I’m five weeks in to my new job.
I broke my 16 year streak without web, so there are things like performance and load testing that I need to learn about.
Everything is weird right now, but I’m making use of all the swag from conferences previous to makes notes!
Days like today are just what I need to refresh and revitalise!!
I was already working remotely, and having EVERYONE working remotely has been a huge advantage for me. On the down side, suddenly having to wfh, often with kids and/or not great internet, has rattled people and means I haven’t gotten the best onboarding help. I find I have to schedule meetings with people so I can learn from them. I’m sure people are all meeting-ed out, but I can’t think what else to do when remote. You can’t just walk over to someone’s desk, and people are too busy to treat Slack as an instant messenger!
working from home isn’t an issue for me I worked from 2-3 days a week in my previous job but I find I am all meeting out no time to get a break as I don’t want to look like im doing nothing.
Working with offshore partners too where there connections are not the best has made this even harder and the majority of my new team Is offshore.
How do I manage people who have more knowledge than me that’s the biggest issue I have, they coming to me now asking how they should write the tests for api tests and e2e tests
Are any of you struggling with your new job? I’m in my 5th week and still feel I don’t know enough to really add any value. I purposely took a job in an area I don’t know well because it’s what I want to learn. My imposter syndrome is killing me. I’m usually in a state of high anxiety because I’m so afraid I’ll fail. I need a support group!
I’ve been in the same role since August 2018 and I still get massive imposter syndrome. The size of the org and technical domain is huge. For me, it’s about celebrating the small wins. Saying to myself “I didn’t know that yesterday but I do today”, or “look how much I’ve helped that person/team”.
This is a luxury, but it’s also good if you have someone in the team that you can share those feelings with? They’ll be able to respond with the value you’ve added that you’re probably not recognising. Or ask some team members for feedback in general?
I usually find it comes in peaks and troughs. Some days I’ll be quite confident and others I’ll feel like I know nothing and I’m useless.
I’ll also add that 5 weeks is not a long time at all in a role, in my experience so far… are you possibly being too hard on yourself?
Thanks, Ali! I’m usually too hard on myself. I’m definitely looking for the “small success”. I have a “buddy” assigned to me who is on a different team (UX design team lead). He advised me to focus on the team I’m assigned to now as the quality person. Look for the small success there. But, I don’t know any of the people on the team and I’m finding it hard to build relationships given - remoteness, they are all in Portugal, I am shy… they were so nice about rescheduling all of their meetings so that they are after 6 am my time so I can attend. Still, I am struggling even to get the big picture. And the one task that is assigned to me seems completely impossible.
I’m always advising people to build relationships, and i find myself at a loss to do so with this team!
It’s the end of the week and I’m very convinced I make the right decision. The people are lovely and friendly. The values refreshing and very well thought through putting people and trust front and centre. I think I’m really going to like working here.
I’ve had two new jobs this year, and it’s been hard work.
In March I started at Scott Logic. That’s a tech consultancy, mostly working in the financial space. In mid April, I was furloughed, and in July, made redundant. It was disappointing, as I was looking forward to bringing my experience to the team and learning from them also.
However, every cloud has a silver lining. Quite literally.
I was approached by Metaswitch, and applied successfully for a role there. I’ll again be working in test leadership, and will eventually be driving testing across a team building products and services for 5G rollout.
It’s certainly a larger technical challenge for me, using some tech that I haven’t used before. Also, it allows me to flex my leadership muscles again, which had become a bit static. Last year was a tough year in a lot of ways, but 2020 has brought opportunity I didn’t even imagine.
I started another new job in August.
So that’s two jobs in a pandemic.
As @danielbilling mentions, there was a silver lining to the failings in the first job.
I now get to build a quality function (or whatever we decide to call it) from the ground up at a start-up, which is both really exciting and so insanely daunting at the same time!
I’m into the fourth week of my new job. I went from the Test Manager at an agency having been sole tester and growing to a team of three moving to be a junior QA in a team of four at a mortgage product to get back into the product arena and learn from others, including automation (I’m entirely self taught so want to learn how other people have done things in more formal settings).
So far, so good! Everyone is great and I’m loving the processes that are in place. I’ve been given my first testing task this week. Raised 95 issues for it so far (eep but it feels like it’s establishing myself as someone with an eye for detail, at least!).
Looking forward to seeing where this journey takes me!
Today is the end of my second month in the new job.
It is the first job I have had in testing where the IoT buzz-word can’t honestly be used.
It is the first time in a long time where the tester and the team are integrated. (instead of silo’d)
It is officially an automation job, but I do more exploring than automating (only tester)
The team itself is the most diverse I have seen where I live, which is one thing I didn’t know I was missing in the past.
There are hurdles, but as-a-team, we are tackling them (maybe we should jump over them instead?)
Congratulations on your new job and I hope your amazing team is welcoming you in an awesome way.
And I agree that a great team with amazing people is a perfect base to start something new and make it successful.
Congrats, Gwen, that sounds so wonderful!