Was it fun?
My company has something about the culture for years that has been really special. Real substance behind the philanthropy efforts, a very human feel, and a sense that fun belongs everywhere, not just in a play hard, then work hard (mostly work hard), but never combine the two sort of way.
I had a testing assignment this week and last night was FUN! I worked really hard. I found a great problem, and I had so much fun communicating it. It made my whole night and I was late to dinner and I didn't even care. That's the sort of thing I like to work on.
I want to be the person who makes sure as we move to every kind of possible metric to measure a person and a task that fun doesn't go away. Just as the soul of software can be at risk when you make changes, so can the soul of your entire workforce, and with it, what made it special and successful in the first place. If you hire just one type of person, you lose every voice of dissent, and with it, often the voice of reason. It is generally bad to mention anything negative to those above you in the food chain, but sometimes they need to hear it. Otherwise they have a year like Britney Spears and everything's gone down the tubes and someone else has to go in and do a very expensive cleanup. When there is a cleanup like that, it's never announced "someone Royally made some poor choices and apologized and now we are going to fix it". Instead we are just "going in a new direction" and "improving our process". I have a way with words so long as I believe them. My friend will sometimes ask me to rephrase what she says before she has fights with her boyfriend so that they go over more favorably. However, as a matter of integrity, I think if you make a huge error, you admit it, apologize, and explain how you are going to move forward.
I recently found out that pretty much you have to be into code or have a CS degree and significant coding chops to be considered for a QE Manager job. I think that is industry standard. Why does no one ask you to give them a demo of the software they are supposed to be managing, yet they must know the code? Do they even know software has a soul? Do they know that their people do, or are they just good at making charts to show how the metrics are doing?
So instead of conversation 1, you have conversation 2.
Conversation 1
Person 1: "We should make this feature. It's really cool!"
Person 2: "Yeah, but it isn't useful and really sucks when you take out all of the stuff you can't fit into THIS version."
Conversation 2
Person 1: "We should make this feature. It's really cool!"
Person 2: "Yes. I've investigated your coding logic and rate it as "pass". More input Stephanie."
I wish I could walk down the hall at my work and ask each tester what they did this week that was fun and get them all to tell me one thing about the TESTING that was fun. Now something else they did at work. Not a conversation about an idea, but that testing was still fun.
Testing should be fun. I don't want to be the only one who had fun testing last week. Saying this anywhere feels about as effective as peeing into the Ocean. I have to focus on the positive, I had fun this week and I'm still here.
I had a testing assignment this week and last night was FUN! I worked really hard. I found a great problem, and I had so much fun communicating it. It made my whole night and I was late to dinner and I didn't even care. That's the sort of thing I like to work on.
I want to be the person who makes sure as we move to every kind of possible metric to measure a person and a task that fun doesn't go away. Just as the soul of software can be at risk when you make changes, so can the soul of your entire workforce, and with it, what made it special and successful in the first place. If you hire just one type of person, you lose every voice of dissent, and with it, often the voice of reason. It is generally bad to mention anything negative to those above you in the food chain, but sometimes they need to hear it. Otherwise they have a year like Britney Spears and everything's gone down the tubes and someone else has to go in and do a very expensive cleanup. When there is a cleanup like that, it's never announced "someone Royally made some poor choices and apologized and now we are going to fix it". Instead we are just "going in a new direction" and "improving our process". I have a way with words so long as I believe them. My friend will sometimes ask me to rephrase what she says before she has fights with her boyfriend so that they go over more favorably. However, as a matter of integrity, I think if you make a huge error, you admit it, apologize, and explain how you are going to move forward.
I recently found out that pretty much you have to be into code or have a CS degree and significant coding chops to be considered for a QE Manager job. I think that is industry standard. Why does no one ask you to give them a demo of the software they are supposed to be managing, yet they must know the code? Do they even know software has a soul? Do they know that their people do, or are they just good at making charts to show how the metrics are doing?
So instead of conversation 1, you have conversation 2.
Conversation 1
Person 1: "We should make this feature. It's really cool!"
Person 2: "Yeah, but it isn't useful and really sucks when you take out all of the stuff you can't fit into THIS version."
Conversation 2
Person 1: "We should make this feature. It's really cool!"
Person 2: "Yes. I've investigated your coding logic and rate it as "pass". More input Stephanie."
I wish I could walk down the hall at my work and ask each tester what they did this week that was fun and get them all to tell me one thing about the TESTING that was fun. Now something else they did at work. Not a conversation about an idea, but that testing was still fun.
Testing should be fun. I don't want to be the only one who had fun testing last week. Saying this anywhere feels about as effective as peeing into the Ocean. I have to focus on the positive, I had fun this week and I'm still here.
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