CISO role first held by Steve Katz
Joel de la Garza noted that the CISO role is a relatively recent invention, with Steve Katz widely credited as the first-ever CISO.
Where this was said
The CISO Talent Problem and Waiting for Vendors
At 12:15 · chapter starts 12:00
Escobar recounts a roundtable on agentic security he led the previous week where the dominant emotion among participants was helplessness — a waiting game for commercial products to make the problem go away [1] — Emilio Escobar "At a recent roundtable on agentic security, most security leaders expressed a sense of helplessness — waiting for a commercial product to s…" 11:48 . He finds this troubling, not because buying security products is wrong, but because the space is moving too fast for passive observation. De la Garza picks up the thread, tracing the talent gap back to the CISO role's origins: the title barely existed a generation ago, and when security teams grew large enough to need managers, the profession hired managers — not technologists. That history means a lot of CISO programs are structured around procurement rather than building. For companies where software isn't the competitive advantage, that's defensible. For companies like Datadog, it isn't.
The Convergence of Security and Software Engineering
Security engineers at Datadog are paid the same as software engineers. AI is redistributing engineering talent — as demand for tier-1 coders drops, security teams are gaining access to technical talent they never could afford before.
Similar snapshots
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China was 25% of global output in 1820s
In the 1820s, China accounted for 25% of global economic output, making it the world's largest economic machine — a historical precedent for its current AI superpower ambitions.
444 days hostage crisis
66 Americans held hostage at the US Embassy in Iran were released after 444 days, within hours of Reagan's inauguration.
508 TOW missiles sent to Iran
In the first round of the secret arms deal, 508 TOW missiles were transferred from Israel to Iran in exchange for hostage releases.
2,000 missiles in 8 shipments
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran across 8 separate shipments over just over a year.
Only 3 of 7 hostages released
Despite all the missile sales, only 3 of the 7 American hostages held by Lebanese terrorists were ultimately released.
Plane shot down at 2,500 feet in daylight
The CIA supply plane that blew open the scandal was flying at only 2,500 feet in broad daylight when it was shot down on October 5, 1986.
Reagan said 'I don't recall' 88 times
In his 1990 deposition about Iran-Contra, Ronald Reagan said 'I don't remember' or 'I don't recall' 88 times.
