Day 7: Share a career success story and the lessons you learned from it

šŸ“† 30 Days of Testing
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Welcome to Day 7! Today, weā€™re celebrating our career success stories and reflecting on the lessons weā€™ve learned along the way.

Whether itā€™s your own personal achievement or an inspiring story about someone else, we want to hear about it! Keep it concise and focus on the following:

  • What was the initial goal?
  • What were the challenges along the way?
  • How were those challenges overcome?
  • What were the key lessons you learned from this experience?

Your story doesnā€™t have to be grand or extraordinary. It can be a simple tale that impacted your career.

This task is an opportunity for us to learn from each otherā€™s experiences. Take the time to read and appreciate the stories shared by others by hitting the :heart: button on stories that resonate with you, and donā€™t forget to contribute your own by replying below.

Now, letā€™s dive in, celebrate our career successes, and uncover the secret sauce that has made all the difference.

Why complete this task?

  1. Learn from Others: By sharing your career success story and reading the stories of others, you have the opportunity to gain valuable insights and learn from different perspectives. Hearing about the experiences, challenges, and lessons learned by fellow participants can provide you with inspiration, new ideas, and practical advice to apply to your own career journey.
  2. Self-Reflection: Sharing your own career success story requires introspection and reflection. It allows you to revisit your accomplishments, identify the challenges you faced, and recognize the lessons you learned along the way. Engaging in this task can help you gain a deeper understanding of your own strengths, weaknesses, and growth areas, contributing to your ongoing personal and professional development.
  3. Celebrate Achievements: Sometimes, weā€™re so focused on chasing the next goal that we forget to acknowledge and celebrate our past successes. This task provides an opportunity to celebrate and appreciate your own achievements, no matter how big or small. Itā€™s a chance to give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back and recognize the progress youā€™ve made in your career.
  4. Inspire and Motivate: Your career success story has the power to inspire and motivate others. Sharing your experiences, challenges, and the lessons youā€™ve learned can provide encouragement to fellow participants who may be facing similar obstacles. By contributing to the collective pool of stories, you can inspire others to persevere, embrace opportunities, and overcome their own challenges.
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I havenā€™t had a ton of success in my testing career, which is a bit demoralizing. I perform my job well, but I havenā€™t had that moment where Iā€™ve set a career goal and exceeded or met it. I feel like a lot of my ā€œsuccessesā€ have been haphazard and accidental, which makes it harder to think of them as earned.

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I always wanted to learn more about security vulnerabilities and I started doing bug bounties for fun. After a long while I found several issues but nothing to crazy. So my goal was to find that one big thing.

A lot of people started hacking during the covid locking and a lot of people are doing it full-time as their main job. So for someone who only spend a few hours a week on it, it was really hard to find those vulnerabilities which were not a ā€˜duplicateā€™ ticket. (you donā€™t get paid for duplicates, you really have to be the first)

At some point I stopped due to being really busy with other stuff and I was ordering a present for my gf at amazon and at that point I saw something that was a bit odd sooo I tried some stuff and BINGO. I found a critical bug at amazonā€¦ ā€œby accidentā€ :stuck_out_tongue:

Itā€™s in that moment of life I just knew ā€˜I can do it againā€™. I somehow regained more faith in myself and started doing it more. Itā€™s not because you cannot do it during period A in your life, that you canā€™t do it later on. It sometimes is the environment that you are in that is different and has an impact on you.

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Hi, Zenzi donā€™t feel low about that, even accidental success is awesome. It is earned working as a QA you get achievements mostly accidentally and thatā€™s not bad either. I am glad to know your accidental success and proud of you.

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As I started to work as a QA at beginning of covid, I thought its just a role I am working on and probably will not work as a QA later on and switch to some other role.

During my undergrad, I was one of the toppers with both very good cgpa and good programming skills as well. Most of the people from my uni discouraged me to switch careers as a QA since they thought its a waste of my skill set and I am just gonna end up doing nothing.

I started to enjoy working as a QA at my previous job and didnā€™t give a damn about those demotivating and demoralizing talks. Got ISTQB CTFL and CSM certified. Started to work with an Indian startup to mentor women in tech in bd and motivate them to pursue their career as a tech person and took a session for QA beginners as well. I started connecting with the QA community in bd and abroad as well like this platform and many others. Started to network with QA from around the world on Linkedin and started to explore more QA job roles and learned there are so many amazing paths for QA roles to switch too, one could be an agile tester, automotive tester, security tester, and many more. Just fell in love with the QA role and planned my whole life ahead till retirement. Letā€™s see what happens. :blush: :crossed_fingers:

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What makes you think that way ? What do you define success as ?

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career success stories and reflecting on the lessons weā€™ve learned along the way.

Day 7 and itā€™s been one full week of participating in this initiative and reading other peopleā€™s responses.

Todayā€™s question was a bit challenging because it kept me thinking as to what career success really means.

For me career success means having a successful career in tech, being the best in what I do, gaining a reputation or recognition for my work

So far I havenā€™t had any to a fuller extent.

I can say I partially achieved it may be.

  • What was the initial goal?
    I did not have any initial goal. I entered the tech industry only with the idea that I wanted to be employable and not be dependent. I was a developer initially and later moved into testing. I did not know if I liked it. It was only after a significant portion of my career has been completed that I realized testing was something I wanted to do and then I made a goal that I wanted to be the best at whatever i did.

In my mid-career, I wanted to survive this was my goal because, after my first firm, I never stayed in any firm for more than a year for different reasons like people problems, slow learner, not understanding things, confusion if thatā€™s something that I wanted.When I discussed this with known people they would say maybe you are not suitable for tech and that disheartened me.

  • What were the challenges along the way?
    The challenges were mostly related to learning and people.
    As for learning challenges I cant self learn.I want somebody to teach me the way my father had taught me math at school. Hence I developed a fear of programming or coding.

As for people, I did not like taking orders and micro-management.I wanted to have a say in everything.

  • How were those challenges overcome?
    For the learning-related stuff, I tried out and experimented in various ways. After a lot of experimentation, I found a teacher who would exactly teach like my dad. He was dedicated and took a total interest in me. Taught things in a logical manner and made me lose my fear of programming. We did lots of fun exercises. He helped me regain my confidence back. Iā€™m thankful to my teacher.

Also, I didnā€™t stop there did lots of new things after that failed, learned, and again failed and the journey continued.

As for the people part Iā€™m thankful to my mentor Ajay Balamurugadas who directly or indirectly showed me a lot of aspects related to people and testing because of which you see a tremendous change in me as a person. I was a complete introvert. Now Iā€™m an ambivert who is still an introvert mostly. He taught me to focus on the process and not the results.

  • What were the key lessons you learned from this experience?
    Things take time and itā€™s not instant gratification that always works.
    Empathy towards self and others
    Perseverance

tough times donā€™t last tough people do :blush: :stuck_out_tongue: :yellow_heart: :muscle:

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Is it ok to share a blog post about this? If so then here it is:

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The one I talk about the most is how I learned that ā€˜best practicesā€™ often arenā€™t.

When I started testing, things were going pretty well. We were following procedures, documenting our results, and doing everything that the certifiers said made good testers.

With their methods, we found bugs, ensure that things which were supposed to work worked, and thought that we were doing great. That is, until we werenā€™t. We had one release where everything was perfect, according to the procedures and the papers and the best practices. Everything worked according to plan, except for one thing.

The customers HATED the changes. To the point that we felt that the pitchforks were at the door. Upper management had a hands on where everyone had to explain how what went wrong wouldnā€™t go wrong again. We (the testers) had our plan, which didnā€™t last a sprint (it had something to do with requirements documentation and not testing what wasnā€™t specified enough). Instead, we threw all of our tests out the figurative window. All of them. Hundreds of pages of documentation would never be looked at again.

We moved our focus to ā€œdoes it work as specified?ā€ to ā€œdoes our customer really want or need this?ā€ We moved our test cases to session based testing. We spent more time testing than documenting our tests.

And after it all, our tests improved, our testing improved, and the product got better.

The lesson is, that what works for some people, isnā€™t right for all cases.
The lesson is, if we make something perfectly, if the client isnā€™t happy, you failed.
The lesson is, we should be brave enough to talk about these things. (this was between the lines in my story. We missed what the client wanted because we did what we were told, and didnā€™t ask for more context as to why the change had to happen. The whole team. From PO to developer to tester)

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Those whoā€™ve read about myā€¦ interestingā€¦ career will understand that I consider my first career success to be staying with one company for more than a year without the company - or me - imploding. I used to joke that my very presence destroyed entire career fields, and Iā€™m extremely grateful thatā€™s no longer true!

So, on a slightly more serious note, at this point Iā€™d list speaking at TestBash Philadelphia (2017, I think) as probably the biggest success. I did a relatively short talk about a security issue Iā€™d stumbled across and the potential implications of it - particularly given that I was not and am not a security tester - the point being that anyone can look for certain classes of security issues without needing the full (and extensive) training and software a dedicated security tester can use. The talk - or possibly my quirky sense of humor - seemed to go over well, and I think I did a decent job covering for the connection to the video where I was demonstrating how Iā€™d found what I did decided it was going to fail and fail hard.

I havenā€™t managed to speak at another TestBash, alas, although I did have fun with the MoT online coding challenges where did a live code refactoring exercise with C# and Selenium.

Both of these events took me way outside my comfort zone, me being the raging introvert with serious self-esteem issues and a need to ā€˜gameā€™ my way through public anything by putting on a mask. Deliberately exposing myself to potential ridicule in a public event like a TestBash did me a lot of good, because I proved to myself that I could speak in public. Or at least, the right kind of public.

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I think that success for me would be:

  1. Having the ability to do some hobby development

  2. Feeling like I meet the standard of what a early career tester should know (not sure what that entails)

  3. Finding a job that matches my skill level and gives me something to reach for

  4. The ablility to mentor others when the first 3 goals are met

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I agree everyone has their own definitions.I realize we both like mentoring in common.

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I canā€™t say I have any great ā€˜successā€™ stories, at least so far. Still working on those. But, the nearest I can figure, is my entry, and then, re-entry into the Software Testing business. You could say that I led a charmed life getting into this industry the first time around, and only learned how easily I had it by trying to re-enter the field and not have things go my way the second time around. It took nearly 5 years for me to get back, and those 5 years were stressful, uninspiring, and just plain brutal.

But Iā€™d like to think that because I had to work so hard for it the second time around, that this time I appreciate it so much more. That is only partially true, as I felt that I really did appreciate it when it first happened to me. I never took things for granted, I felt. But I will say that it does hold more meaning for me now, and that I am truly thankful that I am where I am today in a deeper and more appreciative way.

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One career success story that stands out: I built a Software-as-a-Service application to support people who take exploratory testing notes. RIP TestBuddy. :sweat_smile::smiling_face_with_tear::smiley:

EDIT: This was the tool I wish Iā€™d had throughout my career as an exploratory tester.

Our goal was to introduce an innovative way for people to capture their exploratory testing notes and improve the debriefing experience. It was an incredible journey to have just two of us building something from absolutely nothing. We had paying customers and this still blows my mind!

Throughout the journey, we had to get real about discovering what works for a potential customer and get clear on who that potential customer was. And I reflect that this is crucial when we place our time into our testing efforts. Who are we really building for? Who are we saying ā€œnoā€ to? What risks are we looking to mitigate with both the product features and how people experience something thatā€™s innovative and perhaps ā€œdifferentā€ from whatā€™s out there already? I reflect that it was never just about delivering high-quality features, it was also about all the interactions potential customers had with our company.

We always came back to defining the value we aimed to deliver, the risks that might threaten that value and a series of questions to discover answers related to those risks.

Ultimately we ran out of money and energy yet boy did we learn a lot along the way. :smiley:

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My initial (and still current) goal was to get a job in software testing. The challenges Iā€™ve faced relate to uncertainty about wanting to work in tech and general self-doubt or fear of failure. I have been able to overcome or work through some of those challenges by really identifying the kind of work I have always been drawn to and figuring out what motivates me.

I was initially hesitant to get into tech because I have never been very competitive or money-driven. Working in tech felt a little bit like selling out because I didnā€™t want to work for a company whose sole purpose was profit. However, as I came to find more mission-driven companies, I tried connecting it to an issue I have always been passionate about: education. Realizing that I could work in tech and contribute to a meaningful cause, changed my perspective and gave me a greater sense of purpose in pursuing a career in tech.

To overcome self-doubt, I had to recognize that my previous efforts of pursuing a career in design werenā€™t successful because there was no drive behind itā€”not because I wasnā€™t good enough. Before testing, I thought I wanted to be a UX designer, but found myself avoiding my portfolio like the plague. My avoidance was an internal signal that those efforts werenā€™t moving me in a direction that aligned with my values. I didnā€™t want my creativity to be tied to my work, I wanted to work in a capacity where I could use my analysis and strategy to make things better.

Although I am still in the early stages and havenā€™t quite landed the role, I am still grateful for having done the work to reorient my approach. Now, instead of stressing about the timeline and questioning if Iā€™ve made the right decision, I feel confident about what is driving me and what I want. The key lesson was figuring out what I actually wanted rather than what was expected of me.

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I think I donā€™t have a personal achievement yet, I have a work in tech but I donā€™t feel happy with that, some time ago I was trying to figure out what can be a goal for my professional life, but I am still struggling with this.
For now I decided to look for a job as a tester, so I think this is my initial goal :blush:

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I do want to celebrate my own story here!
My initial goal was to change careers and do it as soon as possible as I burnt out in my previous profession. I developed an anxiety disorder on top of it and because of that couldnā€™t continue working.

So I quickly had to make an 180 degree change in my life. At a time I was living in UK but decided to return to my home country because here I had opportunities to study tech for free. I quickly managed to find a software testing course and started studying. At first it was new and exciting, so I didnā€™t have a problem studying but pretty quickly I was lacking motivation because at the same time I was still dealing with my burnout and trying to recover from it.

How to keep up the motivation to study? For me changing the environment helped. I started going to the library and cafeā€™s to study instead of sitting at home. Also work shadowing people who already worked in tech and going to different conferences, gave me a lot of motivation!

Then I had to opportunity to apply for a QA internship role and the competition was tough. In the final group interview there was 7 of us ā€œfightingā€ for the one position. How did I overcome that? I stayed myself, was talkative and tried to show my skillset whenever possible. It worked cause I got the job and later it turned into a permanent QA position. :slight_smile:

So Iā€™m so grateful that within 6-8 mths time, I managed to quit my previous job, study something completely new and get a job!

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Congrats, @anninool. Thatā€™s an impressive achievement. :tada:

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Last year I was learning about automation. My manager wanted me to research automation tools we can use to automate some of our test cases.

I research automation tools like playwright, cypress and Selenium. I played around with all three and felt I enjoyed playwright because of the record and playback features.

Looked at some the test cases I do for regulations and did a automation test script. Play a feature and would script through each regulations like French, German, Italian, Spanish.

Helped to focus on tests to be done by Exploratory testing

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Thanks for your story. It inspires me a lot!