This was a draft that I never published. It's rare that I do that, to be honest. My drafts folder is very lean but I wanted to hold off on this one. I didn't realize that it would be close to a year before I actually published it. Regardless, I wanted to share some sentiments about looking for work, dealing with that reality, and what my expectations and realities turned out to be. I should mention up-front that this is primarily in the past tense, and I have inserted some new information in a different colored text so you can see what was part of the original draft and what I've added today.
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Intended Publish Date: 11/16/2023
As fun as it was, and with great thanks to my dear friend Gwen Iarussi who reached out to me with an opportunity that I gladly took, that opportunity has reached its end.
It's okay. Contracts do that.
We are asked to accomplish a task or a goal, we go in and we do that, and then when it's all done, we wrap things up with a bow, take a metaphorical bow, and exit stage left.
Of course, the challenge is that, unless something else is lined up and ready to go, we fall prey to the irregular income cycle. We can be well rewarded for our efforts for a time but we may have lean periods we have to weather between opportunities. Such is life and such is where I'm at right now.
Thus it should come as no surprise that I am now at that point where I am actively looking, trying to figure out what my next move will be, where it will be, and who it will be with. Of course, I am reaching out to any and all with these messages. Today on LinkedIn, I posted this update:
I have had many shares and some wonderful comments from a number of people (And to everyone doing that, thank you very much, it is greatly appreciated) but I want to draw special attention to something Jon Bach did with his reply to me. He said he'd be happy to keep an ear out for me but in classic Jon fashion, he added a little challenge for me. Looking out for me is all well and good but what exactly should he be looking out for? Specifically, what is it I actually want to be doing given the choices.
I gave a reply and then realized there was much more here I wanted to both ponder and put into better thought, so I'm taking the opportunity to take my original reply and expand it here:
That is an excellent question.
I listed above areas that I'm most definitely interested in. You may notice that I didn't mention "test automation"?
There's a reason.
It's not that I *can't* do it or *won't* do it (heck, my last several months have been focused entirely on teaching a class how to use C#, Visual Studio, MSTest, NUnit, and Playwright to do *exactly* that) but I am a weirdo who genuinely enjoys the exploration of testing, the detective work of testing, the journalism of testing. Given my druthers, I would much rather be involved in doing *that*.
I want to encourage the broader adoption and understanding of Accessibility and Inclusive Design. I want to advocate for Testability on products. I want to see a world where people who choose to use a particular set of health and wellness products don't have to force themselves to upgrade and abandon everything they've put together to help them achieve their goals.
I enjoy learning, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy being an advocate. I'm a fan of doing. If that seems squishy and not very well defined, it's a work in progress but honestly, I want to confirm or refute hypotheses, I want to experiment... I WANT TO TEST!!!
Star Date: 10/15/2024
Be careful what you wish for, because you may find out that you both get it and don't exactly get it (LOL!). Much of 2024 had me focusing on technical writing rather than testing. In short, I did very little of what I WANTED to do but I was 100% happy to do the work that I did. I learned a great deal in the process and I found that, perhaps, the greatest thing I could have spent my time doing was putting my own writing under a microscope. More to the point, I had a chance to compare my writing to what many AI tools were generating. I confess I was amused that I was being asked to do a writing gig for an extended period at a time when people were commenting on the idea that AI was going to take all of those writing jobs away. I even asked why they would want to hire me when there were so many AI tools that were out there. The answer was intriguing... "Yes, we have experimented with and worked with the AI tools but they don't sound or feel convincing. We think a real writer and human that is involved in this space will bring insights and emphasis that AI tools do not." I experimented with that idea and decided to do some A/B Testing, prompting sites to help me write versus writing directly. My goal was to see how long it took me to take to have a presentable draft or final product I would be happy with.
Did AI do better than me? Depends on what we mean by "better". Did it outwrite me? No. At least not from a writing quality perspective. Literally, nothing I used AI prompts and generated output from was good to go from the get-go. I had to proofread, fix spelling and grammar, and reword a lot of stuff, as well as examine claims made and verify that they coincided with reality and could be backed up by real-world examples. When compared to my regular approach of writing from scratch, the time to a complete product was about the same in both cases. Where did AI excel? It helped me identify potential areas I might have neglected or had blind spots to. In short, it was a nice nudge to look at areas I might have glossed over or had little personal experience with, and encouraged me to look at those areas. No question, that's an AI win. It didn't do the work for me but it definitely helped me frame areas I was less alert to. I could then decide if those areas made sense to explore and include (many times, it didn't but a few times, it genuinely added to my overall knowledge and experience.
Where do I want to work? I've decided it doesn't really matter where I work as long as I can be effective and useful. I'm fond of saying "I'm a software tester and I can test any software out there". On the surface, that's true. If the goal is to help you make your product more usable, more accessible, more inclusive, and more responsive, I can probably do that with any organization. However, to borrow from Dirty Harry, "A (man) has to know (his) limitations." Odds are, if a biotech company were to look to hire me, they would not be looking for my skills to help make sites accessible. They would be looking for me to investigate how software helps answer biomedical or bioengineering problems. It's hard to make headway in those areas without previous experience. Not impossible, but I'd definitely be several steps back from people who have already worked in these industries.
Star Date: 10/15/2024
This is still true. Frustratingly so, in fact, and we can argue all day long about why this is problematic. I fully believe that testers can be effective in many environments but understanding the problem domain is going to absolutely stand any candidate in a better position. Having said that, testers bring many skills to the table and a lot of the skills they bring might not be obvious. Over the past two years, I have worked as the Marketing Chair for PNSQC, the conference I am attending this week. A great deal of my efforts has been to discover how to interpret the data of marketing efforts, trying to make sense of sentiment and expectations, learning about and examining analytics, having debates on the value (positive or negative) of SEO, and what initiatives actually produce engagement and interest. Before my layoff, I had very little understanding of these areas and how I could leverage these in things like my own job search or presenting ideas. Many tech people know about the inner workings of a product but struggle with why someone might actually want to buy or use it. My marketing education has given me significant insights into these areas I didn't have before, as well as how to use them.
- Every tester who is cold applying is going up against everyone else out there applying. You are effectively a number and a score sheet at this point. If a job has 500+ applicants, odds are that, even if you are a 93/100, there are probably a lot of people who are 94/100 or better. If you are outscored by others in some capacity, you are likely not going to get a second look.
- Be helpful with your network and if you know of a position that someone might be able to be filled by them. Again, even if they don't get hired, they will remember that you went to bat for them in the past. That makes them much more likely to go to bat for you. Note: I'm not saying this cynically, I seriously mean that if you try to help people sincerely and honestly, those people may very well be your best bet to get in front of a hiring manager they know later.
- Ghost jobs are real, I'm sad to say. Many companies post job listings hoping to get resumes from the cream of the crop, and they will keep a job open until they get "the perfect candidates". We can argue all day long as to the value of doing that (there is no such thing as "the perfect candidate", and "the perfect candidate" will quickly get bored with the job they are an exact fit for). The point is, there are job listings that stay open forever, it seems, and get renewed regularly without getting filled. These are fishing expeditions. Just be aware of that.
- Your "passion project" may be what ultimately gets you interviews and a gig but just as often, it's the mundane work that needs to be done that is more readily available. It may not be what you were immediately looking for but being willing to do some mundane work can again open an avenue to discussing the work you really want to do with people who have now seen and experienced your work ethic.
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