What hurdles did you have to overcome when starting your career in software testing?

Check out this week’s article by @parwalrahul, “Taking your first steps in software testing,” to explore the journey of starting a career in testing and overcoming common hurdles faced by beginners. Whether you’re transitioning from another role or just getting started in your career, Rahul shares insights from his own path that can help you succeed in your testing journey.

What You’ll Learn:

:compass: Navigating beginner challenges: Rahul shares personal experiences and tips on how to tackle the most common hurdles when starting a career in software testing.

:brain: Adopting the right mindset: Learn how to shift from a developer’s mindset to a tester’s mindset, and why this change is crucial for success.

:books: Understanding key testing concepts: Get introduced to essential testing types and tools to help you build your foundational skills.

:bulb: Setting yourself up for success: Discover practical steps like goal setting, hands-on testing, and creating a learning plan to guide your testing career.

After reading, we’d love to hear from you:

  • What challenges did you face when starting out in software testing, and how did you overcome them?
  • Will you try any of the strategies Rahul shares in the article to help your continue your testing journey?
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nice one with this i believe it can help a lot

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Sarah how long have you been in software testing ?

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The first hurdle that comes to mind for me was (and still is) learning the domain of the software that you’re testing. For me that’s geochemistry & is still a challenge to this day.

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Hey there @kashinaike1

I hope it is helpful for you. I’m not a tester myself, I’m the learning lead at Ministry of Testing, supporting testers to make useful content for the community. How about you? How long have you been testing?

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Thanks for sharing @adrianjr. Learning a domain like geochemistry sounds incredibly challenging alongside testing. Even with it being an ongoing challenge, do you have any tips that have helped you so far?

I think one tip that helps me in retaining complex learning is to try and apply that knowledge in your testing and actually see it in action. I can try and learn certain aspects time and time again but if I keep it theoretical then there is a high chance I end up forgetting it.

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That’s great advice! Thanks, @adrianjr, applying what you learn to learn more deeply is a great tip! :raised_hands:

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more than 2 years now i just move to UK permanently but looking better offer

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  • Imposter syndrome during my grad program because the others had (what I saw as) a relevant degree whereas I studied Economics and German
  • Managing my expectations on what I learned in this grad program vs “the real world”
  • Building relationships with people at work/key stakeholders . Not sure if i would call this a hurdle, but it took time for me to learn how to do this.
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That is a really nice article!

My own first hurdle was coming to the realisation of just what a state testing was in. I assumed everyone knew what they were talking about, and it took a lecture organised by MoT (which is why I’m still here) to teach me about the social and science and social science side of what testing is really about. I could leave behind testing as a set of tools and templates and formal practices, and make it what I needed to be, and be flexible and powerful and the responsibility for my own choices made me put my reputation to my work and encouraged me to get better at it.

I agree strongly with the idea of putting yourself into testing activities. Learn what skills there are, and then practice them. The article also brought up the concept of no question being too basic or stupid, and I always struggled to ask the stupid questions, and I cannot recommend a stupid question highly enough. The answer to an important question can go unfound because a group of people are all too afraid to look foolish, and it will be a huge drag on your testing if you go forward without basic information that you’re too scared to ask about. I think learning how to talk about testing really helps, because you can look smart about your testing which offsets the necessary but stupid questions.

Self reflection is so important, too. Not just for self-improvement but I learned that without reviewing what I’d achieved I tended to assume that I didn’t achieve anything. Reflecting on the work also helps to keep me sane.

A lot of good inspiration in this article.

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I completely agree with the content in Rahul’s article: having a degree in software testing doesn’t help much. Because I was a computer science engineering graduate, I had the same feeling that software testing would be easy for me, but it was not. However, the challenges that I faced so far as a tester has helped me in my professional growth.

The programming language we learn in engineering courses can give us an edge in automation programming, but the mindset required for testing is different from development.

In the starting phase of my career, one of the major challenges was for me to understand the project from the end-user perspective. So I connected with PM and got feedback from her on how the project will be used, tirage prod issues, and understanding the mindset of what the user was thinking while using the app and how this issue occurred.

My project had 2 Android applications, 2 iOS Applications applications, and a web application, overall it was finance-based based integrated with the Stripe payment gateway, so all the transactions were updated in real-time, so another major challenge was to keep track of all the transactions on all devices.
So to handle this challenge what I would do is that I would connect all 4 mobile phones to the monitor with different Google Meet links, share the mobile screen, and adjust the screen so that all 4 devices are visible on the monitor while the web application was visible on the laptop. So whenever I perform any transaction it was easy to check whether the transaction is reflected on all 5 applications in real-time or not.

Some of the tips that Rahul has shared for success in software testing, I’m already working on implementing them in my professional life and I will pick some other points mentioned in the article.

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I have been testing in various roles for various companies, both manual testing and automation for about 24 years now.

My challenges include being able to keep up with new technologies and techniques and finding how to apply them in the right spots. It seems like every time you turn around there is a new hot tool or methodology or whatever. It’s hard to know what to pursue and what to discard.

Another is getting management to stop pulling me off of automation to fill in on manual testing when they get behind. Don’t they understand that if they let me get my automation done testing will ultimately go faster? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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About “The Art of Asking Stupid Questions”, I would recommend you to check out this talk by Dot Graham: “The Art of Asking “Stupid” Questions” by Dorothy Graham | TestFlix 2020 - YouTube

Here is a quick mindmap for it too:

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I have worked with you on some assignments. I have felt that you are a good supportive tester.

Your style of giving feedback, tying it to an oracle (why do you think there’s a problem), and focus on good outcomes (start with the end in mind) are some traits that very good testers possess.

I learned all this from you and it helped me grow as a tester. Thanks for that! Also, thanks for this post. I just saw it today and it made my day reading all the comments.

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It’s mutual @parwalrahul !! I learnt a lot from you!

You’ve sped up my work output three-fold with your top prompting tips. I still need to make myself a prompting hub, though, then I’d be much quicker still :blush:

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Honestly, my biggest issue was allowing myself to believe this could be a career path. I always thought this is a hobby or just something you like to do, but you cant make a living from this. I wish I believed in myself a lot earlier on and put more into my passion but I think my detour allowed me to fall in love with it more.

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Similar thoughts were revolving in my mind. I wish I found such communities and people early on in my career!

Testing is :orange_heart:

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