Bloggers Club June 2022 - 3 Things That Have Helped Me in My Testing Career

Hi folks!

Your challenge this month, if you choose to accept it ā€¦

3 Things That Have Helped Me in My Testing Career

Iā€™d love to know what things have helped you over your career. If you have more than three, or something you really want to talk about in depth, thats great! Canā€™t wait to read about them.

2022-05-31T23:00:00Zā†’2022-06-29T23:00:00Z

How to get involved

  • Write a blog on the above topic any time in June , by the 30th :writing_hand:
  • It can be as long or as short as you want it to be
  • Share a link to the blog on this thread :eyes:
  • Receive lots of support, encouragement, and love from the community :heart:
  • Itā€™s possible youā€™ll get a shout out from the Ministry of Testing Twitter account @simon_tomes :grinning:
  • Iā€™ll also help promote from my Twitter account :nerd_face:
  • If you want to get reminders to submit your blog, RSVP below
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My contribution for Juneā€™s topic :smiley:

I struggled a bit to articulate myself clearly in this bog post, but I hope I still got my points across successfully.

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My contribution has been split into two because it was too big as one. Also I cheated and changed the title as Iā€™m not a tester.

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Thanks for sharing @deament.

Do you find in general that ā€œtoo muchā€ of the things that fill your cup, actually drain it? In your example you get drained by too many people, but also invigorated by seeing and helping people.

Really great advice around self care. I know I definitely donā€™t do enough.

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Thanks @bobs

I really enjoyed both posts. I always see the topics as guidelines rather than rules. :wink:

Are there signs of ā€œgood cultureā€ from your first organisation that you still look for in new companies? If so, Iā€™d love to know what they are and why they matter to you.

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Thank you. Glad thereā€™s some leeway in the themes :slight_smile: .

I think I look for good culture, but I donā€™t have an explicit shopping list in my brain - it turns up more as a feeling that things are right or not.

Off the top of my head, itā€™s things like:

  • Can everyone make meaningful contributions to a discussion, regardless of who else is involved e.g. how senior they are etc?
  • Is it OK to make mistakes, provided you have the right attitude about them?
  • Are people helped to meet a high standard, and then expected to keep meeting it (in a polite and friendly way)? Does this apply to everyone? I.e. senior people donā€™t get a pass.
  • Is time invested in stuff that doesnā€™t give direct customer value immediately, but will help with it over the longer term? (I donā€™t mean YAGNI type stuff, but tests, reviews, test infrastructure etc.)
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Thats been my experience too. There are themes Iā€™d like to see, similar to what youā€™ve listed, but they can vary depending on the place. Good people make places good. :smiley:

Thanks for getting involved!

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Just realised I hadnā€™t answered the ā€œwhy they matter to youā€ bit of your question, which is important, hard but also probably the most subjective / least universal etc.

I think that many of my attitudes and behaviours stem from an underlying emphasis on dignity. The idea that people have an intrinsic worth, and so I need to respect that and its consequences. That means I try to include everyone, try not to give anyone preferential treatment to people just because of trappings and so on. Also, as long as you can do it without e.g. drowning in a stream of comments from a squillion people, getting contributions from as many people as possible means youā€™re increasing your chance of finding the golden nugget. Iā€™ve learned from summer students, and from CTOs.

Also, Iā€™ve been in software long enough to have lived through the consequences of shortcuts many times. Sometimes there really is that little time, but not always. When my boss at the company I referred to left, we got him a T-shirt that said: Of course I donā€™t look busy; I did it right the first time.

Optimising for the medium to long term is good if you can do it - investing in things that will benefit future you, doing this consistently so that present you benefits from things that past you invested in etc. (As in the proverb: the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the next best time is today.)

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Great question.

To an extent yes I need to find a balance. Itā€™s possible to have too much of a good thing :nerd_face:

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Here is my contribution to this months Bloggers Club:
Three Things That Have Helped Me in My Testing Career

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Hereā€™s my small contribution to this montā€™s topic:

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Turning useful behavior into habits

Great way to think about continuous learning!
I could do with forming that habit. Mine is very sporadic.

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It helps to have the snowball effect in mind! :smiley:

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Great colleagues

I cannot agree more Mike. Having good people together, just creates the environment for success. Everyones success.

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I had to stop myself writing a love letter to Git ā€¦

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Here my little contribution.

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Thanks for sharing, @meensmn . An excellent post. Iā€™ve enjoyed learning whatā€™s helped. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks for sharing! And congratuations on your first post in the club :muscle:

it might feel like dumb or silly question

Totally agree that these show more than one person doesnā€™t understand something. Other people are less shy when someone else says ā€œI donā€™t understandā€

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Hereā€™s mine :blush:

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Here is my contribution to this months bloggers club topic:

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