Assuring Quality

Claudio Lener
Aug 28, 2017 · 6 min read
Quality Assurance is more than what you think

Working under the title of a Quality Assurance Automation Engineer might sound like an important, prestigious and honorable job to most people (it is!), although to me, starting out, it surely didn’t seem so. This summer, as my first internship position, I had the chance to occupy exactly that job description at a local startup in downtown Toronto. The area in which the company is located is called Liberty Village and it’s a young, lively and tasty community that’s growing year by year. Populated by a variety of colorful and ethnical food trucks and little local stores, it’s pretty much impossible to go wrong when deciding to go out for lunch with co-workers or friends and both. Yes, co-workers can also be friends.

You are what you eat

Being my first time working in a company, I didn’t really know what to expect. I only had stories in my mind from other peers from University or whatever the media subtly inserted in my head. The office in which I worked was to me a true representation of what a startup could look like. An open space concept served as the main area for the workspace. Developers of all kinds seated at their desks, coding away. Coffee on the right side of the mouse, a bowl of a nuts spring mix on the left of the 2 computer screens and a MacBook (for some reason everyone has a MacBook), beards of all colors and sizes, fancy shirts and casual wear. It wasn’t all developers though, other employees that dealt more directly with the clients were a crucial part as well to the atmosphere that characterized such an amazing vibe. Wearing the company hoodie was for me one of my biggest prides in fact, representing the company meant a lot to me. It’s also a sick hoodie in my opinion, I still wear it to date.

Starting out as a QA wasn’t that great to begin with. I had to read pages and pages of a wiki that gave me not much more of a general overview of what I had to do, which, sure, it was better than nothing, but felt at the same time disappointing because I wasn’t really getting any information I would directly use in my work day. It felt dispersive, overly complicated. I ended up revisiting the wiki and creating some MUST READ pages so that new QAs would be able to get on boarded more easily with the new job. After all my reading I got to actually do some work, around the last few days of my first week, and I finally got assigned to my new project, working with another girl. We were both new to it but she had been at the company for several months already and was a very good QA. She helped me understand a lot throughout my term and saved my a** a few good times in crucial moments. She also taught me good work policies that I would sometime overlook and I owe her a lot for her support.

The work I was given did not seem very interesting at first and became quite boring and monotone. I was checking and making sure that the buttons on the footer of the page all redirected correctly and had a margin that was X on the top and Y on the right side, that the color was of a specific RBG code, that the font matched the requirement, that the CMS (Central Management System, used by the client to enter data into the website) had some fields required and others optional with a toggle that sometimes was there and some others wasn’t. Anyways, long story short, it wasn’t a lot of fun. The first month or so, my internship was cool, but yet, not awesome. The weather was really crappy too so my mood just wasn’t great. After the fourth week I decided that my internship was going to be what I was going to put into it, so I decided to change things around.

At work I decided to start a “Humans Of” series, in which I would feature in a picture with a respective quote some of the employees of the company. As an amateur photographer it was a great experience for me to improve some of my skills and at the same time get to know many of the employees that I was working with a little better. The series went so well that I continued it for two more weeks past its end date, and thanks to the good impact that it had on the company’s environment, I was asked to help start another series, take some pictures for the company’s website and be the unofficial photographer to some of the events that the company organized throughout the summer. This for me was one of the best things that happened at work. By always being around taking pictures I was able to understand and appreciate the company that I worked at, its values and principles it held high, its employees and founders a little better, every shot. Thanks to this I grew with the company and really felt like I was part of it.

As the social and cultural aspect of my internship were definitely improving, the work itself still felt a little stale. My team was awesome (and the other QAs I worked with were too) but I still wanted more. I then decided to ask my supervisor and manager what I could do to be more busy and get my hands dirtier. Luckily my hands only touched the keyboard and the snack cabinet, so I didn’t actually have to get dirty. Knowing what to do better, I got back to the office with a fresh mind and new outlook on what I was doing. I got involved more in the other projects at the company, learned how they worked a little better and got better at collaborating with the other QAs. I did some automation on a few features of other projects and got the chance to work on some development and got hungry for more as I learned the really hot technology everyone I knew was talking about: REACT.js. Thanks to the help of my now friends I was able to improve and keep up to speed with my workload. I was feeling more and more satisfied with work, and happier and happier every time I would tap my door key to enter from the side door (I biked to work and we had a storage right by that door).

The famous React.js logo

By the end of my placement I felt like I really belonged. I was friends with most people at the company I got the chance to work with and I began to really love what I was doing. The tasks I initially found boring and monotone became meaningful and interesting as I felt responsible for the project I was working on and the work I was doing. I stayed at work later to finish what I had to do and trying to learn more about the technologies I was using. It all felt pleasant, almost as if it wasn’t a job at all.

My sixteen weeks ended up flying by. Leaving was definitely a bitter sweet moment as the memories I made at the company were truly priceless. I am only more excited for what the future has in store for my next terms. One of the main lessons I learned from work is that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. And this is not the typical cheesy quote that makes people say “Well… time travel is impossible!”. It specifically regards the self confidence that I lost during my first year of University. It made me realize that as long as I put my mind and effort to it, I will be able to do it. And if you put your mind and effort to it, then you also will be able to do it. That’s the only difference between achievement and disappointment. Go out there, take the initiative to make things better for yourself and with hard work and perseverance you will be able to do it.

I want to thank all of my co-workers for having made this experience a remarkable and memorable one, for having me taught discipline and hard work. A special thanks to my two QA buddies, without whom I would have not had half of the amazing time I did have. Long live QA!

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