Every quarter we start up a new introductions thread for folks to introduce themselves for the first time or to reintroduce themselves to the community again. We totally appreciate that some people like to step away for a while and come back.
What brings you to The Club and Ministry of Testing community?
What interests you now?
What do you want to learn?
Where are you based?
What else could you share about yourself?
You don’t have to answer all these questions. Introduce yourself in a way that works for you.
I am relatively new here and I’d like to introduce myself and share what brought me here.
I’ve been working in Finance field for almost 5 years at prominent global and local orgs. I was well off doing those jobs however the amount of workload was driving me nuts. I had countless sleepless nights trying to meet client deadlines and trying to work around the constant lack of required information.
In short, I had to take a very risky risky decision to throw it all out of the window and start looking into the programming world. I finally made the effort, I left my job, I had no more income and I had to get back to my parents house since I was no longer able to sustain rent payments for my flat.
After a year of studying basics of programming and grabbing QA automation know-how on the way, I landed my remote first job at a German startup where I was working on web automation for a Messaging app on TypeScript using Selenium webdriver.
Two months in I started applying to local IT organizations since working completely remotely with the Germans felt somewhat draining. I landed a job at a local digital banking platform and have been working here for 2 months.
I was assigned to a back-end oriented team where I have to test API day to day using postman and a ton of tools that are completely new to me.
At a point, I was kind-of overwhelmed with the amount of new information and it was becoming gradually more and more difficult to keep up the pace. That’s when I started looking for a forum-like place where I could read and share experiences of QA’s around the world and maybe ask some questions wherever I hit a wall at my job.
So that’s my story about how I arrived here and I’m looking forward to reading other’s stories!
I found this community only a week ago. I was searching for more information or inspiration how I could use my experience of 11 years manual software testing in a v-model project in my new job where software development is done in an agile way.
I’ve read a lot about testing in agile development, and now I’d like to know how people are implementing those methods in their real project workflows.
Generally, I’m always curious and want to learn new things, whether directly related to the things I do or not.
I’m based in Paderborn, Germany. This is also the hometown of Heinz Nixdorf who was a computing pioneer. Paderborn has also the “world’s largest computer museum” (as they describe themselves).
Apart from my job, I like knitting, playing the recorder, and long walks through the forest (Paderborn has beautiful surroundings) on my own.
Welcome to the most awesome community @stall1wow . Brave of you to jump jobs at a time like this. But in the end of it all, waiting until the time to move is good, often means waiting a long time. Once again, good to have you here.
Hi. I’m Simon, CommunityBoss at Ministry of Testing.
I have a passion for all things testing with a career in various testing roles since 2003. I particularly enjoy promoting and sharing the value of exploratory testing.
I’m super grateful to collaborate with this incredible testing community. If you have any questions about anything to do with Ministry of Testing, feel free to message me or ask a community member. Folks enjoy helping out and pointing people in useful directions.
I’m based in Teddington, in Greater London, UK. I’m obsessed with music, in particular the lost art of discovering and listening to albums.
I have been a part of this community passively. I am working as a Principal QA Engineer at one of the e-commerce companies in Munich, Germany. I started my career around 10 years ago
My role is to guide the developers in all things related to testing. I don’t write or do testing myself, in my org we have enabled the developers to do the testing themselves.
I design testing frameworks from scratch for the whole organization to use.
I also set up and maintain the QA infrastructure like Jenkins and the Selenium Grid setup on k8s to run browser automation tests in parallel.
Being a Principal QA Engineer I also take up presentations on testing topics frequently. + Other stuff
Lately, I have been having mixed feelings about my role and I want to move towards Security Testing (I do bug bounties and am a penetration tester as well as a hobby) and I think where my true passion lies.
Feel free to reach out to me in case of any questions related to infrastructure setup for automation tests, for contract testing with Pact.
I actually joined back in April 2023 but life got busy (2nd kid was born).
I joined because I was curious about how other organizations do testing, and also someone at work was actually giving a tech talk and they mentioned this place.
I am based in Vancouver, BC and have been a manual tester for over 10 years. For the past few years, I have also started doing automation (although it is a bit niche, c# windows application, PowerShell and python).
I’m a developer in the Netherlands working on pretty much all the parts of a nifty web app for businesses.
Thinking I was clever, I turned my weakness of spending too much time making things perfect into a strength when I suggested to my employer I might be a great help as a QA Engineer.
Now that that new role is about to become a reality I’m starting to realise that this rabbit hole goes way further than I expected. I’m currently tumbling and seeing lots of other tunnels branching off with topics like planning, cases, tools, continuous integration, strategies, and all the articles and topics that go with them.
I don’t know how deep this rabbit whole goes, but I know I’m definitely in the “whoa” phase and I could definitely use some help navigating this adventure I got myself into.
It is basically infinite, I’ve been into QA for 12 years and I LOVE doing continuous learning. I’m always learning new things in my free time and I still lack time to learn it all.
It can go from shift left, to shift right. From testing the business idea to chaos engineering in production. (Non-Functionals) Performance & Security testing to Test management, coaching, Automation engineer.
The help you need navigating, anything specific you are looking for? Did you just start in QA or are you already working as a QA Engineer for a while now?
I’m “new new”, so I’ll check out that link, thanks!
I haven’t officially started yet, but I am working on it whenever I can.
For example I wanted to set up semi-automated testing for an API. I wrote down roughly what the minimal steps would be, and then discovered that there are a whole lot of different ways to implement this, most of which I have little to no experience with, so yeah, that’s fun.
I do recognise this phase though, the phase of information overload. It can be tricky to find a good place to start, but after spending lots of time on a subject eventually it will all start to make sense. That’s where the real fun begins because at that point I can start to work with what I know and increase my skills.
Now you know why testers have as much fun as coders, we are just like programmers who are always finding out new things. Welcome to our world, hope you do stick around.
Great to read this, @stall1wow. I hope things have been going well for you since. Thanks for getting involved on The Club.
Excellent to see you here, @monija. Good to see you active and getting involved. I hope you’ve enjoyed the month or so of being part of this community.
@haxor5392. Very cool and congrats on setting that up with your developers. Hope things are going well for you and your colleagues.
Hi @mtest, hope you’ve been enjoying the Club so far. Thanks for being part of it. Defo an excellent place to learn from how others do things.
Hi, I am Karuna Kiran Kollipara, my friends call me ‘Kiran’ and colleagues call me ‘KK’.
I started my testing journey in 2004 and have loved every single experience since. I am quite passionate about testing and have played successful roles ranging from being a single tester to leading over 50 testers across multiple geographies in large projects.
What brings you to The Club and Ministry of Testing community? This community is one of my best discoveries and the passion I saw in @simon_tomes was something fresh for me. I have since been able to meet a lot more passionate testers who are doing a lot for this community. I joined here to learn and be part of many interesting discussions, share my experience and build a network with my like minded colleagues in the community.
What interests you now? - Reading Books - Testing, Productivity, Transformation projects, Data Analysis
What do you want to learn?- Exploratory testing, Heuristics, Oracles, Portfolios, Test Strategies, Tools. Besides these, i want to learn from the testing bosses and be able to contribute papers, speak in meetups.
Where are you based? Based out of Ilford, London.
What else could you share about yourself? - I love History and collect antiques. I love Photography and once wanted to work for NatGeo, I love 80’s/90’s music, Movies and off late a lot of gardening. Most of all Testing is what i am passionate about.
Hope you’re all well and I’m excited to share ideas and read all your stories.
My goals are to be:
a well-grounded tester
a well-grounded engineer
a well-grounded guitar player
I joined the Club and Ministry of Testing community because I’ve moved from a small town called Bedford to one of helluva city known as Manchester. This move has resulted in me working from home (full time) and experiencing the feelings of isolation that come with it. But has also given me time to reflect on my journey in software and how I can better myself as an automation tester. And after attending great sessions on Testing in the Week, and a very encouraging chat with @simon_tomes, where better to start/continue this journey than the Ministry of Testing itself.
I’ve been working in software test automation for 3 and a half years now, of which I spent the first 2 enjoying the power of maintaining an iOS and Android mobile app automation test framework, running with Appium and Calabash! Though this was incredibly enjoyable, this came primarily from a lot of on the job training and left me with some significant gaps in my knowledge (cos testing ain’t all about code!) and not a whole bunch of confidence. I knew I needed to know more, but I just didn’t know what.
Ever since this awakening, I have started building my knowledge of code engineering and testing. I hope that the immersing myself in this community will; introduce me to people who have been on similar journeys, gain more self confidence by building on and sharing my knowledge. I am also a keen guitar player and believe it or not, learning about engineering code has helped me to learn to play the guitar more effectively, vice versa! It’s all about patterns man!
Warm greetings to everyone.
Hope you all are doing good.
My name is Rajtanu.
I’m new around here and would like to know you all in a better way.
About me: I learned fullstack development (MERN), but got interested in testing.
I know that sounds strange, especially, when you switch your interest from development to testing. (Would appreciate hearing from those who did the same)
Thoughts on the forum: I really appreciate how welcoming this community is. It does show how much willing the people around here are to help each other out. And I’d like to encourage the people of this community to continue doing that. Let’s all try to be helpful in one way or the other.
Best wishes to all.
P.S: The UI of this web application is similar to FCC’s ( FreeCodeCamp) to certain extent.
Was wondering if the Frontend developer of both the websites are the same, are they?
I’ve seen this community before but never commented or posted, but here I am!
I am a QA Engineer of 2 years going to become a mid-level test analyst for a big brewing company in the UK for a 12-month contract.
Posting here is quite exciting because I am hoping to meet similar-minded people who are eager to learn with me and provide support for each other. I am a big believer in the quote stating: “Knowledge is power!”.
My main goal for now is to use this fixed-term contract to start creating a brand of my self in the testing space, here in the middlands there is a lack of tech companies and I want to help the community grow!
Additionally, I want to refresh and expand my skills in automation. Even though I have two years of experience in Cypress, it’s always great to keep learning!
Welcome @sameea . Keen to hear more of your experiences on mobile testing and what worked for you in approach and tools.
As for guitar, cannot help you there, but would love to listen.
Hi. I’m Simon, CommunityBoss at Ministry of Testing.
