# Can personal projects realistically close professional gaps after 12 years in a legacy environment? **URL:** \ **Category:** Discussions\ **Tags:** learning, automation, career-development\ **Created:** [9 September 2026 09:17 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/can-personal-projects-realistically-close-professional-gaps-after-12-years-in-a-legacy-environment/87729 "2026-09-09T09:17:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Razazarak](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/club.ministryoftesting.com/razazarak/32/15794_2.png) [@Razazarak](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/Razazarak)\ **Post date:** [9 September 2026 09:17 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/can-personal-projects-realistically-close-professional-gaps-after-12-years-in-a-legacy-environment/87729/1 "2026-09-09T09:17:55Z")
I’ve spent 12 years at one company, primarily as the sole QA engineer for several complex enterprise applications. My formal title is QA Engineer II, but my responsibilities include test strategy, release readiness, requirements and risk analysis, quality-process ownership, mentoring, and cross-functional leadership. I also architected two automation frameworks: an earlier Selenium framework and a newer Playwright/TypeScript framework with reusable workflows, fixtures, database utilities, test-data management, configuration, and reporting. The problem is that my employer has remained primarily on-premises and has been slow to modernize. Consequently, I lack professional production experience with several capabilities frequently requested in Senior QE/SDET roles, particularly CI/CD-integrated automation, deeper API automation, cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and observability. I’m building focused projects to gain practical experience in those areas. I understand that personal projects are not equivalent to professional production experience, and I would never represent them that way. My questions for QA leaders and hiring managers are: 1. Would you consider this person an experienced Senior QA/QE candidate with learnable technology gaps, or would the missing production experience be disqualifying? 2. Can well-designed projects meaningfully demonstrate readiness, even if they cannot replace production experience? 3. What would those projects need to demonstrate to carry credibility during hiring? 4. How would you position this background when applying for Senior QA, Senior QE, or Senior SDET roles? 5. Have I realistically stayed too long to transition, or is this primarily a résumé-positioning and targeted-learning problem? I’m not looking for reassurance. I’d genuinely appreciate candid feedback from people who have screened, interviewed, or hired experienced QA and SDET candidates. ---
**Author:** ![nsegal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8491ac/32.png) [@nsegal](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/nsegal)\ **Post date:** [9 September 2026 21:08 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/can-personal-projects-realistically-close-professional-gaps-after-12-years-in-a-legacy-environment/87729/2 "2026-09-09T21:08:43Z")
Btw, I am not a manager or a QA leader. So, I cannot offer their perspective. I have some questions and comments though. You said that you architected two automation frameworks. You should mention if these for work or just side projects. Work stuff would carry more weight. I wonder why you ask these questions. Is it because you want to prepare for interviewing or is it because you don’t feel confident enough given your current experience? My suggestion would be to prep your resume, build your interview skills (Do Leetcode for sure) and then start applying. The feedback from interviews might help you to discover gaps that you did not think existed or show you that the gaps you perceive are not really as big as they seem. Maybe you can start with companies that are suitable for practice. I hear Amazon is a nice one for interviewing practice, especially if you have no intention of joining. But you can join if it makes sense for your career. **PS -** Btw, I was wondering why you stayed at one company for so long. 12 years is not unheard of (especially in big tech), but quite large considering the trend of job hopping every 2-3 years or so which started like 10 plus years ago. The main reason is to get a higher compensation and also diverse experience. Companies often don’t increase your comp since they already have you and see no need to attract you anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Razazarak](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/club.ministryoftesting.com/razazarak/32/15794_2.png) [@Razazarak](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/u/Razazarak)\ **Post date:** [9 September 2026 21:51 UTC](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/can-personal-projects-realistically-close-professional-gaps-after-12-years-in-a-legacy-environment/87729/3 "2026-09-09T21:51:44Z")
Hey there, Great questions! So I have been actively applying for jobs everywhere and what I am finding on almost every single JD are areas where I do have knowledge gaps and no professional experience due to the technical ceiling my company has kept us under (until now…they’re trying for SOC2 compliance. They’d keep us in the dark ages otherwise). So while I am applying, I feel that when reviewing my resume and interviews, I may be getting passed up, not because of my experience, but because of the few areas that I don’t have the experience where the next guy might. So I am curious if those who look to hire look at personal projects, especially those designed for educational purposes to bridge the knowledge gap, as maybe not the same as professional experience but “this person took it upon themselves to learn something they didn’t otherwise have and has some workable knowledge”. Atleast close the gap a little bit between those with professional knowledge and myself if that makes sense. To answer a couple of your other questions, I didn’t put my resume on here but both the architectures I created were both in my professional capacity from scratch with no example to follow. I have a software background so it isn’t too terribly difficult from an architecture standpoint, the syntax and nuanced differences between selenium/c# and playwright/ts are still a work in progress, but going well. As far as the 12 years, my company has been sold 5 times. Each time the purchasing company said they wouldn’t mess with anything, but then mess with everything stopping promotions, bonuses, raises, etc. Our software team in that time would try to start growing into the next iteration of our enterprise system…then sold again and everything gets stopped. I stayed for a few reasons: 1) parents and grandparents taught me loyalty, and sadly it was misplaced. And my school taught us how to get a job but not necessarily what we should do afterward like when to look, when to jump ship, why to be looking every few years, etc. 2) unlimited PTO, eventually my company moved to that structure and I have been USING it! lol. 3) Promises of promotion and some trajectory insights on the backend - not only was I promised a senior/lead position but I was also told some hush hush stuff about the company bringing on other companies and I would build a QA team to cover. But guess what…SOLD AGAIN! So I’ve lost faith in the leadership and am looking for something that puts me back on career track and bridge some technical gaps, hence the personal projects question. My CEO actually said it best in our last all hands - “When I have money, ill find a way to pay for employee retention because we do have great talent”…then hires a multitude of executives and promotes maybe two people internally. So yeah…thats the story. Thanks for the feedback 🙂