On Learning Cryptography (While Managing Three Teams)

February 01, 2026

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from context-switching between “help your report navigate a difficult conversation” and “prove that this hash function is collision-resistant.”

I signed up for NYU’s MS in Cybersecurity knowing it would be a lot. But “a lot” is an abstraction until you’re sitting in a Monday night class on applied cryptography, half your brain still processing the incident review from that afternoon, trying to internalize why lattice-based cryptography matters for post-quantum security.

And yet.

I love it. I genuinely love it.

Why Cryptography?

I’ve spent years building interfaces — making complex systems approachable. But at some point, I realized I was treating the systems themselves as black boxes. I knew what they did, but not always why they were secure.

Cryptography felt like the missing piece. The math that makes trust possible across untrusted networks. The elegant proofs that underpin everything from your HTTPS connection to the keys on your phone.

There’s something deeply satisfying about it. Unlike managing a team — where success is often ambiguous and progress is measured in culture shifts over months — a proof either works or it doesn’t. The math doesn’t care about your feelings.

The Unexpected Benefits

What I didn’t anticipate: how much it would inform my day job.

Not directly — I’m not implementing crypto protocols at work. But studying security has sharpened how I think about systems design. Every feature now comes with a mental model of its attack surface. Every data flow gets scrutinized for trust boundaries.

And there’s a metacognitive benefit too. Forcing myself to learn something genuinely new, something where I’m not the expert in the room, has made me a better manager. It’s easier to empathize with my reports’ learning curves when I’m actively on one myself.

The Hard Parts

Let’s be real: this is not sustainable forever. Something eventually gives. Sleep, usually. Sometimes exercise. Occasionally my social life.

I’ve had to get ruthless about priorities. If something isn’t essential for work, school, or health, it probably doesn’t happen. The poetry I used to write? On hold. The guitar I’m supposedly learning? Gathering dust.

But this is a season. The program has an end date. The teams won’t always be this size. I’m betting that the investment now pays off in capability and optionality later.

What I’m Learning (Right Now)

This semester: Applied Cryptography. We’re deep into:

  • Symmetric primitives (block ciphers, modes of operation, MACs)
  • Asymmetric crypto (RSA, Diffie-Hellman, elliptic curves)
  • Hash functions and their many uses
  • The looming specter of quantum computing and what it means for everything above

Next up: I want to dig deeper into zero-knowledge proofs. The idea that you can prove you know something without revealing what you know — it feels like magic, but it’s just math. That’s the best kind of magic.

The Takeaway

If you’re considering going back to school while working, especially in a demanding role: know that it’s possible, but also know that it’s a choice with costs. You’ll be tired. You’ll miss things. You’ll occasionally wonder what you were thinking.

But if the subject genuinely excites you — if you find yourself reading papers for fun, if the problems keep you up at night in a good way — it might be worth it.

The exhaustion is temporary. The knowledge compounds.