Follow us through our “buddy-film-esque” journey through life as servers, electrical engineers, embedded firmware developers, and finally hardware hackers. We have vast experience developing hardware and firmware that for lack of a better term was trash. Unbeknownst to us though each time we developed something that was insecure or simply didn’t work we learned a valuable lesson that would eventually come in handy in the world of cybersecurity. Ranging from laughable mistakes in hardware to endless dependency hell, and even embarrassing security decisions, we will demonstrate some of the tough lessons we have learned on the way to come to this point. We hope this talk is fun and informative but ultimately, we want to encourage the next generation of electrical engineers, hobbyists, hackers, and enthusiasts to venture into the world of hardware hacking and to not be overwhelmed by the subject matter as we are a clear example that with enough trial and error two goofballs can find their way into hardware hacking.