In development through testing.

I'm not a writer, I'm an engineer.

My story began 7 years ago in the hero city of Minsk. Intro I myself come from a small regional center 100 km from the capital of the Republic of Belarus, where I returned after receiving a diploma in telecommunications. At that time, I knew a little and was able to layout static HTML pages with a little JS admixture. Confidence at that time was also given by the ability to handle a PC and the skills of touch typing on RU and EN layouts. (yes, I was naive and ignorant). I really wanted to get a job as a web designer. There was a problem with English in general: understanding the text is pre-intermediate at best, and understanding by ear, speaking and writing is the absolute bottom. The incentive to not stop looking for my dream job was the huge debt imposed on me by a government organization (I couldn’t even go abroad). I compiled a weak resume (I found some version somewhere on the Internet). I didn't have a portfolio. In the spring, I sent out my resume to all major companies in Minsk. At the same time, I talked with friends, classmates, acquaintances who were already working in the IT field, about whether they needed a young, stupid padawan, but with a very mad desire to learn everything new. Waiting For the first 3 months (late spring and almost all summer) there were no answers at all. My confidence in the correctness of my choice has already evaporated. From the means of subsistence - the meager salary of his wife, who barely had enough for food and debt repayment. And at the end of August my happiness knew no bounds - 2!!! companies responded to my resume. Sentences #1: The first letter was, so to speak, about nothing - casting a fishing rod, am I still alive or not. In response to my response that I was still looking for a job, I was asked to try to undergo training at the company for 3 months (5 days a week for 6 hours), based on the results of which a decision would be made whether I was worthy. Considering my financial situation and the remoteness of my place of residence from the capital, they immediately sent this proposal to the firebox. #2: The second letter turned out to be an invitation to an interview. Fate? I arrived at the “office” (a couple of rooms in some kind of warehouse building, many of which at that time seemed to me somewhat similar to assembly halls) too early (thanks to the “well-developed” intercity OT system). I never got to the interview for the position of layout designer. So as not to be an eyesore for the employees and not to wait alone, the HR specialist suggested that I try to interview for the position of QA engineer . I had no idea who the testers were, but the girls who conducted the interview so enthusiastically described all the delights of the work of a QA specialist that I decided to have a conversation. The conversation was not long: for 10-15 minutes they tried to understand what I know and can do, for another 10 minutes they described the delights of the direction and the project for which they were looking for a person. The test task was long: I was given a chance to “poke” a web application being developed (I now know that it was a tested version, which had known bugs, which, in fact, I was supposed to find). Was this conversation the reason that my interview for the position of layout designer was postponed to another date, or was it just a coincidence, but I left home full of impressions and with the girls’ promise to contact me within the next two weeks with the results of our conversation. Even more surprising was the letter offering the position of junior test engineer, which arrived the very next day. It’s clear that I no longer waited for an interview to become a layout designer, but went into testing with the hope and faith that working in IT would make it easier to upgrade and move around. As they told me a year later, such a quick proposal was caused by the fact that I found serious bugs that their QA team missed. In addition, they liked my knowledge of layout. Career growth, or when? #1. Not Junior yet. It all started with a probationary period. According to the terms of the contract, a probationary period of 3 months, with payment of 50% of the agreed salary (this was my first experience of receiving a salary in an envelope :)). During the probationary period - intensive QA engineer courses. Every day 1-2 test tasks: applications in which you need to find as many bugs as possible. There were ups and downs. Every working morning for me began with getting up at 6:00, a quick breakfast and a 2-hour drive to the OT. 9 hours of work with a lunch break and 2 hours of return home. The first salary was barely enough to cover transportation costs. There was also an unpleasant moment: on one of the test tasks I fell asleep very much, scored only 10% - the question was even raised about stopping further cooperation. We agreed to train me for a couple more weeks, and only then make a decision. The trial period was ended early. After 2 months of intense training, I was transformed into... #2. Junior Test Engineer. For me, as a person who came from the outback and previously worked for the state. office, everything in IT was a wonder. The company's attitude towards employees was especially unusual. No one yells at you for no reason, everyone has specific tasks, no one controls you 10 times a day. I went to heaven... But as my skills grew, I began to sink to earth. All training came down to training in testing, writing test scripts, filing bugs and learning English. In general, thanks to the first points, learning English turned out so-so. It was not possible to study anything in development at all. This is how I remember my first year in IT. #3. Test Engineer. Almost a year has passed. The junior prefix “fell off”, the salary increased a little. Over the winter, I got really tired of spending 4 hours a day on the road. At the family council, it was decided to move to the capital. By the end of summer, we rented a one-room apartment on the outskirts in an old Khrushchev building. The rental just fit into my travel budget. Again, life on one salary, because... My wife’s job search was not going as well as mine. The euphoria of finding a job in IT has passed. “My” first project was completed (by the way, it was not successful, it failed), the team was disbanded for other projects. Here I fully experienced what it was like to sit on a “bench” for a tester. If a developer, sitting on a “bench”, improves his skills by attending various courses and watching various videos, then the “bench” of testers is complete “trash”. You are shoved into all projects where help is needed. In a week you can take part in testing 2-3 projects. Negative emotions began to appear... Winter crept up unnoticed... New Year 2011! A couple of weeks after the New Year, a colleague who had recently moved to another office knocked on my personal door. They urgently needed a tester for the project. He offered me an interview. The interview was purely formal. They asked if I could write sql queries, gave 2-3 tasks to write queries using JOIN. They asked what salary I would agree to go to them for. They gave me 25% more - I hardly thought about making the decision to transfer. New company, new project, big, I would even say huge. More than 200 team members in Minsk alone. Business trips to Moscow and quarterly cash bonuses were a pleasant bonus. Life began to improve, my wife found, although not a highly paid job, but one she liked. Paying off debts has become more fun. In the new company I again had to undergo training (which took 3 months), there was also a probationary period, which ended after a month. The salary was not cut during the probationary period. #4. Middle. In different companies this position is called differently (middel, senoir, without a prefix at all), but in most it is just the middle position. 3+ years of experience in IT. I managed to gain a foothold in the industry. They began to listen to my opinion. There is little time for training. I am grateful to this company for English language courses. After 2 years of classes, I began to understand the language a little by ear, read technical documentation on the project without problems, and began to understand articles in English-language newspapers in places. A year later, the project was closed; it is not so easy to place such a large team on other projects. The developers were offered retraining in Java. Because I was still at the bench; I managed to persuade PM to enroll me in these courses. This was my first acquaintance with Java. It didn't last long - 4 lessons. There are two reasons: the course was designed for developers with 3+ years of experience, and I was transferred to a new project. On the new project, in addition to manual testing, I came into contact with automated tests. Tests were written in Delphi-script :). After half a year, they started cutting the budget on the new project, and I, as the last one to come, became the first to leave. Another “brunch”... and waiting for a new addition to the family. #5. How do middles live in Europe? One day in April, I somehow met one of my colleagues from the first project. We started talking. A colleague had been working in Riga for a year and was very pleased with the move. Then, jokingly, he suggested that I write a resume and give it to him. I wrote some nonsense (I'm not a writer, but an engineer) on one page. A week later I received a call from a non-Belarusian number. I was invited to talk via Skype. Was not. The conversation was conducted in Russian. We just chatted for life. HR on the other side suggested trying to get an interview for a new starting project. Everything went very quickly. After 2 days, a conversation with HR: here, according to my knowledge, they walked through the “tank”, fortunately in Russian. They also checked the level of my spoken English. After another 2 days, a technical interview - 10 tasks and 30 minutes of time, all online (I’m at home in front of the computer, they’re in a crowd at the other end of the “wire”). A week later I received an offer. The paperwork process has begun. A month later I became a dad. Another month later I was walking along the old streets of Riga and could not believe what had happened. Just 4.5 years ago I was a simple unemployed guy with a huge debt to the state. Yes, we managed to pay off the debt without any problems before starting the paperwork. The start of a new project gave me the opportunity to improve my skills in automation. Because For the first 3-4 months there was nothing special to test, the project management decided to master Selenium + Nodejs automation (not a very popular stack at that time). That's how I became an automation specialist. Over the course of 3 years on the project, I created my own framework from scratch and managed to rewrite it twice. #6. Lead. On the wave of a successful automation project, I reached another height. During this time, I managed to give up the team lead position 2 times (I don’t like meetings, I like tinkering with code). Trained my first Padawan :). Conducted several interviews for a tester position. But all this is not what I once strived for. Well, how could it be without His Majesty, chance? In the summer of 2016, I accidentally came across the javarush.ru project, I flew through the first 10 levels in 2 evenings. Appetite comes with eating, especially since vacation is just around the corner. ABOUT! Yes, there’s also a discount for a year... In general, I mastered the second ten levels in 2 weeks of vacation in the mountains. Autumn... Loading on the project, the birth of a second child, paperwork, and also the upcoming update 2.0 - a break for 3 months. BUT! break is only for javarush, not for JAVA. After my vacation, I haunted my colleagues from the server team, asking them questions on obscure topics with javarush, showing them pieces of my code, telling them my logical solutions, and “snooping” on their code in the repository. My activity did not go unnoticed. At the end of November, the lead of the server team invited me to try my hand at Java EE for the benefit of the project. To begin with, these were trial steps - 1-2 days a week. By spring - 50/50 junior java developer/lead test engineer. In the spring, having gathered all his will into a fist, he courageously continued his battles on the fields of javarush until 2-3 o’clock in the morning. Epilogue Today I am working on a medium-sized project. 75% of the time I am a java developer, 25% a test automation engineer. As you can see, a portfolio is not always needed. In my case, there was only one real interview - when moving to Riga. As for learning English, in Riga cinemas show films in their original language, this was the impetus for improving listening comprehension. I take a lot of technical courses in English. We also try to watch cartoons with children in the original language. I haven’t taken any English courses in Riga; I improve my language by watching video content and listening to podcasts, as well as communicating with colleagues. As for interviews (both as a tester and as a subject), do not try to give yourself weight with the concepts in which you swim. It’s very easy to expose him, but you’ll spoil your impression of yourself. It’s better to honestly admit that I haven’t come across this material, but if necessary, I’ll pull it up. Before the interview, take the time to think about what you want/are going to tell about yourself, your previous projects, and your goals for the next 3-5 years. At my first interview, the question “where do I see myself in 3 years” stumped me. Regarding the current project. The project is built on Spring technology. A “zoo” DBMS is supported; Liquibase (a database control and versioning system) is used to control them. There are a lot of integrations with various systems. I was “immersed” in all this without even the slightest idea what Spring, Hibernate, etc. are. You have to figure all this out as you go. At the same time, I watch video tutorials and read excerpts from books. PS This article was born in response to one of the comments to the previous success story. When I tried to start answering, I realized that there was too much for a comment. Don't be afraid to make mistakes.