New habits

Once you've achieved competence and a reasonable tenure at your job, it's easy to rest.  You have valuable institutional knowledge that newer workers don't have, so it's easy to feel "smart enough".  Furthermore, feeling "smart" is awesome. 

But what's next?

Stagnation, unless you intentionally plan otherwise. 

I've been tinkering with scripting for years.  It's a great rush when something works correctly.  But when it doesn't...and when Google searches turn up nothing, it's easy to be content with what you have.  That was probably too ambitious for me to try that in the script.  Manual testing is just fine for this.  I don't want to waste someone's time by asking them -- they have better things to do, and what if they think I'm stupid?

1) Ask the stupid question. 

I'd suggest email, so you don't interrupt someone "in the flow" -- and a preface of "this is not a high priority, but I'm curious if you know how to do X, or if you've ever encountered problems with X and could share any tricks"  Add what you've already tried, so that it's not something they sigh about under their breath and wonder why you didn't just google it. 

They might think you're stupid, sure.  But probably, that is in your own head.  And they'll be flattered that you ask them.  And they might learn something from you that will make them better teachers in the future.  

And, most importantly from my perspective, you could learn something from them that makes you more valuable.  They could show you a technique that opens up all kinds of possibilities for problem-solving in the future. You solve more problems and faster, and now are a vector for spreading this knowledge if someone else has the same problem in the future. 

2) Ask for feedback. 

Show people your code/your work.  People who know more than you do.  If you're a fixed-mindset (by default), people-pleasing person like I am, this will make you want to throw up.  But, it will make you better.  It's like having a personal trainer available to tell you "You know, you are doing that exercise all wrong.  People are probably laughing at you behind your back, and worst-case, you could snap your spinal cord".  Except with code.  It can break you of bad habits and learn to do better work more efficiently. Even if what you're doing *feels* like exercise and the end result seems the same, it could be working by coincidence or doing something unintentional and awful very quietly.  

Professional Miracles

Today marks the 7th Anniversary of the "Miracle on the Hudson".

This story inspires me every time I think of it.  I want to totally rock my job like Sullenberger rocked his job that day.

There are three takeaways from that day for me.

1) Learn different strategies for problem-solving.  Know when to use them and how to pick the best one.

2) Practice.  Get really good at applying what you've learned so that it becomes automatic when it needs to be.

3) Seek out opportunities to be useful.  If Sullenberger hadn't shown up for work that day, maybe Flight 1549 would have had a different fate.

My Story

I grew up with no particular career in mind. I did well in school but I never saw a vision of myself as an adult.  I remember being asked in the second grade and I replied real estate agent (because my parents were) or a teacher (because I like school).

Later on I wanted to be a meteorologist because the tour I went on at OU was cool.

In high school I replied Economist, even though I'd never really had any economics classes.  I did well in math and chemistry. For some reason I never considered math as a career path and if I had just asked the question or been given a nudge in this direction I may have gone down that road. 

I took some chemistry in college but I imagined that thinking about molecular structures and being in a lab all day would be boring. 

Psychology and psychiatry were options, mainly because I'd had my own experience with mental illness that I hadn't quite worked through yet.  Going to medical school scared me, since I felt like I would always be second-guessing myself and berating myself over any mistake and agonizing over each patient 24 hours a day (see my mention of mental illness in previous sentence).

Psychology research seemed fun.  I took Statistics, Experimental Design, Intro to Personality, Abnormal Psych, and worked in a Psych Lab for a year.

I enjoyed making web pages but for some reason didn't consider that I could do that as a full time job and not just as a hobby.  

Political Science seemed fun.  I worked in Washington DC for a summer and got a little jaded with that.

The next summer I worked as an intern for a state-wide housing study.  I enjoyed traveling to small-town Oklahoma and hearing the stories of what was going on there.  There were cities that had a lot of hope and were working to bring businesses there; there were cities that had given up and were just waiting for their old people to die.


I did take lots of Economics, which ended up being my major as I predicted as a clueless high school student.  I ended up with minors in Psychology and Political Science.

I graduated without a clue as to what I wanted to do.  I liked Economic Development but it seemed like it required more of a Sales personality than what I have. I was extremely burned out on school due to my perfectionism.  I was terrified of making the wrong choice for a Masters program so I made no choice.

I moved to Tulsa from Norman to work with one of the companies that was involved with the state-wide housing study I worked on the summer before.  I was a commercial real estate appraiser and market analyst.  It was data-heavy which was fun. There were aspects of real estate appraisal that were not me, however.  I was Not Happy.

So I remembered that I liked web pages and started thinking of that more broadly.  I took some programming classes at TCC in the evenings so that I could use that part of my brain and maybe make an escape plan.

I eventually found my first IT job, which later let me jump to my current position of testing software at StatSoft/Dell.  StatSoft was acquired by Dell in 2014.  I call it my dream job.  It combines my natural OCD + analytical personality tendencies with the Math I loved but didn't know I could do anything with with the Statistics I loved but didn't know I could do anything with with the computer programming I had failed to consider as a possibility.

As I plan for the future growth of my career, I try to keep aware of the latest trends in each of these fields.  I know a little something about many things but deepen my understanding as much as I need to depending on the project I'm working on.

I *still* don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I'm beyond happy right now with a career that lets me get immersed in both the technology and the subject matter. 

Being and Hiring a Test Specialist - Post by Jeff Nyman

"...each and every tester must have a personal goal of becoming a credible, high-integrity reporter of information that people value. Any ideas and solutions they put forth must be demonstrable in the context of that goal"

Complete post: http://testerstories.com/2015/11/being-and-hiring-a-test-specialist/

Learn a lot about one thing or a little about a lot of things?

Should Custom Software Developers be Generalists or Specialists? 

Spoiler alert: " I think the answer is that I need to be both. There are a few things that I need to know deeply. Deep enough that I am prepared to solve complicated problems that my teams encounter in that technology. There are many things that I know broadly. I need to know enough about them that I can leverage those technologies to solve a wide array of problems my team might encounter throughout the life cycle of a project," Eric Potter writes.
 
True for testers as well.  I want to know enough about everything that I can point junior colleagues in the right direction when they have questions.  But I also want to be an expert of at least a few things, so that I can be useful in solving particularly arcane, tricky problems.

Testers: Get Out of the Quality Assurance Business

I was doing some late Friday afternoon cleaning of my to-read list and finally read this post of Michael Bolton's that I had bookmarked within the past few months.  

We give information.  We explore.  We look at the product from the perspective of "maybe this doesn't work?" instead of trying to prove that it does.  We add value that we sometimes only know is there if we *don't* add it.  

The article spoke a lot about our relationship to development, project management, and management.  I want the developers to think of me as an ally who saves them time in the long run and not someone to hide from. I want management to see me as an ally who does their best to make sure we aren't embarrassed in the marketplace.  I want project managers to see me as an ally providing information about risk and gut feelings and diplomatic assessments of project stumbling blocks.  I try to be honest in all of my dealings internal and external to my department and positive/affirming at every opportunity I'm able, so that when I suddenly sound the alarm, it's perceived as important.  I want to, as Michael Bolton states, "Be a service to the project, not an obstacle." 

Moving from Tumblr

My previous blog posts: http://amandashankleknowlton.tumblr.com/