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Want a peak behind the curtain into one of the best places to work in cybersecurity and the minds of the innovators behind the industry’s leading security operations platform? Tune in to The Howler podcast!
Hosted by Chelsea Lowman, People Experience Specialist, and Mary Newville, People Experience Senior Manager, the culture duo connects with pack leaders on leadership insights, mental health and overall wellbeing, and how they lead their teams to advance our mission of ending cyber risk.
Matt Setzer_Audio
Fri, Aug 14, 2026 12:46PM � 56:48
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Matt Setzer, Arctic Wolf, Chief Architect, Technical strategy, technical roadmap, technical skill, electronics, hardware hacking, computer security, computer science, machine learning, generative AI, leadership, delegation, gardening
SPEAKERS
Chelsea Lowman, Mary Newville, Matt Setzer, Speaker 1
Chelsea Lowman 00:00
Hi, welcome back to the Heller podcast. I'm Chelsea,
Mary Newville 00:06
and I'm Mary.
Chelsea Lowman 00:08
August 2026.
Mary Newville 00:11
Last chat of summer.
Chelsea Lowman 00:13
Last month of summer. Although technically, per the is it the summer sol? No, it's the fall equinox. It's an equinox. Doesn't happen until september 21.
Mary Newville 00:27
So
Chelsea Lowman 00:27
technically, summer is most of September.
Mary Newville 00:30
Okay, just kidding, everybody. Not last month this summer. We still have two more months.
Chelsea Lowman 00:35
But I feel like like we all are like August is once school starts. It's like summer. It's
Mary Newville 00:42
fall. Yeah, this year you have just like
Chelsea Lowman 00:45
last minute summer things you want to get in this last month before we go fully into fall.
Mary Newville 00:53
Um, I think just trying to savor the days. It's just been flying, but also my goal for fall is being a Texan now. That is the one thing I miss is the fall, like the crispy leaves and the smell and the cool air. So I do want to intentionally plan a fall trip, like whether that's just come back home and spend some time and get to do like some hikes. Last some or last fall, by the time I realized I wanted to do a fall trip, it was too late. It was there was we were busy. There were plans, and then we were trying to squeeze something into the weekend. So last minute, that flight prices just didn't make sense. So I need to get on that so that I can have my fall experience. What about you? Do you have any final summer bucket list items?
Chelsea Lowman 01:43
I have a whole list of things I wanted to do this summer, but again, it just has felt like such a short summer because June, like all of June, I was in Asia.
Mary Newville 01:52
Yeah.
Chelsea Lowman 01:52
So yeah, it just like I haven't even paddleboarded once on my paddleboard. I haven't sat in my hammock.
Mary Newville 02:01
You have to. I
Chelsea Lowman 02:02
know, but I will say
Mary Newville 02:04
that I can't. What
Chelsea Lowman 02:06
I know, I do. I but I've been really busy. Like I feel like I've I've just had a lot of social things every weekend, which is good. Like I've been doing fun things, so there's been less like me sitting in a hammock. But I hammock pretty. I hammock into fall. Like I will like cozy hammock with like blankets and hoodies and whatever. So I'm less concerned, yeah, about the hammocking. But I do. I need to get on my paddleboard at least once, and I just bought an anchor for it.
Mary Newville 02:37
Okay, because as you know,
Chelsea Lowman 02:40
yeah, I don't actually. My paddleboard is not to paddle. It's to sit in the middle of the lake and either read or watch Netflix on my iPad.
Mary Newville 02:49
I just love it so much.
Chelsea Lowman 02:51
It's like my boat. I can't afford a boat, but I want to be sitting on the water. So I just bought an anchor. So now I don't even because usually you know I paddle to the center, and then I slowly drift over to somewhere, and then after like 20 minutes, I gotta paddle again. Now I'm just gonna anchor myself, and I don't even have to do anything.
Mary Newville 03:11
Literally, it's gonna be amazing. So
Chelsea Lowman 03:14
I love that. Yeah, I need to do that at least some point. Nick and I were talking about maybe doing a weekend, but I just don't think realistically we're going to. So maybe in the fall. But you said last minute flights, and that made me think about your little extravaganza this past weekend.
Mary Newville 03:33
No, I haven't even talked to you guys about it. I was like, should I just quick text everybody to be like FYI? I did text Trisha. I asked Trisha before I did it. Obviously, yeah. Okay, well, just everybody knows. I met with my well, because I have something I want to say about something different. But just to bring this part full circle, like maybe many of you listeners, because I do know our average age at Arctic Wolf is 38. So I feel like maybe the average listener also grew up at the exact same time as us, and I loved Hilary Duff and the Lizzie McGuire show. Like that's what I watched on Saturday mornings. The long and short of it is, on Saturday morning, I was sitting on my couch, wishing that I had bought tickets to see Hilary Duff, and feeling a lot of regret because all her concerts are sold out. And by Saturday morning, I was on a flight to Philadelphia to go see every concert. It just the stars aligned. We were my best friend lives in Philly. For whatever reason, I the tickets were normal priced, and I was able to use Sky Miles to pay for them. And it wasn't a crazy amount of points; it was like 24,000 points, so like doable, and my friend lives there, so I got so just was like just the stars aligned, and it was so much fun. I feel like my inner it was just such a full circle honoring of like little me, but also like look at how much I've grown, and so has Hillary and like everybody else. Audience, it was a very like wholesome, healing, fun, fun, fun little adventure. So, okay, but I have to say something. I just saw this morning, and I think in with regards to time flying, I think this might like change some people's lives.
Chelsea Lowman 05:16
Okay,
Mary Newville 05:16
like this is better. It's not like a second bounce analogy. If you know, you know.
Chelsea Lowman 05:20
Okay,
Mary Newville 05:21
Chelsea. If I so on the topic of like time flying, summer being gone, yada yada yada, our bucket list. If I was to give you $10 million right now, would you take
Chelsea Lowman 05:34
it? I'm scared about where this is going. I don't know. No swings are
Mary Newville 05:39
captive. I was like, I will hand you $10 million right now. I'll write a check or whatever. I'll wire you $10 million. Would you take
Chelsea Lowman 05:46
it? Yeah, no, no strings attached. Of course, I take $10 million.
Mary Newville 05:50
Yes, I mean yes. Sorry, there are some strings in a second, but yes, you like okay, you take it right.
Speaker 1 05:55
Yeah.
Mary Newville 05:55
What if to take it meant you wouldn't wake up tomorrow?
Chelsea Lowman 06:00
No. Would you
Mary Newville 06:01
still take it?
Chelsea Lowman 06:02
Absolutely not.
Mary Newville 06:03
Right. So now you've you've just you've just told us that waking like being alive is worth more than $10 million
Chelsea Lowman 06:13
for sure. So
Mary Newville 06:16
everybody, I don't know. I saw that this morning on Instagram. I was like, "Wow, that is so powerful! Like, life is truly the greatest gift. Anyways, time's flying; summer's almost over, but
Chelsea Lowman 06:30
yeah, having tomorrow is
Mary Newville 06:32
like worth more than everything. So let's make the most of it.
Chelsea Lowman 06:36
Love, love, and final
Mary Newville 06:38
tickets to see your childhood idol icon in concert. It is like so good for the soul.
Chelsea Lowman 06:45
It looks so fun. I loved your like butterfly hair clips. It was you went all out on the moon. I was
Mary Newville 06:51
like, what would 13 year old Mary want to do and wear and be? We're going like she's leaving tonight.
Chelsea Lowman 06:58
Amazing. I thought you were gonna say. I feel like there's this video flowing around, speaking of the passage of time, and it was like, FYI, there's four more months until 2027, and 2020 was is gonna be seven years ago. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not right, because 2020 was just two years ago,
Mary Newville 07:22
right? Literally,
Chelsea Lowman 07:24
yeah.
Mary Newville 07:26
I don't. Yeah, time flies.
Chelsea Lowman 07:30
It really flies. Well, hopefully, it's not going to fly too fast while we chat with our next guest.
Mary Newville 07:36
Yes, good one.
Chelsea Lowman 07:39
Cheesy. Okay, who are we talking to today, Mary?
Mary Newville 07:44
Excellent segue. We are going to be chatting with Matt Setzer. He is our senior vice president and chief architect at Arctic Wolf. Matt partners with product and engineering leadership to set the technical strategy for Arctic Wolf products and platform. Matt has spent the last 20 years in senior engineering and architect roles in the security space at Microsoft and Sophos. Prior to that, he spent a number of years working in the game industry. With that, welcome to the podcast, Matt. We're so excited to have you.
Matt Setzer 08:14
Thanks. I'm excited to be here.
Mary Newville 08:16
Okay, love to hear it.
Chelsea Lowman 08:19
I've been telling Mary like you're kind of a man of mystery because you don't have a picture on your Slack or your LinkedIn. I've never been in a meeting with you, so I was like, I don't know what to expect. It's pretty exciting.
Matt Setzer 08:34
I I do tend to be camera off most of the time. Yeah, I'm just not a not a visual person. I'm kind of face blind, so
Mary Newville 08:42
hey, really, like for real?
Matt Setzer 08:44
Yeah, I have mistaken other people for my own children, and mistaken my own children for other people on multiple occasions.
Mary Newville 08:53
Hey, interesting. I've heard of that, but I've never met anyone that experiences that for the level of. so can you tell us where you're at in the world? Are you in Canada?
Matt Setzer 09:07
No, I live in southeastern Massachusetts, so I live
Mary Newville 09:10
Matt Setzer 09:11
miles south of Boston and 20 miles east of Providence.
Mary Newville 09:16
Okay, lovely,
Chelsea Lowman 09:18
fun. Well, before we get to the hard-hitting questions, we thought we'd start with maybe a little fun one, a little icebreaker. So, if you could master any technical skill that doesn't currently exist today, what would it be?
Matt Setzer 09:36
Technical skill that doesn't exist today, like doesn't exist at all, or does there that I don't have?
Chelsea Lowman 09:43
You can answer it in whatever way feels right for you.
Matt Setzer 09:48
Okay, I mean, I would love to be, you know, much more skilled in electronics and just kind of hardware level hacking. I have. No will there whatsoever, and being able to to repurpose devices and things like that, I can you know I can root a phone, but that's about the the extent of my skill there. So I would love to be able to do more in that area.
Mary Newville 10:16
Okay, let's say you had that skill. What would you do that you can't do today.
Matt Setzer 10:21
Disassemble the robot vacuum cleaner and make it work better. Set up set up some some better like tools for my garden to to tell me when when it's time to water and when hey it's had enough and I don't need to do this anymore, you know things things around the house that I would make easier if I had the the time and and the the aptitude to go hack those things.
Mary Newville 10:55
Okay, fun. So we're also learning that you're a gardener.
Matt Setzer 10:59
Yes.
Mary Newville 11:01
Okay. Have you always been, or is this something that has developed over your life?
Matt Setzer 11:05
I mean, I was raised by someone who was a gardener, so I spent lots of time as a kid working in my mom's garden. There's neighbors up the road that had gardens that I'd spend time with, and then took a long break when I lived in apartments in urban areas and didn't really have anything. But yeah, the last 15 years or so have always had some type of garden wherever I've been living.
Chelsea Lowman 11:35
Hey, I love that. What are you most proud of in your garden?
Matt Setzer 11:40
Native native plants, native flowers. So I, I mean, I have some vegetables that that are mostly volunteers that grew where where things were growing last year, and I didn't actually pull them out in time. But a lot of native flowers and and plants to attract Pollinators,
Mary Newville 12:01
pretty. How would you say is it for you a an outlet like a release, just kind of get out of the day to day and garden, and or maybe it's both. But I was going to ask, does gardening are there ways it makes you better at your job?
Matt Setzer 12:18
It certainly gives me lots of time to think, and I think that's a a big part of my job is is having time to think. And so, being out working with my hands, where where I'm just I have something to let my brain kind of run in the background is very helpful. So I don't know if it makes me better at my job. It does give me time to do an important aspect of my job, and it's a separation. It's nice to be able to go out and you know spend an hour pulling weeds, and at the end of it, look and go, yes, I have made progress.
Mary Newville 12:53
Yes, totally. I also grew up with a green thumb mother, and I never understood it as a kid, her love for it. But as I've gotten older, I I see myself becoming my mom, and there's just something so satisfying about, for for me, like seeing growth from like nothing to like the nurturing and like everything you do, and like and then flowers or fruit or vegetables come from it. It's just really amazing. So,
Chelsea Lowman 13:22
yeah. Well, you mentioned your skill. You would want to be able to take apart your robo vacuum, make it better, put it back together. I'm curious. As a kid, were you one of those kids like taking things apart, trying to understand how they work, or did that come like later in life? No,
Matt Setzer 13:43
my mother tells stories about me taking stuff apart from a very young age. So yeah, disassembling things, trying to figure out how they worked, putting them back together again.
Chelsea Lowman 13:55
Okay, so then tell us the
Matt Setzer 13:57
same number of parts. Sometimes not.
Chelsea Lowman 13:59
Yeah, yeah. I feel like it's never properly put back together. But so then, tell us a little bit about little Matt. Like, what did you want to be when you grew up, and then kind of take us on a journey. How did you end up here at Arctic Wolf?
Matt Setzer 14:13
I mean, for as long as I can remember, I've I've just been fascinated by computers, and so you know, as a kid growing up, I think it was always going to do something in computers or math. So I went to college, started as an electronic engineering and and math major. Realized I liked the computer part of it, the programming part of it, more than I liked the building part of it, which gets back to that lack of aptitude with electronics now, but switched to math and computer science. Was into graphics and scientific computing, and when I graduated, I got an offer from a game company in California, and I grew up here. Where I live now, so that was kind of fascinating, and so I took the leap and moved to California. Worked in games for a number of years. I'm not going to give you enough enough accurate numbers to add them all up, but worked in games for a number of years. Ended up moving to computer security when a game company that I co-owned. We had to wind down, and we'd been doing a game for Microsoft. And my the producer who'd been working with us at Microsoft said, "Hey, you know, we're we're hiring on the team that I work on, and you know you seem really smart, and we could use good people. So I interviewed at Microsoft, got the job, and when we started the game company, my wife was pregnant with our first child, who was born, I think, about a month after we kicked things off. And when we wound down the game company, she was pregnant with our second child, who was born between my interview and my start date at Microsoft, in fact, she was close enough to do that to her due date. That in my interview, every time I went in, I was like, "I apologize. My phone is turned on, and if it rings, I'm leaving because it rings. I have to get to the hospital right now. So fortunately, she held off. I think the our daughter was born two days after my interview, but you know I sort of figured, hey, I could use a stable job for a while. That would be nice. So I went to Microsoft and and really enjoyed the the security aspect, and and I did backslide. I went back to games for two or three years while I was at Microsoft, but otherwise, I've been in security pretty much ever since.
Mary Newville 16:44
Hey, interesting! What an interesting journey. And what would you say brought you back to games once you had kind of tasted security for a bit, and then what ultimately then brought you back to security, where you've remained the rest of your career?
Matt Setzer 17:00
So I've remained a gamer. I play lots of games, and just somebody that I had worked with was like, "Hey, I just went over to Microsoft Games. You know, would you like to come over here? And and I was like, "Yeah, sure, I'll give it a try again. But I think I enjoy not making games as much as I enjoy playing them. When you're when making them, you tend to get into a mode of hey, I need to analyze the game. I want to understand it, and it you know sort of detracts from the hey, I just want to sit down and shut my brain off and play a game for a while. Also, it is it is a very cyclic industry, and so you know there was a lot of ups and downs in that industry, and and again, it kind of got to you know I'd like to not be getting laid off every three months, kind of thing. Yeah,
Mary Newville 18:00
yeah, for sure. That's understandable. So, for those that don't know what an architect is in the security world, I think maybe people are more familiar with like a physical building architect. Give us a little peek into like what you do, or how do you describe what you do to people that don't know anything about your world, and what does a typical day in the life look like for you?
Matt Setzer 18:26
So that's a good question because architect, I think, is one of the vaguest terms in the technical industry because it can mean a lot of different things depending on the person. Mostly, you know, I mean, my job is is to help define the technical strategy for the organization as a as a chief architect. You know, if you're an architect of a product line, you're defining the strategy for the product line, and and really to kind of help map from the business goals and and outcomes that the business is trying to achieve. To all right, these are the pieces we have to build to make this work, and how those pieces fit together, and how we do this in a way that is the most efficient without you know building the same thing in three different places and and making them all work together properly. And so that's kind of my my role in terms of my day to day. I don't know that there is such a thing as a typical day for me. I you know I've learned over the years that my most productive hours are like late afternoon, early evening. So I try to structure my day so that I keep like Five 5p.m. on, kind of clear. I also try to structure my day so I start later because if I start at nine a.m. and then I've cleared 5p.m. on to work, I'm going to work you know 12 hours a day. So I know a lot of people who who look at my calendar notice. Wow, you're you know you. Block out your mornings. It's like, yeah, that's because I tend to work late into the evening every day. But so I, you know, keep some thinking time in the evening. During the day, it'll be meetings that will really depend on what's going on. So we have regular planning cycle meetings. So I'm in the planning cycle meetings. I'm in our quarterly business reviews, kind of understanding what's going on broadly in the business, what challenges we're facing, where you know where we need to be looking kind of ahead to say, hey, this is going to be a problem for us, or or you know this technical limitation is causing us a bunch of stress. We need to figure out how we're going to work through that. You know, we've obviously done some acquisitions. We look at other companies, so I do M and A investigation, and we'll spend time with companies that we're you know talking to, kind of looking at their technology and thinking about how this would fit in if we were going to do a deal. What that would mean. What we'd have to change, either on our side or on their side. Meeting with teams about projects that they have going on, and meeting with individuals. So just giving you know career feedback or guidance or or talking about projects. So a lot of a lot of meetings and discussions throughout the day, and then some time in the evening to to think and kind of provide feedback out of hey okay based on what we discussed this is what I think you should be looking at next.
Mary Newville 21:36
As someone who's not technical and not in your world at all, I'm hearing this and thinking, wow! You're there. Must be a lot of collaborating, networking. I'm thinking about how I'm trying to understand your world and how so it intersects with like product marketing, where they're creating personas and how are the product, how is the product used, and what what needs to be on the roadmap. But then you also have sales, who's on the front lines, and they're saying, "Oh, this is what the customer wants, and this is what we should build. And then you have us too, that experiences how the product is working, and how do you? What does it look like to be creating the technical roadmap for the product and balancing all these other people doing similar things or at least putting in similar requests or wanting to influence what it looks like?
Matt Setzer 22:36
Yeah. So ultimately, you know, our our goal is is customer outcomes, right? We we're here to protect the customer. That is our our number one thing, and you know the number two thing is to figure out how to do it cost effectively enough that a as a business we are making money, and b we can continue to you know add more capabilities and and and help better protect the customers, and when I'm interviewing people, I often talk about you know our two business goals being you know better outcomes at at better profit margins in that order because we can't sacrifice the first to do the second, and so you know the various groups stakeholders that you've listed are all folks that are on the front line with the customer? Their you know product marketing is out talking to to current customers, prospective customers. Sales is talking to a lot of prospective customers. s2 is talking constantly to our current customers, and so all of them are providing signal of things that you know, either you know customers want to be able to do, customers are trying to do, and struggling with our current products. The you didn't mention the threat intel team, but you know they're another big stakeholder of, hey, here's what's going on in the industry that may not be impacting us right now, but is coming, and so being able to you know gather all that data, and then and then part of my role is to help synthesize that into okay, you know we're we're hearing these things from these groups. If we distill that down, here's a capability that we're missing that we have to go build, or here's something that we could go add to the product that would enable us to to protect customers in another way or improve customer outcomes that solves you know these four things. We you know part of my job is to think strategically. It's easy to just chase hey you know customer called and said, "I have this problem. Okay, we're going to go fix that. Customer called and said, "I want to be able to do that. Okay, we're going to go add that feature, but it's really hard to build a cohesive product that way because everybody, you know, every user is looking at a slice of the product. They're not necessarily looking at the product as a whole, and so. So you know, my role is to help aggregate all that information and to feed that back into into our product teams. Of okay, I know you're you're thinking about doing this thing, but if we did it a little bit differently, we could solve your problem and this problem we have over here and address both of those together. But you know, a lot of my job is absolutely collaboration. Like I don't sit in in an ivory tower and think about how the world should be. I need to listen to all of our stakeholders and say, okay, what are what are the pains you're feeling, and how do we translate that into customer outcomes? Because at the end of the day, that's that's the thing that matters. Is are we protecting our customers, and what can we do to better protect our customers?
Chelsea Lowman 25:47
So, do you have one big roadmap of like if we to your examples earlier, like if we work on this product, this hits these customer needs that these various stakeholders have brought to us. Like, is there one big mastermind like roadmap?
Matt Setzer 26:06
Not really. I mean, I think we we try, but for a company of our size, it's very hard because you have a lot of different pieces, and also there's a lot of external things that can happen, so we kind of have a you know vision that I would say of of where we want to go and a roadmap for different product areas that extends out you know for a period of time, depending on the product area, six to 18 months. But realistically, if you looked back 18 months, you know what were we doing? What did we think the roadmap was going to look like 18 months ago versus the reality of the world today? It's very different, and so there. I don't want anybody to get really attached to a roadmap. I was actually having a conversation earlier today about some product features that actually got first kicked off four years ago, four plus years ago, before I even joined the company. That sort of just keep bubbling along, and it's like you know, at some point we have to decide that we're either going to do this or we're not going to do it. But people get attached to this. Well, I, you know, this was my job, and so I need to keep working on it until it finishes. We need to really be more flexible, and so we kind of have a vision. And certainly, you know, as a business, we have a annual operating plan where we lay out these are the things we're going to do. This is the you know why we're doing them, we obviously want to hit all of those things. But even there, sometimes we will make adjustments because you know market forces dictate. Hey, you know based on based on what our competitors are doing, based on what our our threat actors are doing, we need to make some adjustments and we need to pivot in a different direction. So, I would say there is a vision. I don't know that I would say there is a big master roadmap because I don't. I I think that kind of lends itself to a to a locked in way of thinking that can be very dangerous for a business.
Mary Newville 28:17
That's really interesting. I I like what you're saying about there's there's a vision, but there's it's held with an open hand, so that as the market change or a like right now AI is changing everything. There's that room to be strategic if we can let go of what's no longer serving us, if you will. I imagine in your role, I'm curious if you're naturally good at this. Well, I guess I'm curious if this is true and if you're naturally good at it, and what we can learn from you for those of us that aren't, but I'm thinking about that you must have to be really comfortable. I don't know if the word is disappointing people, but I'm sure people have a lot of opinions of like we should do this, and I really want to do this, and ultimately you just need to make a decision and move on and do the best you can with the data you have, and know that you're not going to be able to make everybody happy, but you feel confident in the decision. Is that something that comes naturally to you? Is it a skill you've already had, but has got has strengthened over time? How does that land? Does that does that do you think that's right? Or
Matt Setzer 29:21
I will say that that I'm you know fairly comfortable in my own skin, so I'm not really concerned about you know people being upset with with decisions and things. So in that sense, it does come naturally to me to kind of say, okay, you know, here's the options on the table. Here's the trade-offs. Let's pick one. All right, let's move on. Like we've picked one. Let's move on. There, you know, there's this notion in the industry of one-way doors where you want to you want to maintain as much flexibility as you can. There are decisions that you make that once you've made them, it's like okay. Well, I'm stuck with this decision for a very long time, versus things where you can just say, "Okay, well, I decided this this year, but next year I can just shift, and it's not going to cost us a ton of time or effort to shift. And so, you know, obviously, weigh those one-way doors, the bigger decisions, more carefully. But yeah, at the end of the day, I'm just kind of like, hey, let's make a decision and keep going. I I don't, I you know, I just want to get things done. Like that's that's sort of my approach. Is I I want to, and I am, you know, known as a somewhat direct person, which is why I kind of laughed when you asked about you know disappointing people are are kind of saying like I'm I'm just like this is it this is this is how it works and and if it's bad news I'm just going to give you the bad news if it's good news I'm going to give you the good news but not not known for for sugarcoating things
Mary Newville 30:55
totally no I appreciate that I've never heard the analogy of the one way door like one way door decisions versus two way door decisions, but I'm gonna think about that. I love that, and I don't know if disappointing feel was the best term. I wasn't trying to say you're disappointing people, but you know when there's a lot of opinions on direction, just the like here's the decision. I know not everyone, yeah. Some people
Matt Setzer 31:17
some people come away disappointed. Like if you're, you know, the example that I was using a few minutes ago of the thing that's been going on, bubbling on for years. Like we've had, you know, different teams working on it, different people working on it. If we decide, you know, what that made sense four years ago, but it really doesn't make sense now, there are definitely going to be some people who are disappointed. They put a lot of time into it, I personally tend to be much more attached to the outcomes than I am to the work. At one point, I remember somebody commenting because we were working on a project, the business canceled the project. They said, "Hey, we want you to go work on this other thing, and we got the news probably 11 a.m. in the morning and by 4p.m. in the afternoon, I was like, "Okay, so here's what we got to do. Here's the, and and one of my teammates was like, "You know, how did you switch that fast? Like, how, you know, I want to mourn this other project for a while. And I was just like, "No, I'm done. Yes, yes, I spent six months of my life, you know, putting a lot of effort into it, but it didn't work out. It wasn't the outcome, and you know, I have had to learn that not everybody kind of switches on a dime like I do, and so I have to give people that space and time if we are making those decisions. But ultimately, I think as a business, you have to make hard decisions and and and focus because you can't do everything that everybody wants to do, and so
Mary Newville 32:46
yeah,
Matt Setzer 32:47
I guess you know it does sort of come naturally to me. I think.
Mary Newville 32:52
Yeah, no, really interesting thoughts. I mean, I have noticed from being on just with all the AI changes happening at with internally and being on some calls as you, I've really appreciated your directness because that is something that I, I think, is a growth edge for me of being comfortable in the uncomfortable and being more direct to cut through. Sometimes I can sit in the discussion a little bit longer, but I've appreciated your directness and just seeing that in action. As sometimes you've just called out like, "This is out of scope. Like, let's stop talking about it. I'm like, "Yeah, let's stop.
Matt Setzer 33:31
I even know which meeting you're talking about, and yes, I'm pretty good at saying, "Hey, this is this is the bounds of what we need to decide here. Let's not.
Mary Newville 33:40
Yeah, super helpful though.
Chelsea Lowman 33:44
Well, on the talk of topic of AI, obviously it's it's all anyone's talking about right now. So we'd be remiss not to hear your thoughts a little bit about AI. It's top of mind here at Arctic Wolf. Kind of what excites you most about AI? What's been your like personal and professional journey with it? Are you like full steam ahead? Kind of share a little bit more about your thoughts there.
Matt Setzer 34:12
Sure. So I mean, you know, one thing that's worth noting is that AI is a very broad term that's meant a lot of things, and and so you know, AI in in cybersecurity. We've been using machine learning in a variety of ways of cybersecurity for many many years. In fact, we acquired Silence, whose main claim to fame was applying machine learning to to static file analysis. Gen AI, you know the the AI tools that can kind of more converse, and that's a newer thing. And I think that's where where when people talk about AI and and and for good or bad, that's kind of where their their focus is to. But it's been it's been really interesting watching it progress. It has allowed us to do some things that would have been very difficult for us to do a few years ago, because what we were doing with machine learning was really pattern matching and not able to apply sort of a level of reasoning on top of that that required humans or additional techniques, whereas now the kind of the reasoning has become much more accessible to a to a wider variety of people, and it's you know it's let us build say the swarm of experts where we can say we can take some of the straightforward knowledge. Hey, if you see this, these are the four things you should go look at that were not quite codifiable as as you know lines of code to say, okay, you look at these four things, you make a decision, but hey, you need to look at these four things, and then you kind of need to evaluate some trade-offs, and maybe maybe you can make a decision, maybe you can't. So it's really opened up some some doors there on the on the you know engineering side, the coding side. These tools have gotten very good at operating in a in a model where you can kind of frame the problem and say, okay, I need you to you know solve this problem and and make sure these tests pass, and and the tools are very good at kind of iterating within that kind of environment, and so it's helped unblock you know a lot of work that that is not hard, but would not generally get done. When I was when I was at Sophos, at one point we actually discussed briefly hiring like a couple of people to kind of work with me because there was a lot of tech debt that we were working through. That I was like, wow, you know, if I just had an engineer that I could go talk to and say, this is what I want you to go do, and now go do that across the codebase, that would you know allow us to get a lot more done than than me sitting there working on it, you know, half an hour a day. We ultimately decided it wasn't really worth the money, but now, like if I had the tools that I have today, back then I would have gotten most of that work done in in a matter of months. So it's really opened up a lot of of opportunity and and to do like to help people automate things that they wouldn't have automated. So I think even in our non-programming folks, are I think I was working with our legal department on something, and and the lawyer that I'm working with is is like, hey, you know, I need to do this and this and this and this, and we never would have taken the time to write a program to do those steps, but now it's like okay, you can you know script an LLM to go do those things because you can describe it in English and it can kind of figure out what what you need to do and then you still have to check the work. It's not not you know perfect, but you know it's like having a legal aid to go do all of that, except this person can go figure it out and say these are the things that I want to go do for problems that are not big enough that we would have applied, you know, an entire legal aid to them.
Matt Setzer 38:32
I think it is really expanding the the realm of of problems that people are able to solve for themselves, and things that they can try. Now, you asked about me personally, so that's interesting because I did say earlier a lot of my job is thinking and you know synthesizing information. So, gathering information, the tools have been great for, so it's been great for me to be able to say, "Hey, I need to go figure this out. Go, go, you know, rummage around in our in our ticket backlog and find all the tickets that are related to this, and our people talking about these things, and you know, go process all this feedback and and summarize it for me in terms of the actual you know understanding of that information and then creating outputs though that I still tend to do myself. I posted something to one of our internal Slack channels a while ago about kind of my my process of of staying on top of things, and I tend to take a lot of notes in meetings. I use a Kindle Stripe, so I don't go through quite so much paper. But I take a lot of notes, and then I transcribe the notes. And you know, people have asked, well, you know, well, could it? Could I do handwriting recognition? That handwriting problem again, but even if I could, it's the you know the transcribing, the retyping is me thinking and processing, and so I think it is it is very important for people to kind of understand that they are tools, they are super helpful in many ways, but if you're like you know, using it to to skip the thinking piece and just kind of throwing stuff back out at your coworkers, then you're not adding value. And so I think that's something that internally, like even Dan Chappa posted something on LinkedIn a while ago about I think he called it AI noise. Like you know, you need to put in the time to understand. Like my value add is is the synthesizing and the thinking and the saying, okay, this is how this all should work. That's not a good use of of AI. Getting the data, helping me to understand the volume of data. That's that's a really good use, and so that's largely where where my use of it is, and and some you know visualization and things like that. That it's just like oh, it would have taken me a couple of days to go figure out how to get a graph that I want in Excel, and now I can just say, do this, no, make it you know greener over here, and it just does the things that I want. So that's super helpful.
Mary Newville 41:20
Yeah, no, I think that's really interesting and spot on. I I remember seeing that article by Dan Shiapa too. I feel like he was bold and he called it AI slop, not even noise. Maybe I'm like conflating that with something else, but
Matt Setzer 41:34
AI slop is kind of a general term that people have used. I think he I think he called it noise because he wanted to to distinguish from, you know, just kind of regurgitating something and and and you know typing in a prompt and saying, "Hey, I wrote a book, just kind of AI swap, whereas you know having somebody you know produce an email that's you know 4000 words that were generated by ChatGPT. It's like exactly is that
Mary Newville 42:07
is
Matt Setzer 42:07
that the value add that you're bringing? Because if that's all you're doing, I could get that from ChatGPT myself. I'm asking you to process the information to tell me what's important. And you know certainly there are lots of memes about people using it to generate emails, and then people using it to summarize said emails. And played the game of telephone. You can probably guess how that ends. So
Mary Newville 42:34
it is
Matt Setzer 42:34
important to to you know use the tools to bolster your abilities and skills, not to say, "Hey, I'm going to use the tools so that I can skip out on on work and go play in my garden all day. As much as as tempting as that might be,
Mary Newville 42:50
right? No, absolutely. It's like truly using it as a tool versus a replacement for like the value really only you can bring. If we switch gears here a little bit and chat about leadership. How do you define leadership, and how has that evolved throughout your career?
Matt Setzer 43:09
That's an interesting question. So, I mean, I think keeping it in the business perspective, it's about sort of defining the the goals of the business, and then breaking down the you know from the goals here the things that we need to do, and here's the the functions that will do those various things, and then providing support to the leaders of those functions so that they can do the things that they need to do. So you know, Nick saying, "Hey, you know, this is what we're going to go out and accomplish this year without any additional guidance or structure would just be chaos, right? We have 1000s of employees. They'd all figure out. Okay, well, I think I should go do X to go support that goal. We'd end up with you know a bunch of people doing the same things and big gaps where things weren't getting done that should be getting done. And so you know, kind of providing that that extra structure, but then supporting the team with, okay, what is it that you need? What tools do you need to get your job done? How can I help you be more effective? How can I, you know, answer questions and then get out of your way? So I think it's it's providing that structure and guardrails, and then kind of letting the the folks that you've hired, trusting the folks that you've hired to deliver on their area of expertise relative to the things that you're asking them to do,
Mary Newville 44:45
I like that. It it defines the vision, but gives people the space to spread their wings.
Matt Setzer 44:52
Yeah, supporting them and developing
Mary Newville 44:55
them. Yeah, yeah.
Chelsea Lowman 45:00
I feel like sometimes the getting out of the way is a challenge. Do you find that comes naturally to you?
Matt Setzer 45:06
No, not at all. I, you know, am am a hands-on person. I got into this role because, or you know, started in in this field because I liked being hands-on and and and doing the the work, and so you know, figuring out that boundary has been an ongoing struggle, particularly as I've moved up in level, and and where I should be drawing that line has changed, because you know now even with AI tools, it's not appropriate for me to be like, hey, I'm just going to go write all the code. So figuring out the boundary has definitely been a been a challenge for for me as a more hands-on person. And I've worked with people who were, you know, moved into management and were like, oh wow, thank you. I don't have to write code anymore. Yay! I've never understood that. It's like no, I'm the opposite. I wish I could write more code, but I understand that that's not the thing that I should be doing for the business. So yeah, that that is a tough thing, and and you know, the entire concept of micromanagers comes from I think people struggling to find that boundary.
Chelsea Lowman 46:20
Uh huh. Yeah. Are there any like tips or things you've learned as you've navigated this that you think would be helpful for other leaders?
Matt Setzer 46:34
I mean, building a level of trust, making sure that you've you know hired people that you trust to do the job, talking out, you know, this is what I what I expect. This is what I would like to see out of this. Understanding that that there are you know n ways to solve a problem, and just because it's not done the way you would have done it doesn't mean it's not right. And so, really focusing on outcomes, I guess, is is the big thing there. You know, if you focus on the outcome, are we hitting the outcome? Okay, sure, it wasn't done exactly the way I would have done it, but we hit the outcome. We can, you know, grow on, grow the business, move on, and do the next thing. Versus no, it it you know I expect it to be done this way because this is how I would have done it, so you know I think if I had one tip, it would be focusing on the outcomes. That's the thing that really matters at the end of the day.
Chelsea Lowman 47:30
Yeah, yeah, that's making me think. Last week we hosted a professional development session on delegation for some of our Stronger Together program leaders, and we had Kelsey Besser and Vic Wiesner present, and they were speaking on this exact thing. And something Kelsey said really stuck with me was, which was, was it wrong or was it just different? Yeah, I guess it was just different, and that's okay. We still got the outcomes, but yeah, I think just challenging. I think for most people, that's a challenge as a leader. Okay, well, before we get to our rapid fire, we always like to talk about wellness. So you shared a little bit about your gardening, but what does well being look like in practice? Is there anything else outside of gardening you do? Any routines, boundaries?
Matt Setzer 48:26
Yeah. So, so I think you know the one that I already mentioned is is understanding kind of where I'm most productive and and what that means for me, and trying to structure my day around that doesn't always work. You know, many of the people I work with most closely are morning people, so there's a little bit of a tension there between us. But you know, trying to structure my day so that I don't get into a mode where where I get to you know 4p.m. and then it's like, okay, now I want to to start being productive, and then I realize, wow, I worked you know, 12 hours a day every day this week. Exercise is super important to me. Again, I think this is the in the thing that I sent out internally, but you know, everybody kind of has their their thing that helps them kind of reset and recharge. For me, I do some walking or running every day. I work out four or five days a week, and so I I really try to make time for exercise and sleep. Like I make sure that I get you know a good seven eight hours of sleep a night, and and where things have to get traded off, then you know I might trade off the exercise for sleep. Although I I know if I do that more than a couple of days in a row, then I stop sleeping. So, but yeah, I really try to make you know the exercise is a reset. For me, and I and I make sure to to focus on that.
Chelsea Lowman 50:04
Are we talking weightlifting, or what? What's the exercise? Does it vary?
Matt Setzer 50:11
So I do. My wife and I belong to a CrossFit gym prior to prior to the pandemic, and we end up building a pretty you know, well-equipped garage gym over the the course of the pandemic. So so yeah, I I do an online program now, but but basically that.
Mary Newville 50:33
Okay,
Matt Setzer 50:34
lots of variation, which helps because
Chelsea Lowman 50:36
yeah,
Matt Setzer 50:37
when I when I did you know kind of the the standard weightlifting thing, it was easy to kind of fall off the routine, get bored, and now you know every day I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing today. So
Chelsea Lowman 50:53
yeah, nice CrossFit is no joke
Mary Newville 50:58
for real. Yeah.
Chelsea Lowman 51:00
All right, Matt. Well, you survived. We only have the fun rapid fire questions left. It wasn't too bad. Hopefully, wasn't
Matt Setzer 51:08
too bad.
Chelsea Lowman 51:08
Okay, good. I was like, uh oh, there's silence. Okay, so rapid fire. This is just first thing that comes to your mind. Best concert of your life.
Matt Setzer 51:19
Uh, so my my daughter is a performer, and so I'm going to have to say one of her concerts.
Chelsea Lowman 51:25
Wow! Like a singer or a music?
Matt Setzer 51:28
Yes, yes. She actually got a degree in vocal performance from a music school in Los Angeles, and is now doing wrapping up a degree in the next few weeks in recording.
Mary Newville 51:41
Amazing! So.
Chelsea Lowman 51:44
your favorite word?
Matt Setzer 51:47
Not one that I can say on this podcast. Okay, we'll go with chocolate bucket.
Chelsea Lowman 51:52
A place on your bucket list.
Matt Setzer 51:59
I'm really a homebody. I, I, you know, like when I take vacations, unless I'm, you know, traveling to the West Coast to visit my daughter, I'm pretty much at home. So, my my garden. I
Chelsea Lowman 52:14
was gonna say a nice stroll around the garden, baby. What's something that people often get wrong about you.
Matt Setzer 52:21
That's a good question. I think you'd have to ask somebody who formed an initial opinion and then got to know me. I'm not sure. Okay.
Chelsea Lowman 52:28
Last one. Give us a snapshot of an of an ordinary moment in your life that has brought you joy.
Matt Setzer 52:35
So I guess there there would be two. One would be just like you know, hanging out with my family someplace, you know, out at a brewery listening to music or something like that. And the other would be a few weeks ago. I was in the garden. It was kind of peak season, so all the flowers were at their peak, and I was watering some plants. And I stopped and just surrounded by bees and wasps and and bugs and the butterfly floating by and I was like wow you know I 10 years ago this was all like grass so I was pretty happy that that I had that I had done that and just kind of stopped to soak in that moment for a bit
Chelsea Lowman 53:15
that that sounds so peaceful and beautiful okay amazing well once again, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Really excited for the pack to get to listen, to get to know you better. I agree. Lots
Mary Newville 53:31
of great wisdom gems, though, about the architecture org, and yeah, I think I'm excited for the greater pack to get to know you better and learn from you. I certainly learned a lot today and really enjoyed the time. So thank you so much, Matt.
Matt Setzer 53:46
I'm looking forward to all of these slacks I get that are said, "That's what you look like.
Chelsea Lowman 53:51
Seriously, I yeah. Maybe you can now add a photo now that you've revealed your face. Maybe you can add a slack photo. You know, you know. I I
Matt Setzer 54:02
need to get the rubber. I have a Zoom photo that that is a rubber duck. I need to go get the. I I didn't realize I hadn't put it in Slack. I need to go find the photo again.
Chelsea Lowman 54:09
Okay. Okay. Awesome. Well, thanks again. Have a great rest of your day.
Matt Setzer 54:14
Thanks. You too.
Chelsea Lowman 54:15
Wow. Another great chat in the books. I will say I was really excited to chat with Matt because I don't know what a chief architect. I didn't know what a chief architect did at all.
Mary Newville 54:27
To be honest, and I didn't know Matt. I don't know Matt at all, so that was fun to get to know him more personal level.
Chelsea Lowman 54:35
100% Well, as we wrap up summer, if you are part of the pack, don't forget to sign up for our Run with the Pack 5K. It's our sixth annual race run walk, which is wild. That is later in September, but sign up on the registration form by August 21st. You can find all the information on the Run with the Pack Confluence page. We've also launched our. Our pack gives back. Our pack gives back global VTO challenge. That's a mouthful.
Mary Newville 55:06
Volunteer challenge. Yep.
Chelsea Lowman 55:08
We are pitting our three regions against each other: North America, EMEA, APAC, and so throughout q2, we're going to see which region can use the most VTO, so you can find more information on that in the Pat Gives Back Slack channel.
Mary Newville 55:27
I'm so excited for that. Here in Texas, we're kind of upping the ante a little bit, and we're making it an office competition that's Mario Kart themed.
Chelsea Lowman 55:38
Of course. So
Mary Newville 55:38
I'm on Team Rosalina, and hopefully at the end of q2 we come out on top.
Chelsea Lowman 55:46
I mean, I love it because that is just adding to the North America tally, which obviously is I live in North America, so I want to win.
Mary Newville 55:57
But may the what's the phrase? May
Chelsea Lowman 56:03
the best man win. May the odds be ever in your favor.
Mary Newville 56:06
Yes, tell the other countries that's what we say to you. Yep. Best of luck.
Chelsea Lowman 56:11
Is that the phrase? May the odds
Mary Newville 56:13
be ever in your favor. You're right. That's Hunger Games, right? Hunger
Chelsea Lowman 56:16
Games. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mary Newville 56:18
Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Well. Anyways, if you want to join this one of kind one of a kind community that we call the Pack, you can always find our open positions at ArcticWolf.com/backslash careers. Enjoy the last couple months of summer here, and we will catch you in September
Chelsea Lowman 56:33
for our third anniversary episode.
Mary Newville 56:35
Yes, for our third anniversary, three years of the Howler podcast. See you soon! Thanks, everybody.
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