Why the rubbish name of the Blog, and what is this bad news?
It is a bit rubbish isn't it, but it's my title and I am keeping it. I have been involved with Software Testing malarkey for over twenty years now almost all of it has been manually done...times are changing though this old coot has to get into the modern age or I will be put out to pasture, or wherever old testers go in their twilight years-there is probably a dark dingy dive bar full of old testers muttering over the cheap beer squinting at the occasional daylight whenever someone opens the door.
So to my bad news. A few months back I changed jobs, I moved from a relatively large, well managed, organised software company that had pretty good QA/software development process.To a relatively small software company that didn't. I have always wanted to go to a company like that. A small company that had relatively no process, so I could go in there help create them and build on my skills as I went. I thought it would exciting, it would stretch my mind. I would go in there and help them deliver better software quicker and more efficiently, with of course an improvement in quality! I knew it would be a massive challenge and it would take time but I thought I had the ability to do this. So I went for it.
It was tough gig from the get-go, and yes as you may of guessed my direct manager is a rather unforgiving individual. To put it mildly, he seemed to think I had not been able to swim out the massive deep end that I had been tossed into quickly enough. Last Monday I was called into a meeting room and told I was being let go. Yep, my big gamble had not paid off, I have been cut lose to start again. I fully realise that there were a few things that I could have done a lot better, one of them was shouting from the rooftops that someone on probation period needs a lot more training that just an hour here and there.
Admittedly I did join the company at a busy time, they had customer conference on and by the time that had finished it was the festive period and people were going on holiday. But maybe just I could have some training and good mentoring? None of which seemed to be high on their agenda. It seemed to be a common theme when I asked other members of the team about training, they gave me a long lost look of someone who had been deprived of the favourite food and was suddenly remembering what it tasted like.
It was tough gig from the get-go, and yes as you may of guessed my direct manager is a rather unforgiving individual. To put it mildly, he seemed to think I had not been able to swim out the massive deep end that I had been tossed into quickly enough. Last Monday I was called into a meeting room and told I was being let go. Yep, my big gamble had not paid off, I have been cut lose to start again. I fully realise that there were a few things that I could have done a lot better, one of them was shouting from the rooftops that someone on probation period needs a lot more training that just an hour here and there.
Admittedly I did join the company at a busy time, they had customer conference on and by the time that had finished it was the festive period and people were going on holiday. But maybe just I could have some training and good mentoring? None of which seemed to be high on their agenda. It seemed to be a common theme when I asked other members of the team about training, they gave me a long lost look of someone who had been deprived of the favourite food and was suddenly remembering what it tasted like.
They(being the management) seemed to think that with me just being there the software testing would just magical add quality and value to their software. ( I was actually asked ten weeks in "So do you think have added value to this company?" It was about then I sensed that things were not going well at all, especially when my line manager just sat there in silence and did not make any attempt to support me. He watched me toast.
There were other issues, which are rather too raw and which I still need to fully process before I can write about them. All in all, not a good experience. Now I am in full job hunting mode and discovering how much I have let my own skillset slide. No one else to blame but yours truly. I am now in the process of trying to change that by learning Python. Yes, yours truly trying to learn some sort of coding. Hold on to your breeks this is going to be a rough ride.
So this old tester, with limited coding but with solid Exploratory/QA/Testing mind is in the hunt for a new job. I think the next post will be about the sorry state of job application web sites...
Not sure what this blog will be about, if you are looking for wonderful serious tech-laden discussion then I suggest you mosey off to another blog. I will write honestly about what I think.I will not take myself to seriously -more often I will be wrong, but I like to think I can actually provide some insight..and of course stand up for us old manual testers..we do after all find most of the new bugs.....
There were other issues, which are rather too raw and which I still need to fully process before I can write about them. All in all, not a good experience. Now I am in full job hunting mode and discovering how much I have let my own skillset slide. No one else to blame but yours truly. I am now in the process of trying to change that by learning Python. Yes, yours truly trying to learn some sort of coding. Hold on to your breeks this is going to be a rough ride.
So this old tester, with limited coding but with solid Exploratory/QA/Testing mind is in the hunt for a new job. I think the next post will be about the sorry state of job application web sites...
Not sure what this blog will be about, if you are looking for wonderful serious tech-laden discussion then I suggest you mosey off to another blog. I will write honestly about what I think.I will not take myself to seriously -more often I will be wrong, but I like to think I can actually provide some insight..and of course stand up for us old manual testers..we do after all find most of the new bugs.....
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