Solo QA Warrior — Challenge Accepted! [1/2]

One QA to Rule Them All: Tales from a Solo Tester

Big opportunities come with big challenges! Working in a startup company and being the only QA on the team is no different. Agree?

But is it all worth it? Absolutely!

Introduction & Background

I started my career as a Software QA Engineer in 2012, but that was more like a manual tester’s life where there was no light at the end of the tunnel. There wasn’t the end of the dark tunnel … it seemed!

Back then, after graduating and joining my first company as a Junior QA, just when I was expecting good supervision from seniors from whom I could learn and excel professionally, I was told “You are the captain of your ship!”. It took me some time to figure out what it meant and how to achieve it.

“You are the captain of your own ship; don’t let anyone else take the wheel!”

I was the only QA in the team and was thrown into the big pool of ongoing projects which were already reaching their deadlines to be deployed on production. We all know the kind of pressure that builds up, especially when you are coordinating with an offshore team, trying your best to beat internal office politics, and still doing what you are supposed to do. Yes, you guessed it, a solid bug-free production-ready platform!

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

Approximately a year later, a senior was hired, and I was happy to have someone who could guide me through the complicated, in-depth QA workflows. Unfortunately, my happiness couldn’t stay longer when I learned the hired senior also knew nothing about automation and was following the same pattern and doing the same job as me, just struggling with the manual process, finding bugs and reporting them to developers.

**** I couldn’t believe it and of course, I wasn’t happy with it. He was a good guy and we’re still good friends, but I’m happy that at least we could manage to do a Selenium QA Automation certification together. At that time, test automation was nothing more than a rumour in my hometown, and earning a certification felt like truly being the captain of my own ship.

I was thrilled to have achieved not only the certification, but also the learning curve, some hot offers at the time, and I was offered a good package with the title of “Senior Engineer”.

Everything was going great, I started my new journey as a Sr. SQA Engineer (again without any supervision, but I was confident now). I was motivated and looking forward to growing professionally. Nice!

But…

However, my excitement quickly diminished when I realized the toxic environment and the quite unrealistic expectations from management.

I was expected to work late to meet the unrealistic deadlines. Well, that wasn’t my fault, it was clearly a sign of poor management. They were struggling with time management and resource management. I literally spent nights and weekends as well as national public holidays in the office, conducting regression testing.

Greed is a curse!

Oh man, I was so much done there. I felt like a well-paid servant and I felt being caged for the time I spent in the office. I wanted to get out of this sh** ASAP!!

"It always seems impossible until it's done." — Nelson Mandela

Luckily my habit of continuously exploring new ideas and new upcoming hot topics soon presented an opportunity. I decided to acquire new skills at just the right time when Hadoop and MapReduce were among the hottest global trends. I could secure admission to a European university for a Master’s degree in Information Technologies for Business Intelligence.

To be continued …

Solo QA Warrior — Challenge Accepted! [2/2]

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Substack (QA Warrior): https://qawarrior.substack.com/