Why this exists, and who's behind it.
Most career advice for technology gets written by people selling courses, ranking affiliates, or chasing search traffic. POST isn't that. It's written by one person who's spent twenty years inside the work, from the helpdesk phone through to security architecture, and who got tired of watching newcomers burn two years on certifications that lead nowhere.
Twenty years from helpdesk to security architect.
I started where most people in technology start: telling someone over the phone to turn their laptop off and back on. From there I moved through tiered support (L1, L2, L3), did onsite installs and field engineering, ended up as a senior engineer, ran an IT department as a manager, and now work as a security architect. Along the way I sat (and passed) a decent stack of certifications across multiple vendors. I currently hold CISSP.
POST is the guide I wish I'd had at every one of those stages. It's also the guide I now wish existed when I'm on the hiring side of the table reading another CV built out of YouTube playlists.
- Phone support
- Tiered desk
- Field / onsite
- Senior engineer
- IT manager
- Security architect
Why POST exists
The single most damaging pattern I see, on both sides of the hiring table, is people stacking certifications and tutorials with no operational time wedged in between. Three credentials and zero context produces a candidate no hiring manager will trust to run anything on a Monday morning. I've sat in the interview, I've seen the face.
The opposite extreme is just as bad. Pure self-study with no structure leaves people busy for two years with nothing a recruiter can decode. Both routes waste real money and real time. Both get pushed hard by content optimised for engagement rather than outcomes.
POST sequences the route the way it actually plays out: foundations first, then a real role, then specialisation grounded in the work you're already doing. It says no to shortcuts because the shortcuts aren't real. The people loudly promising them have, almost without exception, never had to hire anyone.
To be fair, there are edge cases. Someone with adjacent experience, a sharp referral and decent timing can compress a couple of years. It happens. It's just not a plan you can hand to a stranger and expect to work.
How the pathways are built
Every pathway in POST is built from the same four sources, weighted in this order.
- 01Hiring reality
What real employers are actually posting this quarter in the UK, EU and US, not the aspirational job descriptions that read like someone's wish list. Entry, mid and senior listings all get sampled, because the gap between them is where most people get stuck.
- 02Operational truth
What the work feels like once you're in the chair. The distance between a job description and what's expected of you on day one is wider than most resources admit, and that gap is where people quietly quit in year one.
- 03Cert sequence that holds up
Which credential opens the conversation, which one's worth the money once you're already in role, and which one is a long-term bet that only starts paying back after three to five years of relevant work. Not what the vendor recommends. What hiring managers actually weight when they're shortlisting at 11pm.
- 04Realistic timelines
With overshoot built in. The "you can be a SOC analyst in six months" headline is almost never true, and the people repeating it aren't the ones doing the hiring. POST's timelines reflect what people actually report once they're a year in.
What POST will not claim
- That a certification stack on its own makes you hireable. It doesn't.
- That you can skip the boring operational years and walk into a senior role.
- That AI is about to delete IT. It isn't, and the loudest voices on this aren't doing the work.
- That any one vendor's path is universally correct. Most of them aren't.
- That getting into security, cloud or DevOps is fast. Occasionally it is. Usually it's a slog, and pretending otherwise just sets people up to feel like they've failed when they're actually on track.
If a section of POST starts drifting toward any of these claims, that's a bug. Tell me.
What POST is not
Update cadence
Pathways get reviewed every quarter. Certifications get re-checked whenever a vendor ships a version change (CompTIA refreshes, AWS or Azure or GCP path renames, ISC2 tweaks, that sort of thing). Salary bands get a proper look twice a year against current listings and reported data. When a pathway has gone materially out of date, it's flagged on the page itself. Nothing's silently left to rot.