you need to be prepared. You need to have some protection for the long term. So yeah, that's a good point. All right. And then, so another point, this kind of combines like two points, but they go together, right? So a lot of this, the curriculum, right? This is something to look into a lot, because if you can see what the curriculum is, and then like Tim mentioned earlier, you can Google a lot of this and you'll probably find a lot of free material.

29:46
I think to me that's a huge thing that you want to look out for. If you Google all the topics that they present to you and you're seeing hits everywhere and there's a lot of free, easily accessible material, I think that's a huge red flag. It's just repackaged someone else's material. And people can build their own interpretation of the material and it has value, right? But I agree completely that, you know, if...

30:12
For example, using my example, $20,000 for a CCNA, most people that know what a CCNA is and what it takes to get one would be like, anybody who would pay that must have brain worms, right? But the people getting into it, they don't know, right? They don't know what it takes to get it. They don't know the value that it has. They don't know that Cisco will practically hand you everything you need to get a CCNA.

30:39
minus the test fee, you know, which is, which is, I don't know what it is now. What is it? Is it 200 now? I actually don't know. Right. Like, but when I took it, it was like a hundred, maybe a hundred, 150. I don't remember so many years now. I think, I think it's 300 now, but I'm not, not positive. You might be right. Even with the CCNA. But the point is it's not 20,000 freaking dollars. Right. And, and so it's absolutely nuts. And anyone who's going to.

31:05
interpret the CCNA training and build their own curriculum and course, I would argue that I don't care how gold-plated you did it, it's still not going to be worth $20,000 for your CCNA, right? So there's obviously lines to be drawn in the sand somewhere in there. And so certainly the curriculum vitae is a good place to start. How much of this can I find without paying for it? And how what quality is that material?

31:32
versus the money that they're asking me to lay down for essentially the same shit. Yeah, and I think that's also where things like samples are really good, right? Like we were talking about this a little earlier, but like Adrian Cantrell stuff, it's all listed there. You don't even have to buy it, right? You can literally go on the site, like expand the list of video courses, see the title of every single video that you would be getting. And I think he does previews too, right? Like you can actually watch like a video or two. Like the first couple ones, yeah. Yeah. I think that's right.

32:01
So just doing that and getting a feel for what the rest are going to look like, right? That's a huge advantage too. That's an awesome sign of something that's probably more legit. If we're trying to talk about like, you know, good, good signs or signs of like, you know, Hey, here's, this one's a legit one. You know, versus a scam, I would say a really good sign is if the person delivering either the material who created the materials, delivering the bootcamp course, whatever it is,

32:30
is like an actual authority in the field in what they're doing, right? Like that's an obvious big old green checkered flag, you know, not that those people couldn't still scam someone, but I mean, if you're a noted authority in your field and you have a community of people that believe in what you do and believe he was a person, that goes a lot further than someone who comes out of nowhere basically saying,

32:57
you know, I'm making six figures and I'm driving these cars and I'm, you know, doing all of this stuff. And you can too, if you follow me and do my course, like, you know, and this one seems so obvious in when you're looking at it, but of course, people who are new, you know, may not be able to tell the difference, right? And so you gotta be able to do your research. You have to do your research. Yeah, I think, I mean, right. You hit on a couple of things here, right? People that are new are probably not going to know who the authorities are in the field.

33:26
And this is really where social media is a skill, right? Like as soon as you get into a field, you need to be tied into the community so that you can figure out things like this. And then the second point is, I don't think these people are ever the same person. The person who's like the, you know, an authority in the community and the person who's always talking about the six figures they make and driving in my Bentley, right? They're not the same person.

33:51
So they'll never be the same person. So there's a big difference there. Yeah, but that it's almost like the, I don't know. It's like, it's almost like people with the mentality like of like toxic people in the weightlifting community, like made their way over to tech or something like that. Like it's like, Hey, I have this, you know, you don't have it cause you don't fucking want it in us. Like you're, you're, you're not built like me, you know, like you need to change it. You need to wake up at 5 a.m. every day and do it. Like it's like weird, man. I don't know how it like.

34:21
It's like this bully mentality, you know what I mean? You're selling yourself short, you're being a pussy or something like that. It's really strange. That's a sales tactic and I forget which one it is. Because what you're trying to do basically is get that person to prove to you, be like, oh, I'm not like that. I'm serious, right? And so they'll actually lay the money down. That's an actual sales tactic. Right.

34:47
It has a name and I can't remember that off the top of my head, but it's like a well-known thing, right? It's like nagging, right? It's like the nagging thing with pickup artists, right? They, oh yeah, the women, you know, you nag them and then they'll want to prove themselves to you or whatever it is. It's like that, but with tech or bodybuilding or whatever. Yeah, that's a good point. But it totally happens though. You're absolutely right. Like that's one of the many tactics that they use.

35:15
Like I said, you always see nothing but social media from these people about how people who took their course are making thousands of six figures. That's all you see from them. When you go to look for these people, they either don't exist or you just can't for whatever reason get in touch with them. You can't go validate it yourself. It's never that easy.

35:44
If someone is not engaging in the tech community, I don't want to sit here and say that everyone needs to be on social media, everyone needs to be tweeting every day, talking to people and things like that. But if they are, like we said, purposefully obfuscating what their training is like or something like that, and just saying, people that listen to me make the salary, drive these cars, they have this job or whatever.

36:15
like engaging in any way. Like you said, they kind of come out of nowhere and are all of a sudden like, yeah, you should trust me. I've been doing this a little while. You know, once in a while that probably is correct, but it's just like, it's weird to come in and think that you should be established this level of trust, yet you don't like, conversate with the people that do the same thing on a regular basis. So I feel like that is a little bit of a...

36:41
of a red flag. If you've never really heard anything or seen anything from them prior to that, and even while they're being a trainer, a mentor or something like that, if you still don't see content from them, then that's also quite strange. Yeah. And it's funny because the people you're talking about, right? If you're a lot of the people doing these videos or stuff like this, they're in your face and they're, like you said, the bodybuilder thing, they're talking to you like, you need to man up and do this and do that.

37:10
And it's like, those people are obviously outgoing. So you would think that those people would be engaged in the community, right? Like you said, social media is not for everyone, but those are the people that you would expect, if they were like that, would be really, have all these other contacts in the community and would be talking to everyone. Right. The trust thing, and I know we're running out of time, but, and we could probably go another hour just on trust alone, but the trust thing is really important, right? Like, you know, a lot of these scammers trade very heavily.

37:40
on the trust that is kind of either implicit or intrinsic or whatever with these communities, like the military or other underrepresented groups, whatever that is, right? That there's a lot of heavy trading on you can trust me because I am X. OK, I'll try not to make this go too long, right? But the military one really, really pisses me off because I was in the military 13 years, right? And so I know what happens when you get out.

38:09
and transitioning into the civilian world. And it's so funny because the military does such a great job of boosting you up, right? And teaching you how to do things for yourself. But when you get out of the military, all you hear is, are you sure you're gonna be able to make it, right? It's gonna be really hard for you to get a job outside of the military. There's a lot of negativity about getting out of the military. And now, mainly from people in the military, not the military itself,

38:38
Because the military itself has programs. I forget what it's called. I think it's like taps like transition assistance Something some program that's like as you get out It's meant to help you like transition and find a job and like they help you You know build out your resume and get interview skills and all this stuff And yeah, feel free to jump in anytime guys because I'm just gonna rant for a bit but yeah, you know you get out and everything's so uncertain and

39:06
A lot of these scam companies, they'll put something on their website that's like, oh, this is from prior US military, US Navy, US Marines, right? And playing on that trust piece, like you said. And it's so aggravating, man, because these people that are already vulnerable and being told, oh, are you sure you're going to be able to make it on your own, right? And it's a lot of people that joined the military did it when they were 18, 19, 20, right? Really young. So they get out and it's their first foray into real adulthood, if you will.

39:36
And, you know, so they're just vulnerable. And then you see this on here and you're like, oh, well, this is right, my brother in arms. It's catered to me. So they must be trustworthy. Yeah, exactly. And it's- Yeah, and they know what I need because they were in the military too and all of that, right? Yeah. I think that's actually the most disheartening thing about when something comes to light that you find out. Like someone or some organization that-

40:03
did kind of establish that level of trust based on, you know, a minority group of any kind, you know, whatever it is, an underrepresented community is that you just want to be like, bro, like you went through this, you know how hard it was, why are you going turning around and like preying on, you know, your kin, your brothers and arms? That's the biggest piece.

40:33
you know, establish a level of trust. Like I've been doing this for 15 years. You know, I'm an expert. You know, I drive this car, I have this salary, blah, blah, blah. And then to know that you turn around and offer these false promises to people, it's like, that's fucked up. Like there's no other way to put it. It's just fucked up. Yeah. No, it totally is, 100%. Yeah. And it's, like you said, killing that trust, man. It's so disheartening. Cause it's, I mean, I think all three of us, like we started,

41:02
at a help desk, moved our way up, right? Like that's how we expect to see people like being told to give advice. So when someone comes in and oh, 90 days, you can make six figures, shut up. Just, you know, why? It's so annoying, man. Some people say that's gatekeeping, but like here's the thing is like gatekeeping is arbitrary. And I know, again, this is for the people, people who haven't gone through the process will probably see.

41:30
certain things as arbitrary and therefore as gatekeeping. And again, we're almost out of time here. So we could start a whole other thing here. And I don't want to, well, we'll save that for a future episode. But it's not gatekeeping to, I think, be realistic, right? It's almost like the opposite of gatekeeping, right? Because someone who's going to believe that in 90 days,

42:00
you know, for whatever reason stumbled, tripped over a rock somehow and managed to make it happen, at least for some period of time. You know, that's going to be me. That's the unrealistic part. And that's really the part that's, you know, it's not realistic, right? It's like saying, you know, if you take your shovel out back and dig deep enough, you're going to end up with a pot of gold or something, right? Like, I mean, it's, if one guy does it in his backyard, does it deserve shit? Everybody run back out back with their shovels? Probably not, right? And it's probably not, and I don't think it's gatekeeping to say.

42:30
Yeah, you probably shouldn't run out back with your shuffle. That's probably no pot of gold in your backyard. Yeah, yeah. Not even not even trying to gatekeep. Right. It's just that. Right. I wish people could. That'd be awesome. If you could just come in and in 90 days, you could go and do it. I just I'm not even saying you have to do it this way. Just say it's not realistic. And like you said, it's just you have to be realistic with what people that have gone through this have gone through. I'm not saying you have to go through it, just that that's the expectation that.

42:59
you should have. You don't have to do it the way I did it, but I can guarantee you that, you know, unless you're bringing in some magic one type of ability or something, whatever child prodigy or Mozart, whatever it is from the outside, it's just not realistic in any way. Yeah, I think that's especially with this career field. I feel like it's more important as a mentor to point out the things that people shouldn't do rather than what they should do. And if you're if you're honing on what they should do, what they should earn.

43:29
know, what steps they have to take to get an outcome, then I think that's, you know, like, no, not everyone's going to follow your path. Not everyone has to follow your path. More so tell them, you know, don't lock yourself into a certain, maybe a technology sector, you know, maybe be a little bit more fluid, be willing to adapt, things like that. I feel like that's much better advice and kind of guidance to give to people.

43:56
Well, yeah, like Tim said, we're not going to keep dragging this out because we could go on forever. So I think this is probably a good point to wrap it up and I'll let Tim or Chris, you guys have any quick last points you want to chime up before we end the episode? If it seems too good to be true, it is. I mean, follow your gut, right? I think that's the main thing I would say. And I'll leave it there. My closing point is Alex said certs are worthless. So make sure you...

44:26
tweet at him and let him know how you feel about that. Hey, man, I'm the only one of us three that doesn't have a CCIE, so I can't even speak to it. That's true. Maybe pay, man. If you want to, you should go for it. Yeah, just go ahead. On weekends, you know. Actually, I know a guy. You put in 10 hours a day. 90 days, CCIE. I know a guy who'll look you up. All right.

44:53
Thank you all very much for tuning in to the Cables to Clouds podcast. If you like this episode, please share it around to anyone you think might be interested. Give us a five-star rating on your favorite podcatcher. Hit those like and subscribe buttons on our YouTube channel, and we will see you guys next time. Hi, everyone. It's Chris, and this has been the Cables to Clouds podcast. Thanks for tuning in today.

45:17
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