Win for the Year - Career and Personal

Questions
#1

We’ve asked you to share your win(s) for the week, but what about your win(s) for the year. It’s been an “interesting” year, so it might be just a case of hooray, you survived intact! Or maybe you found a new job or took some training.

My wins for 2020

  • Personal: Developed a green thumb and found peace in gardening. I’ve currently got plants in cupboards, tables, shelves indoors and I’ve put most of the outdoor garden to sleep for winter - cannot wait to see it all flourish in 2021.
  • Personal: Knitting triumphs - I finished my first jumper and I’ve started the second. I knitted my first pair of socks. I sewed my first pair of trousers and some t-shirts. I’m hoping to have finished my first massive quilt too!
  • Career: To be honest, pushing my boundaries this year and discovering I can do things. I had become frozen for a while - you know that feeling when you’ve heaps to do but you can’t seem to get things done. I broke that cycle (mostly) and I’m now powering through things and feeling less overwhelmed! Worked my backside off this year with all the things we did at MoT and I’m dead pleased.
  • Career sort of: I continued growing my yoga classes prior to lockdown. During lockdowns I’ve recorded classes and switched to teaching live online.

What have been your wins for 2020? Big, small and all the things in between.

14 Likes
#2

My wins for 2020:

  • Personal: Managed to make it through 2020 - and I mean that with slight humour. It’s been a tough year as a single father with a child off school during the pandemic, working full-time, and supporting my mother who has been furloughed from work for six months and has struggled with it. So, seeing out December with my loved ones happy and healthy is a big win.

  • Professional: Being promoted to QA Lead at my company during my first-year appraisal. I took a big risk joining the company after being with a company I loved for five years so it’s amazing to have that risk and hard work rewarded.

12 Likes
#3

This is a great way to show that we can find positivism when we think there’s none…
So here are my wins for 2020:

Professional: Joined the MoT team in January 2020 - Definitely the highlight of the several years professionally! Coming from a very competitive and stressful hospitality industry to a loving and beautiful community only made me realise that work can be great fun and not just a ‘pay my bills’ sort of attitude!

Professional: Having had around 10 years of experience in the events industry, I had never been involved with online events. This has been a massive learning curve for me and one that has developed a lot of new skills!

Personal: A lot has happened personally this year and the super positive impact of joining MoT has definitely made me a less stressed person and overall happier. Me and my husband have sold our house and are still in process of buying a new one, so🤞🏻 that will continue to go well and the best of all of it, we’re now expecting a baby to arrive in April 2021!

Personal: Because of @mcgovernaine I’ve also self-taught on how to crochet and have been making stuff! Loving this new hobby as it makes my TV time way more productive!

So I can say, that despite all the things that 2020 has thrown at us, the fact that I hugely miss my family and friends and looking at the above positives, 2020 hasn’t been that bad!

13 Likes
#4

Congratulations on the :house_with_garden: and :baby: news Diana - sounds like you’ve really been able to find lots of positives from your year :+1:

3 Likes
#5

Thanks Beth! :grinning:
I do believe that we can look past any negative and find a positive, no matter how tiny it can be, it’s a positive and that’s all the matters.

3 Likes
#6

My wins for 2020:-

  • Professional
    This year I really feel like I have been one of the winners of the side-effects of the Covid pandemic. I have been able to kick on with my public speaking goals, attend lots of new conferences and have even started a blog (thanks MoT bloggers club for the inspiration!). Personal highlight has been completing my Test Automation Portfolio, which involved writing 6 working test frameworks and getting them all on GitHub - for a relatively unseasoned automation tester like me this was a big deal.

  • Personal
    I think this year I’ve had a lot more time to think, and focus on the things that are important to me. I’ve been able to spend more time with my family and watching my 4 year old nailing his first days at school after having to miss so much nursery this year was a definite highlight. 3 family members have had covid this year and the fact they are all now recovered (including my 92 year old grandma-in-law!) is definitely cause for celebration. Feel very grateful to be working in an industry which is still thriving, with my health and happiness (mostly) intact. Not every day is sunshine and rainbows, but I’m taking those wins.

14 Likes
#7

It’s been a bonkers year, with surprisingly more highs than I would have expected during a pandemic.

  • Career: After an initial early pandemic hiccup, the second new job of the year has been an absolute blast. Getting to establish a quality function from the get-go is so exciting as well as incredibly terrifying, but it’s definitely not boring!!

  • Career: I got to present at an in-person conference before the pandemic and at a couple of virtual meetups - all firsts for me

  • Career-ish: We launched the Testing Peers podcast, and I think it’s gone pretty well, I’ve definitely enjoyed having a project like that to work on and I have learnt a lot in the process

  • Personal: I have made some new friendships as a result of the wonderful @nufenix setting up the Tester’s Hangout

  • Personal: Pre-pandemic, I was so lucky to be able to take my family to Disney World, it was a wonderful week, it definitely does not feel like it was this year!!

  • Also…by some sort of fluke, I won @bencf1’s Tester of the Day two times, the Club Test Ninja of the Month and even the Crystal Maze (wonderfully hosted by @gwendiagram)

15 Likes
#8

You totes deserve to be tester of the day twice!

3 Likes
#9

You are far too kind and generous Veerle!

1 Like
#10

Áine, thanks for starting this. Reading others’ experiences and highs made me realise that this hasn’t been a completely wasted year. I’ve been kinda stressed over the past few months for various reason (personal and professional) so it’s been hard to recognise any successes at all.

Professional: I was asked to come test on a project by a company that I’d worked with before. I wasn’t a great match for the project I did with them last year (nor for the team working on it), but clearly they still thought I was a decent enough tester because they asked me back. The new project is going really well and I feel I’m actually contributing.

Personal: I’ve been able to put my sewing skills to good use by making everyone and their dog a face mask :slight_smile: I also got more into fermenting and pickling, which I’d been wanting to do for a while. Plus I started on a long distance walking trail here in the Netherlands, got the first 107km out of the way in a week of walking back in September, only 400 more to go!

14 Likes
#11

Agreed!! Should be tester of the year!!

3 Likes
#12

That’s brilliant Paul! Hooray to surviving all of 2020!

#13

Wow! That’s brilliant that everyone belonging to you has come through covid, all the high fives. Also, can we take a minute - 6 working test frameworks is a massive deal. Nicely done!

1 Like
#14

That is some serious mileage! My god! I’ve beetroot I’m going to try and pickle…if that’s what you do with beetroot. I’ve grown it, just need to figure out the rest :laughing:

That’s brilliant that the new project is working out Veerle!

1 Like
#15

That sounds like a pretty epic year to be fair! Regardless of doing half of it during a pandemic. Nice one

1 Like
#16

What a brilliant idea to spread some positivity:

Professional - got out of a toxic job into one where I am able to make a difference and have been given the remit to change things for the better. Despite the pandemic meaning the test function took a battering and letting some great people go (3 people who I would call friends)

Professional - created a talk on Building A Culture of Quality which I have been lucky enough to present at an International Test Conference, several MOT meet-ups and just today invited to another company’s internal test community.

Professional - Starting the Testing Peers podcast with 3 folks who have become amazing friends and our weekly therapy session has become one of the highlights of my week and the pod seems to be going down well too!

Personal - While not a highlight, we lost my father in law this year and my boys biggest hero. As a result of that, he insisted all his grandchildren got a companion, so we ended up getting two adorable fluffball puppies which have enriched our lives no end!

14 Likes
#17

2020 has been a rollercoaster ride for most of us! Here are some of my wins for this year.

Professional: It’s the year where I became really active in the testing community. I’ve been focused with my blogging, won Applitools hackathon twice also been involved in 23 testing events (meetups, lunch and learn, podcast, AMAs) and I am very thankful for the opportunity! This has led to other opportunities such as creating video courses (soon to come), organising a Cypress UK meetup group, being invited to speak at Automation Guild and Agile Testing Days next year and networking with so many professionals within the industry! It is such an honour to connect and learn from so many of you :blush:

Personal: It’s been a hard year definitely I’m not going to lie, not a win but my mental health suffered due to personal issues going on but I am just pushing through like everyone else. I’m also happy to spend more time with my daughter and she is such a blessing. I also started embroidery to help relax and completed the 100 days of move challenge to help me with my physical and mental health.

13 Likes
#18

I can confirm that the face masks are full of awesomeness.

@veerle you are so kind and generous.

You even topped up my boys’ supply of hagelslag when you didn’t need to!

4 Likes
#19

Love this - what an awesome thread.

Personally

  • Spent lots of time with my 10 and 5 year old boys and husband
  • Started exercising 4 times a week and lost lots of weight
    *Decluttered and minimised our house - my husband now has more clothes than I do :slight_smile:
  • Figured out what really matters for me - less stuff, more time with family, be myself!

Professionally

  • Grown in confidence - facilitate events and workshops internally & external speaker now!
  • Really got to know my team mates really well
  • Survived working in my dining room :rofl:
  • Got involved with the ministry of testing community
    *Joined twitter, which has been amazing. Why didn’t I join sooner?!
  • Built up relationships with many, many different people at work and outside of work
  • Became a continuous innovation champion at work :smiley:
11 Likes
#20

Professional:

  • Got a new job, and am now working on the QA/Infosec partnership from the infosec side. \o/
  • Learning a lot about some cool technologies I had never touched before this year, such as playing with containers.

Personal:

  • Started and kept a home exercise regimen, which I’ve been wanting to do for years.
  • Picked up a new hobby and revitalized some older ones as I make an effort to keep my home life and my work life separate.
  • Making it through this year is an accomplishment in itself.
10 Likes