How did you get Started in software testing?

[Francois]

I stepped into software testing from the beginning of my career by chance.

In my engineering school, where I had been studying computer science and electronics, the vision I had from my soon-to-come professional life would be me developping or creating electronic boards… which I really was not looking forward to! Fortunately, in one of my first interviews, whose scope was not very clear, the client asked me: “what do you want to do in life?” to which I immediately replied: “I do not want to develop, I hate coding!” My answer pleased her, because she thought testing would suit me. While she was explaining me the job, I understood testing would simply be “Press a button and see what happens!” I was fearing it may nonetheless become quickly boring because it really sounded so simplistic…not at all!

From that 1st experience until now, I have however always questioned my progress in my field, and how I felt about carrying on in the same direction. While I was unsure until my 3rd experience, due to the company cultures and ways of working with testers, I became really enthusiastic after a fantastic 3-year experience in London, showing me that the testing world was much bigger and interesting than I thought, due to the extensive knowledge sharing of the community.

Now I am convinced that I want to carry on in that field, and am barely interested in management position until I feel I have gained enough experience: for me a collaborative experience with being embedded in a team is the way to go, and I am trying to avoid as much as possible the clustering between testing and development.

[Ronan Healy]

Some great stories guys.

@cutterslade It’s amazing how the culture of an organisation can shape your feelings about the job. Good to hear you have a good experience after.

[Kate]

I’m another one who got involved sideways. I started my life after college as a geologist – right when the bottom fell out of the geology market in Australia. So I tried teaching. BAD move. The less said about that one the better.

After I’d recovered from that fiasco, I went back to college and took a software engineering degree. And graduated in 2000…

After a year of intermittent programming work (one company went bankrupt under me, then there was some contract work, and…), and some other interruptions, I moved to the USA, and started working as a tester (to be fair, in that position, I was also a project manager, network admin, dogsbody, and intermittent programmer). The testing side is what I enjoyed most, and I’ve now been a tester for nearly 10 years. I intend to stay in testing, preferably with some automation because I do still enjoy the coding end.

Right now I’m the sole tester in a small team that’s handling all the software for a payroll company. It’s never boring.

[Ronan Healy]

Some great stories guys. It is fasinating how people come to this industry from so many different backgrounds. I would say that the people working in software testing have some of the most diverse careers of those working in IT. Am I wrong?

[Archana]

Ronan Healy wrote:

I would say that the people working in software testing have some of the most diverse careers of those working in IT.

I agree with you. I have seen many people with different backgrounds switch to testing even within the IT industry.

[Tassawer]

I started off as a developer but always had the tendency towards Software testing.
Switched my focus totally towards testing during my Post graduation starting off with an internship and then did my master thesis project related to Agent Based Test Management system.

It been 5 years since i stared to work as a System Test Engineer and i am loving it 🙂

[John]

I’ve found one really good testing tool named EasyQA and got interested with it. I literally spammed their support with questions and improvement feedback, so they once asked if I don’t want to be their remote stuff QA-tester. SO that`s how I got into this.

[Author]

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