Q&A | Carter Spear, cybersecurity expert

West Hollywood resident and cybersecurity expert Carter Spear was recently featured on Google Job Hoppers.

Share a little about your career background before you jumped in Cybersecurity?

I spent most of my early adulthood thinking I was gonna be an animator. I put lots of study into the science and art of 3D animation. I then realized my senior year of college that I really wasn’t that good of an artist! I worked at the IT Helpdesk at my college, and I was very good with the computers. I found a lot of joy in helping people understand how technology works. When I graduated, my first real tech job was at the Geek Squad at the Best Buy on Santa Monica and La Brea! I then worked for a managed service provider that did technology work and was the primary systems administrator for a VFX company contracted to work for companies like Disney and Warner Brothers… and now I’m a cybersecurity engineer!

What made you decide to shift careers?

I’m a curious person, and I get bored easily. To keep myself engaged and doing my best work, I need to make sure I’m learning something new every day. I love to help others learn in the same way, but eventually, I found that I ran out of things to learn. You can only fix so many laptops or connectivity issues before you get bored. In cybersecurity, there’s never a dull moment. There’s always a new vulnerability. There’s always a new puzzle to solve to keep the bad guys away from data. Every day I get to wake up and solve the puzzle of “how can I discover my own vulnerabilities and fix them before someone malicious does?” And because there’s always something new, I’ll never be bored again.

How has that impacted your life and lifestyle?

I’m always thinking. I’ve always been a cautious person, but now it’s my job to wear the tin foil hat! I also make much more money than I did in other fields. It gives me the money and time to do the good work I was most passionate about when I was a kid. I finally have the resources to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to issues like mutual aid and support for struggling people on the streets. I actually work with a few unhoused support organizations down in Venice (primarily Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid, or PUMA) and I’m so thrilled that I’ve reached a phase in my life where I can be the change I wanted to be for our society’s most vulnerable when I was a kid.

How did earning a certificate help and how could it help others?

Technology changes incredibly quickly. What was relevant knowledge last year might not be relevant ever again. Learning the basics is critical– and because I went to art school, I didn’t have a lot of those fundamentals when I decided to start pivoting to tech. That’s why I pursued the Google Career Certificate program. When I needed more specialized knowledge, I studied and pursued my own learning for additional certifications (and I’m still studying for more!). That’s why tech is one of the fields where you seem to find backgrounds of all types. As soon as you can learn how to direct your own learning, the world is yours, and for very little relative cost when you decide to pursue certification in relevant topics over more traditional school. Not to mention that certification paths are often much more accessible than traditional school – you can study anywhere and take the test at any time, and study for as long as you like without the deadlines of school keeping you from spending the time to master a topic.

How did you get connected with Google’s Job Hoppers?

One of Google’s folks reached out to me! She asked if she could send some people to my house… And then Aaron Burriss showed up and chaos ensued! Fun chaos, but chaos, nonetheless. He sniffed all my spices too. That clip didn’t make it into the final.

How does it feel knowing tens of thousands of people are being inspired by your story after watching?

Honestly, it makes me a little nervous. I used to be pretty big on TikTok and I remember the hate comments being a pretty big component of why I stopped posting and eventually took down most of my videos. I am a gay, trans person, and putting myself out there again was hard. But I balanced that with how valuable I feel representation of my kind in this field is, and I got over the fear. I hope some gay kid or trans kid feeling hopeless about their own future somewhere sees the flag in the background of my episode and sees their own potential future success in my story.

What are your career goals and aspirations now?

My aspirations are to stay engaged and keep doing great work, both in my pursuit of the tech knowledge, and in the other stuff I do. I’d love to become a manager or a trainer one day to get back in touch with my roots of why I liked tech in the first place– technology is nothing without the user. I still find a lot of value in the human component, and being able to help others better themselves is a real joy for me too. I want that to be a core component of my future plans, however that happens to manifest itself.