Meet Wrikers: Snezhana Shustova, QA Manager
Before coming to Wrike, Snezhana worked in an outsourcing company as a tester. Check out her personal journey of going from tester to QA Manager, and why she decided to join Wrike! 👇
My name’s Snezhana, and I’m based in Prague, Czech Republic. I’ve been working for Wrike for 7.5 years. Now I am a QA functional manager, leading seven different product and internal teams and responsible for test infrastructure and deploys.
What made you want to join Wrike?
I worked with Wrikers in the same building for quite some time, so when my project ended and Wrike offered me an opportunity to join their team, I didn’t hesitate much. I knew the people already, and I was sure they were going to be great teammates, and that appears to be 100% true after 7.5 years, I’m still with Wrike, and our community is our best asset.
…and I was sure they were going to be great teammates, and that appears to be 100% true after 7.5 years, I’m still with Wrike, and our community is our best asset.
How did you become a QA Manager?
When my former manager said that I was born to lead, it was a genuine surprise to me. By that time I’d worked for six years as a QA and was responsible for many important projects, but never thought about actually leading people. It still took me a long time to become a proper manager, though, since I had to develop the soft skills required for careful leadership. I took over a lead position on one of the teams and started acting as a tech lead overviewing our CI/CD processes and infrastructure. The experience taught me a lot and eventually I was offered the chance to take over leadership for a couple more people, then a couple more people at the end of the last year, I was given two full units of teams and officially became a QA Manager. That was and remains a scary responsibility, but I believe that my manager and QA colleagues will be here to guide me, support me, and share best practices. And looks like it worked out!
What is the hardest part of your job? What is the most rewarding one?
The hardest challenge is our rapid growth, both internal (number of engineers) and external (customer base). We grew from only a few dozen people in 2016 to more than 500 in 2019, our customers' accounts became bigger and bigger, and we continue to expand. That creates a massive challenge for our test and production infrastructure. We have to constantly redefine our processes and product completely to make them more scalable while still fast, intuitive and easy to use. However, here comes the most rewarding part — we invested so much effort into our internal tools and infrastructure that we really created one of the best sets in the industry. I just love to see that “Woooow” moment when a newcomer to our company says that we have the best CI/CD tooling they’ve ever worked with.
We have to constantly redefine our processes and product completely to make them more scalable while still fast, intuitive and easy to use.
How would you describe Wrike’s QA team and culture?
Wrike’s QA team is one of a kind since all our QA engineers know how to combine different roles. We do a little bit of everything — from helping with business analytics to writing autotests, providing cross-team communications, facilitating delivery, the testing itself, and generally making sure we deliver the best product in the market. Having such bright and creative multidisciplinary engineers on board creates a truly unique culture, everyone is always very responsive, proactive and ready to help.
How do you think the team will continue to grow and mature?
We have a strong focus on educating people in QA Automation. Every QA is encouraged to take a course with a personal mentor from QAA and learn how automation works for Wrike. We heavily rely on our autotests which help us to completely avoid so-very-hated manual regression and have the best job offer on the market.
Every QA is encouraged to take a course with a personal mentor from QAA and learn how automation works for Wrike.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
A lot of it is spent on Zoom calls — those could be 1:1s with my direct reports, sprint reviews with teams I’m responsible for, departmental meetings, interviews with potential candidates, conversations about infrastructure changes and many more. Since my work is also cross-departmental, I spend some time supporting effective communications between the QA department and SysOps/DevOps departments. Slack conversations also take up a major part of my time. However, as much as I love a good meeting, I still try to dedicate some quiet time to working on my personal goals, projects and action items, mostly infrastructure-related. My stack consists of Wrike, Google Docs/Slides and some of our internal tools.
What’s something that people would be surprised to learn about you?
Regular vacation destinations become too boring after 50+ countries! One of my best trips took place in Zimbabwe, and on my wishlist there’s Somalia, Antarctica, Bangladesh, Colombia, Mali and many more. One day I plan to get everywhere. I try to combine more mainstream trips with more exotic ones, but still, walking in the favelas of Brazil or camping in Sahara, Egypt that’s the only thing that truly energizes and gives me the energy to work.
If you were going to give someone who just decided to join Wrike one piece of advice, what would it be?
Don’t be afraid to speak up! We need and love your advice and suggestions, so don’t hesitate to share some ideas. Wrike is a super open-minded place where every opinion is valued.
Wrike is a super open-minded place where every opinion is valued.
