Although I received my offer letter back on June 3rd, for a Software Test Engineer position at Verily (formerly Google Life Science) it was still thrilling to see in my Inbox:
"Welcome to Google: Hi Thomas Maher, We're so excited for you to join us at Google/ Alphabet".
"Email: Onboarding at Google" |
The premise of the book was that quality wasn't some other department's responsibility... it was the software development's job. "Quality is a Development Issue, not a testing issue". It talked about having a Software Developer in Test who could:
- Go through the same questioning and examiniation process a traditional QA Engineer would go through
- Be able to correct code that could be improved, such as having functions that are given vague names.
- Be able to refactor code that isn't testable
- Try to focus on 100% test coverage, coming up with an automation plan
- Look at poorly written APIs and rewrite them
- Be able to code with fluency in C++, Java, Python, and JavaScript
- Is more of a "user-developer" where they try to keep the end user of the product in mind.
- They don't code as as much as the Software Developer in Test, but they need some fluency.
- They implement the automation plan and write the test scripts.
"After reading this book, and seeing it mentioned more and more in the tech blogs, I was quite worried. What if this catches on? All of my experience would be obsolete. The following year, I made sure to gain exposure to the automated testing world at my company".Five years later, I (somehow) managed to land a position at a Google/Alphabet company. Wish me luck! I start June 15th.
Happy Testing!
-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston
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