Starting a brand-new career tomorrow

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So after working in media buying for a bunch of years, and becoming pretty sick of the place I’d been at the last 2 1/2 years - I put out some feelers w/ some friends about possible job openings and ended up landing a new gig pretty quickly.

The new position is with a company that produces software that some agencies use to facilitate their media buying. I’ll be a QA Analyst, testing the new software releases for bugs and giving input on ways to make it better. They like to hire techies (not me) and people with end-user experience (me) for this department. I have a great friend there who followed a similar path (and helped me get this position).

So tomorrow morning is my first day at the new company and I’m nervous as all hell since this is pretty much a completely different career path than the one I’ve been on for most of the last decade.

I’d wonder what the heck I was thinking to even consider this drastic of a change, but the 32% increase in pay (plus some very nice benefits) is a pretty convincing argument. Also, the company seems to be on pretty good footing and they seem to think I’ll do ok… Hope I don’t prove them wrong! Wish me luck!

2

Sounds like a fun opportunity. Good luck!

3

Ah, the sheer joy of bringing along old skills into new applications and building all sorts of new connections in your skill web! Truly one of life’s greatest pleasures (for me, anyway). If shit gets too crazy for you, just remember: The worst case scenario is always a funny story or a valuable learning experience, and sometimes both!

4

Good luck!

5

Stop back in a few weeks and let us know how it’s working out.

6

I’ve been a software tester for a few years. I can think of three pieces of advice that might be helpful.

  1. Value, and make notes, of your first impressions of the software. You’ll wind up using it so much that you’ll get used to it, but you’re trying to make the software better for users who won’t spend all their time on it. You first experience will more closely match the user’s perspective.

  2. Don’t just look for bugs. Your experience puts you in a good position to identify usability issues. Are the controls intuitive, is it clear what the software can do and how to make it do it, does it present the information you need in a way that’s easy to understand.

  3. Try things you wouldn’t ordinarily try. Nobody deliberately types the wrong PIN code at the ATM machine; we just assume it’ll block access if we did. Now it’s your job to make sure of things like that.