In this episode of the Arguing Agile podcast we welcome Lenar Mukhamadiev!
Lenar shares his fascinating career path from starting as a QA intern at age 20 to founding his own software development company, iDelsoft: https://idelsoft.com
Lenar discusses the challenges of being an entrepreneur, the importance of embracing failure as learning opportunities, his thoughts on the future of QA, and advice he would give his younger self.
Tune in for insights on leadership, accountability, hiring, and more!
0:00 Podcast Intro
0:12 Guest Intro: Lenar Mukhamadiev
0:56 Lenar's Background
2:14 Life at Idelsoft
4:16 QA Progression
5:39 Moving to Software Engineering
7:15 Brian's QA Journey
10:01 Challenges
12:31 Where to Play...
13:38 Success & Value
15:58 Testing Skill
17:25 Owned Outcomes
19:24 Accountability
23:06 Communication
25:11 Failure & Iterating
27:29 Interviewing
29:40 Work Experience
33:56 Future of QA
37:51 Advice for Your Younger Self
38:49 Wrap-Up
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00:00:01 --> 00:00:11 welcome to the Arguing Agile Podcast, where Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel and Product Manager Brian Orlando argue about product management, leadership, and business agility, so you don't have to.
00:00:12 --> 00:00:13 Welcome back to the arguing agile podcast.
00:00:13 --> 00:00:14 Lenar is here today.
00:00:15 --> 00:00:16 Lenar is here today.
00:00:16 --> 00:00:20 He is a technical generalist, software developer, and founder at Idlesoft.
00:00:20 --> 00:00:22 It's too early to be messing up pronunciations.
00:00:22 --> 00:00:27 10 plus years of experience developing innovative solutions for fortune 500 companies, enterprises, and startups.
00:00:27 --> 00:00:38 He's also the organizer of the Tampa QA meetup, which I think I am a part of, and I've never actually shown up to so bad on me and it's a leading community for QA engineers and enthusiasts in the Tampa Bay area.
00:00:38 --> 00:00:40 We'd like to welcome Lenar to the podcast.
00:00:40 --> 00:00:41 Awesome.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:41 Welcome.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:42 Thank you.
00:00:42 --> 00:00:42 Thank you.
00:00:42 --> 00:00:42 Thank you.
00:00:42 --> 00:00:43 Thanks for having me guys.
00:00:43 --> 00:00:55 I'd like to start off with people that are new to the audience I'd like to start off with a career summary, like if you were to walk into an interview and they say, Tell me about yourself, which by the way, is code for I didn't read your resume.
00:00:55 --> 00:00:56 exactly sure.
00:00:56 --> 00:00:56 Yeah.
00:00:56 --> 00:01:01 So I started out as a QA intern when I was 20 and didn't really think about.
00:01:01 --> 00:01:06 or technology as a career at first, because the major was slightly different from that.
00:01:06 --> 00:01:14 Engineering technology major, but I was kind of got recruited by my friend to work for text tech company back in my hometown and I did my internship.
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 I kind of liked it and I never left technology since then.
00:01:17 --> 00:01:29 When I was 21, I came to the United States and start working for the several consulting companies, basically doing manual QA first and then switched up into automation and work for enterprises, work for startups.
00:01:29 --> 00:01:37 this largest company was number thirteen at the fortune 500 list, So yeah, I was taking a leap from mental QA to the as that role.
00:01:37 --> 00:01:42 then I had a one year when I switched to software engineering proper doing backend development, but I didn't like it that much, to be honest.
00:01:42 --> 00:01:49 And I had to go back to QA engineering And I thought like, I have to do something with my knowledge that I acquired in the past 10 years.
00:01:49 --> 00:01:50 And then I started Idelsoft.
00:01:50 --> 00:01:55 in 2019 Past couple years were phenomenal for us and we were going crazy.
00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 We scaled up to 22 people right now.
00:01:58 --> 00:01:59 So, It's been going well.
00:01:59 --> 00:02:08 We mainly work with local companies from as early as two people, one people companies up to corporations to 5, 000 people.
00:02:08 --> 00:02:14 Obviously eventually when I started, I was mainly doing website design, web development, mobile applications.
00:02:14 --> 00:02:26 And now we are taking higher challenges for us doing that cloud migration projects, like rewriting the old code from moving from old COBOL code to the more modern technologies and stuff like that.
00:02:26 --> 00:02:28 So yeah, our team is remote.
00:02:28 --> 00:02:29 we are mixed.
00:02:29 --> 00:02:30 We have some people in the U.
00:02:30 --> 00:02:30 S.
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 We have some people all over the world.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:34 We have people working from 12 countries right now.
00:02:34 --> 00:02:46 And yeah, We came up with our unique system off screening and finding people where we embed ourselves into the local communities in every country, mainly in this Tech towns in every country, right?
00:02:46 --> 00:02:53 Think like Israel, like Tel Aviv, you know and when you think about like Latin America, that is like Medellin San Paolo, the same thing in Europe.
00:02:53 --> 00:02:55 This country of Georgia, for example.
00:02:55 --> 00:03:00 So we will be deeply involved in the community, sponsoring many events and finding people for our company to work for.
00:03:00 --> 00:03:01 So so far so good.
00:03:01 --> 00:03:08 Despite the current challenges of the market, we've been growing and signing new clients and starting new projects.
00:03:08 --> 00:03:14 And even today, like we have, I know many roles open and we close like three, four roles a month right now.
00:03:14 --> 00:03:15 So which is good.
00:03:15 --> 00:03:16 I cannot complain.
00:03:16 --> 00:03:16 Yeah.
00:03:16 --> 00:03:17 I love Tampa.
00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 Like I'm a huge fan of Tampa.
00:03:19 --> 00:03:19 I love being here.
00:03:19 --> 00:03:20 So nice.
00:03:20 --> 00:03:21 So warm, so sunny.
00:03:21 --> 00:03:25 And previously I spent five years in Pittsburgh and it's a different contrast, definitely.
00:03:25 --> 00:03:26 Awesome.
00:03:26 --> 00:03:27 So for our.
00:03:27 --> 00:03:29 If they want to check out a little more about your company, what's your website?
00:03:30 --> 00:03:31 Idelsoft.Com is a website.
00:03:31 --> 00:03:32 Yeah.
00:03:32 --> 00:03:40 So we are pretty much well known, I think, in the startup community here in Tampa but since Tampa startup community is not that big yet we work with clients all over the States.
00:03:41 --> 00:03:56 There's a whole lot of questions that I want to ask that I didn't think about before we started now about running a company especially when you're, I mean, what a great pitch of like, just get like, don't spin up a team to do all this stuff with legacy, just break off some money, send it to us, we'll migrate your legacy systems like that.
00:03:57 --> 00:03:59 That's a very, that's a great self contained.
00:03:59 --> 00:04:01 Like focused business idea.
00:04:01 --> 00:04:06 I like there's a million questions I want to ask about the sales and marketing and positioning apparatus for that type of business.
00:04:06 --> 00:04:12 I would guess word of mouth and successful migrations would pretty much be the majority of it.
00:04:12 --> 00:04:14 But I want to take the whole podcast and talk about that.
00:04:14 --> 00:04:16 We're not going to, We need to come back.
00:04:16 --> 00:04:23 So Started as an intern and then you did manual testing and then you became S D E T type of QA engineering.
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 how did you make that leap?
00:04:25 --> 00:04:30 Was this moving around from a different place getting promotions or did you stay in one place?
00:04:30 --> 00:04:30 how did that happen?
00:04:31 --> 00:04:44 if you've done manual QA work before, it gets boring, it gets old, and you really want to start looking somewhere and to upscale yourself, you know and QA is really, Good entry point for people from all professions, right?
00:04:44 --> 00:04:55 I know people from QA did a leap to project management, product management, DevOps, software engineering, backend frontend, So it's a good leap and it happened naturally to automate myself a little bit.
00:04:55 --> 00:04:59 I didn't like learn anything like from I know from college, right?
00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 So obviously like some courses on YouTube, Udemy and stuff like that.
00:05:02 --> 00:05:04 So you taught yourself how to automate your work.
00:05:04 --> 00:05:09 So you don't have to spend hours before release clicking every test case it happened quite naturally, I think.
00:05:09 --> 00:05:14 And gladly it worked out because super frankly, it was being well more than doing mental testing.
00:05:14 --> 00:05:25 So that's why I don't, I don't regret it, company supported it and good management is always a rare thing to find nowadays so when management supports you, when company supports you through automating process, you're just taking this challenge.
00:05:26 --> 00:05:26 Yeah.
00:05:26 --> 00:05:27 You got me on that one.
00:05:27 --> 00:05:28 A good management is.
00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 like looking for a needle in a whole bunch of needles.
00:05:31 --> 00:05:32 A haystack of needles.
00:05:32 --> 00:05:39 Welcome to issue number one in most agilists lives right there is it's like leadership is tough to find in the modern day.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 And then you jumped the software engine.
00:05:41 --> 00:05:42 How did you make the jump?
00:05:42 --> 00:05:45 Like obviously you found out that career was not going to be for you.
00:05:45 --> 00:05:46 But how did you get into it?
00:05:46 --> 00:05:50 Did you think that like, oh, I started in manual testing and I've just been doing more and more automation.
00:05:51 --> 00:05:54 It would just be a tiny leap just to start creating all the software.
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 Or did someone try to talk you into it or offer you a job?
00:05:57 --> 00:06:14 Back in the time, I will say it was my decision, but now I understand that it was mainly influenced from outside like from people you work with and they see you taking a step forward and you're like, why, why I'm not taking a step forward to different directions, and I did that and I was like, okay, maybe I should try it.
00:06:14 --> 00:06:29 So for engineering, I didn't say I failed, but I just didn't enjoy it as much because coming from QA background to do development was kind of not challenging per se, But it's a new thing still, different process, different challenges, different tasks So yeah.
00:06:29 --> 00:06:31 And then I came back eventually to QA engineering anyway.
00:06:31 --> 00:06:35 So I was like, okay, this is, this is going well, but I, do I enjoy it?
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 So it's the same thing with the career of being an individual contributor, right?
00:06:38 --> 00:06:43 So when I came back to QA, I was like, okay, I like being QA also, but do I really enjoy it?
00:06:43 --> 00:06:45 Like, if this is what I want to do, maybe I should try it.
00:06:45 --> 00:06:49 Something else, you know and this is how Idelsoft was born because I was doing solo consulting.
00:06:49 --> 00:06:51 I was doing myself only.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 I will rarely hire some people like to help me out.
00:06:54 --> 00:07:02 But I was doing mainly simple tasks like to fix some bugs on the websites like from Upwork, I was getting some challenges to do stuff like website design and development.
00:07:02 --> 00:07:04 So, I got embedded myself into the community.
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 met people, understand their pain points and offer them solution.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:08 Right.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:09 That's how it's done.
00:07:09 --> 00:07:10 And that's how I met you guys too.
00:07:10 --> 00:07:15 I went to a community event, I met you guys and now we're sitting here talking about feature fragile.
00:07:15 --> 00:07:16 Yeah.
00:07:16 --> 00:07:23 I've told the story I haven't told it in a long time, like probably a hundred episodes, but early in my career, I got picked up right out of college.
00:07:23 --> 00:07:38 As a QA analyst, which is almost all manual testing and then there was an element of automation later in that job when I became a lead, I did more automation and a little bit of management and then I became a manager and that job was terrible.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:39 I feel I was good at it, but it was a terrible job.
00:07:39 --> 00:07:45 it was just a losing no matter what you did, you were going to lose no matter what happened.
00:07:45 --> 00:07:49 Like If you mess something up, then you're going to take the blame.
00:07:49 --> 00:07:53 But if everything goes right, then somebody else is going to take the credit.
00:07:53 --> 00:07:53 Yeah.
00:07:53 --> 00:07:57 There was no way that you were winning, especially in that role.
00:07:57 --> 00:08:06 The QA department for a long time at the one company that I was at for a while the QA department and development department were looked at as peers until the firm was bought.
00:08:06 --> 00:08:11 And then they didn't they, when private equity buys companies, they don't really know what to do.
00:08:11 --> 00:08:16 They're like professional managers, and they, they just shuffled the QA department underneath them.
00:08:16 --> 00:08:19 Development because they're like, we don't understand what these people do all day.
00:08:19 --> 00:08:26 this is around the time where all those articles were out of like, Oh, companies are getting rid of all their QA people and you don't need QA people anymore.
00:08:26 --> 00:08:27 And Scrum was.
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 Hot on the scene where there's just developers in scrum.
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 There's no QA people and everyone eats pizza at 7 AM.
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 and we just party all the time or whatever.
00:08:35 --> 00:08:36 none of that is accurate.
00:08:36 --> 00:08:43 But that's what people read and take away from it they look at their bad behaviors and the evidence being presented by things like that.
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 And they just take the one or two things that support their bad behaviors.
00:08:46 --> 00:08:47 that was the company.
00:08:47 --> 00:08:57 So it's not really fair, but I knew that there was a ceiling as a QA manager, and I had to move to break through it at that company because nobody from QA was ever going to supervise developers.
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 That's just the way the attitude was at that company.
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 So there was nowhere else to go, you know?
00:09:01 --> 00:09:07 So I started looking around and, I saw the opportunity for all of the QA analysts to also be the permanent scrum masters.
00:09:07 --> 00:09:12 I said no, I'll volunteer to have the QA person also play a dual role of being the scrum master.
00:09:13 --> 00:09:15 So the QA people were always the scrum master.
00:09:15 --> 00:09:18 So basically, my team got to train themselves up in the process.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:24 And they understand that like, process is nearly as important as all the rest of the stuff in software development.
00:09:24 --> 00:09:25 It can really sink you.
00:09:26 --> 00:09:39 If you have no process, you know so that I went from that and I started understanding, well, early in my career, coupling with customers, understanding process, understanding like a systems view of software development and putting all those things together.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:45 When I finally got synced up with the Agile' community, I started realizing, Oh, this is like this community knows about all these things.
00:09:45 --> 00:09:48 That sort of led me slowly into product management, you know?
00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 And I was like, well, I can talk to customers.
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 I understand how to how to find where the value is.
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 And how to test for the value.
00:09:56 --> 00:10:03 and then I had a technical skill from my time in QA and working on development teams do you have a piece of the journey that I do not have?
00:10:03 --> 00:10:07 you transitioned to working with communities and then now you're running your own company?
00:10:07 --> 00:10:08 Yeah, I think it's a great opportunity.
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 you get to challenge yourself all the time, right?
00:10:10 --> 00:10:16 And I think the entrepreneurship is the one thing that gets you challenged in every aspect of your life.
00:10:16 --> 00:10:19 For example, I've never done sales in my life, and now I have to do sales.
00:10:20 --> 00:10:22 I've never done marketing in my life, now I have to do marketing.
00:10:22 --> 00:10:32 I've never done recruiting in my life, now I have to do recruiting, I have to do content, I have to do like some other stuff like it's something that, I never learned and you're learning on mistakes.
00:10:32 --> 00:10:35 You're just trying, failing and reiterating as with Agile, right?
00:10:36 --> 00:10:40 And so I think the concept of Agile is really, you can apply to every aspect of your life.
00:10:41 --> 00:10:44 Personal life, your career, entrepreneurship, you know and everything.
00:10:44 --> 00:10:47 Cause I, I'm talking to like my wife's from finance background.
00:10:47 --> 00:10:50 I'm talking to her like, Hey, do you guys have something like similar to Agile?
00:10:50 --> 00:10:51 No, what is that?
00:10:51 --> 00:10:52 I'm showing her.
00:10:52 --> 00:10:57 Okay, we have this desk boards like we have these points that we're giving, you know and she's like, this is mind blowing.
00:10:57 --> 00:11:00 I should tell my people like she'll tell my colleagues about it.
00:11:00 --> 00:11:00 Yeah.
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 And they're they were not so excited as her.
00:11:03 --> 00:11:11 When you first decided to make the shift you know, running your own business, what were some of the key challenges that you ran across right away that you had to work hard and break through?
00:11:11 --> 00:11:15 I think communication is the one, because one thing is the business communication internally, right?
00:11:15 --> 00:11:22 Colleagues and you are in the same boat, but another thing is to understanding what the client wants and what value it can bring to them.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:23 And does it actually make money to them?
00:11:24 --> 00:11:30 Because it's important because oftentimes people will come to you and say, I want Uber for dog shelters stuff like that.
00:11:30 --> 00:11:31 Yeah.
00:11:31 --> 00:11:33 So I was like, okay, how are you going to make money?
00:11:33 --> 00:11:34 I was like, I don't know yet.
00:11:34 --> 00:11:35 And I'm like, so, and what features do you want?
00:11:35 --> 00:11:36 I was like, I want this, I want this.
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 It's like, Okay, okay, but what about this?
00:11:39 --> 00:11:45 I was like, oh, I never thought about that so It's working with a client and giving him a good direction and good.
00:11:46 --> 00:11:49 Natural feedback like even Sharing your honest feedback is important.
00:11:49 --> 00:12:03 Yes, a lot of times they learn new things oftentimes I had to reject some clients I have to reject some projects because I didn't feel that it will be right fit for both of us, you know And it saved both of us good sleep next day next six months and next year.
00:12:04 --> 00:12:11 Because if there is no fit between me and the project that we're working with and the leads that are coming to us, then it's not going to work.
00:12:11 --> 00:12:13 Because I think that's the one thing you have to understand the pain point.
00:12:13 --> 00:12:16 You always like think about, okay, what's the value?
00:12:16 --> 00:12:17 How much revenue is going to generate?
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 And what I'm learning from it, you know?
00:12:20 --> 00:12:24 So It's more of a partnership with the client to really understand their journey and experience.
00:12:24 --> 00:12:29 Which they may be missing because they're internal.
00:12:29 --> 00:12:30 So, awesome.
00:12:30 --> 00:12:30 That's great.
00:12:31 --> 00:12:34 There's a book called Playing to Win, How Strategy Really Works by the A.
00:12:34 --> 00:12:34 G.
00:12:34 --> 00:12:36 Lafley, CEO of Procter Gamble.
00:12:36 --> 00:12:39 Oh, and Roger Martin, that's right.
00:12:39 --> 00:12:40 Lafley and Martin, that's what it's called.
00:12:40 --> 00:12:43 Wow, this is the longest, the longest book reference ever.
00:12:43 --> 00:12:46 Ed would he'd tell me he'd say, good job, good job.
00:12:46 --> 00:12:56 even I in product management where I thrash with my leadership is I don't get I can choose how to win, but they will choose for me what the playing field is.
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 And I will be very frustrated, because I'll say, Why would you pick that?
00:13:00 --> 00:13:01 A market that's just jammed.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:03 Why, why would you pick a playing field?
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 That's completely the opposite of the ideal place.
00:13:06 --> 00:13:08 Like in product management, we have ideal customer.
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 Yeah, things like that personas.
00:13:10 --> 00:13:12 And I'm like, why would you do that?
00:13:12 --> 00:13:14 Because they saw money and they couldn't say no to money.
00:13:14 --> 00:13:15 And then that's part of it.
00:13:15 --> 00:13:16 I think that's a big part of it.
00:13:16 --> 00:13:21 The other part of it is they'll say, well, because Brian, if you can succeed here, you can succeed anywhere.
00:13:21 --> 00:13:23 He's like, but if I fail here, we were off to a non starting.
00:13:23 --> 00:13:25 You can bury me there.
00:13:25 --> 00:13:25 Right.
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 Well, if you fail there, Of course, of course.
00:13:28 --> 00:13:30 And if you succeed there, we take the credit.
00:13:30 --> 00:13:31 Exactly.
00:13:31 --> 00:13:34 It's always like a project management, product management triangle, right?
00:13:34 --> 00:13:37 Fast, cheap, right.
00:13:37 --> 00:13:40 You have to pick two because how you measure success, right.
00:13:40 --> 00:13:41 Is that, I think that's important.
00:13:41 --> 00:13:55 And also like, I I was already mentioning it before, but they're especially valid for startups and because they don't want to risk the precious, expensive hours of development team for the feature people will not use and enterprises can take this risk.
00:13:55 --> 00:13:55 Right.
00:13:55 --> 00:14:06 But the one thing that I think, which I was mentioning before is everyone has to understand that they are in the same boat because if they deliver things that don't make money, you might lose your job.
00:14:06 --> 00:14:09 I mean, it's a worst case scenario, but these companies are making money.
00:14:09 --> 00:14:13 And you're making something not useful, the company might lay off.
00:14:13 --> 00:14:14 And that's the least thing you don't want you know?
00:14:15 --> 00:14:25 as someone who's gone through that experience, it is good to go through that experience because when I do product discovery activities, when I test something against the market to see if users react of that's exactly what I need.
00:14:25 --> 00:14:39 You know, there's a few terms that I'm used to hearing from people that I know that this is the right idea We should take this to development if I get like it, yeah, it's okay you know, I would use that or yeah It's this is this works for me.
00:14:39 --> 00:14:41 Like that's not those are lukewarm.
00:14:41 --> 00:14:51 Yeah, that's that's someone being That's someone being polite to me And and usually I'm not dealing with a Entrepreneurs or founders of companies.
00:14:51 --> 00:14:54 'cause those people and all product managers, they'll brutal.
00:14:54 --> 00:14:55 People tell me, they're like, I don't like this.
00:14:55 --> 00:14:57 Yeah, I don't, I can't use this.
00:14:57 --> 00:15:07 I don't have any, there's no value in, in that was one of the things that you said you, you the two things, you, you said communication, but mainly I'm talking about internally, so talking to everyone, giving everyone on the same page.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 And the other side was value for customers.
00:15:10 --> 00:15:33 So the value for customers, like I've learned the funny part is after I left QA, after I left the career field, I learned so much more about value to customers, which is sad because I should have learned a lot of that in the career field, I feel in retrospect, I could have learned a lot about coupling with customers to test things the way that they're using it to become a better tester.
00:15:33 --> 00:15:33 Correct.
00:15:33 --> 00:15:36 But again, under development, none of development's metrics were that way.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:42 All of the development's metrics were, you have to have this out by this date because these are the commitments that were promised.
00:15:42 --> 00:15:47 By someone else choosing where we play, and then development is trying to win on our behalf.
00:15:47 --> 00:15:50 By just getting stuff out in half the time that it normally would.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:52 creating technical debt, all the other things.
00:15:52 --> 00:15:52 Right.
00:15:52 --> 00:15:58 Yeah, those are interesting because value for clients is one that I heavily invested in learning through my product management part of my career.
00:15:58 --> 00:16:02 And the communication side of it is one that I still am learning, right?
00:16:02 --> 00:16:06 And I still don't feel like I'm great at I'm much better than I was.
00:16:06 --> 00:16:08 So if I compare against myself, fantastic.
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 If I start like looking around at other people, I'm like, Ooh, don't do that.
00:16:11 --> 00:16:16 when you think about it, like product manager job and UX designer job, it's also testing, right?
00:16:16 --> 00:16:24 It's a testing customer doing ABS on different angles, you know and doing a proof of concept and checking if the proof of concept is actually has the high ROI It's also testing.
00:16:24 --> 00:16:26 So life is constant testing.
00:16:26 --> 00:16:27 So for development is constant testing.
00:16:27 --> 00:16:29 So QA is a very minor part of the testing.
00:16:29 --> 00:16:32 It's like testing the functionality of the application, right?
00:16:32 --> 00:16:34 But you have to always test the market too.
00:16:34 --> 00:16:43 And you know, the funny thing is if I could go back in my career and supervise like myself and the whole QA department early on in the career, I would get them involved in that.
00:16:43 --> 00:16:52 I would say, okay, you guys are, not only going to do manual testing and basic automation, but you're also going to do customer facing interviews and tests.
00:16:52 --> 00:16:57 here's my MVP list of tests that I want to check off before I build something.
00:16:57 --> 00:16:59 And you're going to be the main people that do that.
00:17:00 --> 00:17:04 Yeah, and a lot of large companies, that's kind of prohibitive because of the way they're structured.
00:17:04 --> 00:17:07 So a lot of the development teams, testers are outsourced.
00:17:08 --> 00:17:11 And they don't really ever talk to the customers necessarily.
00:17:11 --> 00:17:15 The best that could happen is maybe like at a review, they'll be there and the customer's there.
00:17:15 --> 00:17:18 But then developers usually don't say anything.
00:17:18 --> 00:17:20 They usually don't say anything because they're afraid.
00:17:20 --> 00:17:24 They should be the ones actually talking to customers instead of having intermediaries.
00:17:25 --> 00:17:28 You know, with the latency of time saying, well, the customer wants this.
00:17:28 --> 00:17:29 I talked to them last week.
00:17:29 --> 00:17:36 So you're already losing stuff in translation and not having the ability of the team to ask questions directly to the customer.
00:17:37 --> 00:17:41 So, yeah, I think it's a huge opportunity miss on the part of development houses.
00:17:41 --> 00:17:43 We learned this hard way because we were like, okay, we're going to build.
00:17:44 --> 00:17:45 Provide resources.
00:17:45 --> 00:17:46 We're going to help with direction, right?
00:17:46 --> 00:17:48 But we didn't own the outcome.
00:17:48 --> 00:17:52 that led us to creating our company values that are several points.
00:17:52 --> 00:17:54 But I think the main tree is.
00:17:54 --> 00:17:55 Ownership, right?
00:17:55 --> 00:17:59 So you own the outcome, whether it's successful or it's a failure, right?
00:17:59 --> 00:18:05 So you, whatever you do, you own the outcome and you, whatever decision you make within the company, you back it with the data.
00:18:05 --> 00:18:15 I think this is the second point because we highly rely on data But you have to always like prove it with proof of concept, with data, with dash, dashboards, whatever, like customer users, everything, right?
00:18:15 --> 00:18:16 And the third thing I think we just.
00:18:17 --> 00:18:21 really important for us is in software development, this is not stable job.
00:18:21 --> 00:18:28 It's like up and down before release or before releasing some important feature that is production bugs you have to fix, right?
00:18:29 --> 00:18:30 Things can get messy and stressful, right?
00:18:31 --> 00:18:37 Which we actually encourage you to put extra effort during that period so you can take recharge.
00:18:37 --> 00:18:39 After this part of the project completed, right?
00:18:40 --> 00:18:42 That's why we have unlimited PTO from day one.
00:18:42 --> 00:18:48 So everyone comes to us like, if you want to take a recharge, you want to take the day off for yourself, for your family, for your mental health.
00:18:48 --> 00:18:52 You can easily take that cause that, that things like we learned.
00:18:52 --> 00:18:55 that's how we produce results, which we kind of happy with right now.
00:18:55 --> 00:19:16 You know, obviously there's a lot of reiterations have to teach people how to own the outcome but like, okay, you, if you have tasks assigned to you, you are responsible, not the scrum master, not the project manager who have to always follow up on you, but you have to be responsible to meet the deadline and deliver it on time and deliver it with the highest quality because I don't, it's not blaming somebody, it's just taking a leadership.
00:19:16 --> 00:19:21 Taking ownership of the problem and then sharing it, sharing the updates and sharing the progress with the team.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:24 After all qualities, everyone's responsibility, you know?
00:19:24 --> 00:19:24 Yeah.
00:19:24 --> 00:19:34 Leadership is, when you're, when you're describing, that's what my brain is translating into, is I nobody holds me accountable the way that I take accountability for things.
00:19:34 --> 00:19:37 Nobody's harsher on me about my work than me.
00:19:38 --> 00:19:44 Well, if someone's holding you accountable, they hold the power, which means they can grant you the power and they can take it away, right?
00:19:44 --> 00:19:46 So, you're the one accountable to them.
00:19:46 --> 00:19:48 to what you're committing to, right?
00:19:48 --> 00:19:50 Somebody could say, well someone else is responsible.
00:19:50 --> 00:19:55 That's where this whole We talk about this often on the podcast of management versus leadership.
00:19:55 --> 00:20:02 So managers are responsible to deliver something, but ultimately the individuals are accountable for their own actions.
00:20:02 --> 00:20:07 I remember early in the QA career, I remember the, the phrase, who tested this?
00:20:07 --> 00:20:07 I remember that.
00:20:07 --> 00:20:08 Yeah.
00:20:08 --> 00:20:08 Who tested this?
00:20:08 --> 00:20:09 I remember that phrase.
00:20:10 --> 00:20:18 It's because a lot of people that are in a QA role, or a tester role, sometimes the role is called tester, right?
00:20:18 --> 00:20:27 But if you're just clicking through screens after it's been sent through the development, you have no influence over the way things get picked up and taken in for work.
00:20:27 --> 00:20:30 You have no influence into the way things are developed through the development pipeline.
00:20:31 --> 00:20:34 You have no influence into the process of software development.
00:20:35 --> 00:20:41 The solution, not just the software, the whole thing, is quality, is good, is built for spec or something like that?
00:20:41 --> 00:20:44 Yeah, built to specify, rather than, yeah, built for purpose.
00:20:44 --> 00:20:48 It really does a good job at solving the problem you're taking all the tools away from that person.
00:20:48 --> 00:20:48 Sure.
00:20:48 --> 00:20:53 You know, and you're not allowing them to get involved earlier when they should be involved.
00:20:53 --> 00:20:58 all this stuff goes back to manufacturing, which there were books written about this years ago.
00:20:58 --> 00:21:02 We talked about a lot of this with the podcast with Bob, Bob Crews.
00:21:02 --> 00:21:05 The difference between QA and QC, right?
00:21:05 --> 00:21:08 it goes back to really the lean days in manufacturing, right?
00:21:08 --> 00:21:11 Where people were empowered to stop the production line.
00:21:11 --> 00:21:12 Anyone could do that.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:13 Imagine doing that today.
00:21:14 --> 00:21:15 It'd be like, who pushed that red button, right?
00:21:16 --> 00:21:17 who stopped the production line?
00:21:17 --> 00:21:19 It's costing us thousands every minute it's down.
00:21:19 --> 00:21:25 But at the same time, would you rather ship out faulty products that will cost you even more in the long run, right?
00:21:25 --> 00:21:28 It's funny how companies and countries that have.
00:21:28 --> 00:21:30 Got this more right than wrong.
00:21:30 --> 00:21:31 Really a thriving when you think about it, right?
00:21:32 --> 00:21:39 You're manufacturing also in software companies that empower their staff to say, call it as it is as soon as you can.
00:21:39 --> 00:21:40 And you're not penalized for that.
00:21:40 --> 00:21:43 Like they're the ones doing well, as opposed to others.
00:21:43 --> 00:21:45 Like this has to ship on a certain date.
00:21:45 --> 00:21:54 Come what may I've, I've seen that happen in many, many companies where management, because true leadership's not around that manager will say we have to meet this deadline because let's face it.
00:21:54 --> 00:21:55 This because their own bonus.
00:21:56 --> 00:21:58 It's on the line for them, right?
00:21:58 --> 00:22:01 So, yeah, I mean, there's no real mystery here, right?
00:22:01 --> 00:22:02 We know what needs to be done.
00:22:02 --> 00:22:08 We just don't find ourselves out of this smog to be able to come up and do it.
00:22:08 --> 00:22:10 Well, this also leads to outsourcing the account.
00:22:11 --> 00:22:11 Yeah.
00:22:11 --> 00:22:12 It's hierarchy, right?
00:22:12 --> 00:22:23 You know it starts from the business decision and then comes all the way down to the simple Scrum Master, QA guy, Being at the end of the chain, the whole company is going to blame him for The scapegoat.
00:22:23 --> 00:22:24 Yeah, it's not okay.
00:22:24 --> 00:22:27 I mean, everyone's responsibility, I think, should be equality, you know?
00:22:27 --> 00:22:29 So, that's how only we, you have.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:42 the enterprise coaches, the actual, like the people at the top of that career field, They're the ones who are coupling with leadership to say Hey you want to have quality software, but you've got this Your sales team is out there selling with dates first.
00:22:42 --> 00:22:43 They promise dates first.
00:22:44 --> 00:22:48 And then the team is cutting quality and doing things in an unsustainable way.
00:22:48 --> 00:22:48 Yep.
00:22:48 --> 00:22:58 You know, and all these kinds of, they're trying to solve all these underlying issues where the agility coaches are trying to build something that's sustainable and something for the future.
00:22:58 --> 00:23:00 And you don't build Toyota quarter to quarter.
00:23:00 --> 00:23:06 you have a 20 year plan, at least you have a five year to five year plan, I go on diatribes on the podcast and then forget what I was talking about.
00:23:06 --> 00:23:07 Communication.
00:23:07 --> 00:23:09 I wanted to round back to communication.
00:23:09 --> 00:23:12 Because again, this is still in my number one slot.
00:23:12 --> 00:23:21 Coming from technical teams and now having to be business facing, representing all the technical teams, is a whole different level of communication needed from me.
00:23:21 --> 00:23:23 Internal and external.
00:23:23 --> 00:23:24 let's just start with internal.
00:23:24 --> 00:23:28 Because now I have to, Pitch and sell ideas to everyone internally.
00:23:28 --> 00:23:33 I have to project confidence about what we're doing because if I don't, the team is not even going to start.
00:23:34 --> 00:23:35 You're going to be the thought leader.
00:23:35 --> 00:23:36 Absolutely.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:39 And you're going to say, this is where we're charting our vision.
00:23:39 --> 00:23:39 This is where we need to go.
00:23:40 --> 00:23:41 And here's why.
00:23:41 --> 00:23:43 especially if you're in a company where you have a bunch of.
00:23:44 --> 00:23:45 high ranking architect types, right?
00:23:45 --> 00:23:47 The technical people.
00:23:47 --> 00:23:49 But they're like, we know the technology here, right?
00:23:49 --> 00:23:54 They'll take the most technical path going forward using the sexiest tools available.
00:23:55 --> 00:23:56 Cause that's what trips them up.
00:23:56 --> 00:23:57 So there's sexy tools, right?
00:23:57 --> 00:24:04 So when you want to, when you want to explain to those guys why we're going somewhere and you can be successful, you're getting somewhere.
00:24:04 --> 00:24:06 If you just don't wear, you're going to be shut down pretty quickly.
00:24:06 --> 00:24:07 in every.
00:24:07 --> 00:24:20 Large or small, there are 80 percent of the features, 80 percent of the project, which is usually built on legacy code, but it's making money and there's always like 20 percent of the Sexy tools, Which is losing money.
00:24:21 --> 00:24:25 So this 20 percent is allocated for experiments, That's why you like to do experiments on a smaller scale.
00:24:25 --> 00:24:28 And if it's working out, you just expand it to the larger scale.
00:24:28 --> 00:24:34 I think it's great, because if you think about it some websites are really old, but they are really performing well.
00:24:34 --> 00:24:35 Look at the Craigslist.
00:24:35 --> 00:24:37 It has the ugliest UX ever.
00:24:37 --> 00:24:38 Forever, yeah.
00:24:38 --> 00:24:39 It's been like that forever.
00:24:39 --> 00:24:39 On purpose.
00:24:39 --> 00:24:41 On purpose it is ugly.
00:24:41 --> 00:24:44 I watched an interview with some of the developers on that.
00:24:44 --> 00:24:45 It's on purpose.
00:24:45 --> 00:24:45 Exactly.
00:24:45 --> 00:24:48 But it's making money, right?
00:24:48 --> 00:24:56 I know a company I think the company name is called "built with" basically it's a Chrome extension tool where you go to website and they tell you what tools they use to build this.
00:24:56 --> 00:25:04 Companies like two people, one people making like millions of in revenue, simple Chrome extension tool or so really the business is pretty simple.
00:25:04 --> 00:25:06 You find the solution that everyone needs.
00:25:06 --> 00:25:09 Marketed in the right target audience, then you charge the money for it.
00:25:10 --> 00:25:10 You're happy, you know?
00:25:11 --> 00:25:13 So, so like, where did you learn that?
00:25:13 --> 00:25:14 Did you start small?
00:25:14 --> 00:25:20 Did you start like in communities and then you started like by making mistakes with one or two people here and then you grew that and make mistakes.
00:25:20 --> 00:25:24 I mean, you fail multiple times because if you only consistently.
00:25:24 --> 00:25:25 You get successful, you don't challenge yourself.
00:25:25 --> 00:25:26 You gotta fail.
00:25:26 --> 00:25:27 That's true.
00:25:27 --> 00:25:28 You gotta fail all the time.
00:25:28 --> 00:25:35 You gotta fail, you have to hire wrong people, and these wrong people will be having a beef with the client team, and you have to lose client.
00:25:35 --> 00:25:36 Sure.
00:25:36 --> 00:25:37 To understand the value of hiring.
00:25:37 --> 00:25:42 That's why we like hiring very carefully because we taking time before we were like, okay, tell me about yourself.
00:25:42 --> 00:25:44 Like, oh, I was working there and there.
00:25:44 --> 00:25:44 Okay.
00:25:44 --> 00:25:49 You let's go jump on the project, but now we're becoming bigger and we're working with larger clients.
00:25:49 --> 00:25:50 We cannot afford that risk.
00:25:50 --> 00:25:58 last year we were working with a client, and they were super impressed with our developers, and they were like, can you find me the similar people, but in the U.
00:25:58 --> 00:25:58 S.
00:25:58 --> 00:25:59 for a full time, want to hire them full time?
00:26:00 --> 00:26:00 I was like, sure.
00:26:00 --> 00:26:02 So we started our recruiting service that way.
00:26:02 --> 00:26:05 We were recruiting people for full time positions here in the U.
00:26:05 --> 00:26:05 S.
00:26:05 --> 00:26:10 Because they really liked our quality, quality of the people we're working with.
00:26:10 --> 00:26:11 They're like, can you do the same here?
00:26:11 --> 00:26:14 And for developers, we have multiple ways of screening.
00:26:14 --> 00:26:16 We've screened for technical skills.
00:26:16 --> 00:26:18 We don't do live coding, right?
00:26:18 --> 00:26:22 We just send them home desk and then we don't even need like perfect solution.
00:26:23 --> 00:26:44 For the home coding task we just need to see your thought process we do culture fit interview and then only if that goes well, we let them to meet with a client because if you had hunting down the acquisition, the recruiting placement agencies, it was, I think it's pre COVID era where you have Small city like Tampa, you have to really find people locally only.
00:26:44 --> 00:27:04 You have to steal from one company to another now it's a remote culture, you can hire everywhere like now you have to really have a huge pool of talent we once posted a DevOps job, I think last year or beginning of this year, 800 applications in three days and who's going to go through them and the companies don't have time for it, obviously.
00:27:04 --> 00:27:07 We have to go through them to check them if they're matching the requirements.
00:27:07 --> 00:27:13 Use some sort of AI to screen the resumes, and we have this tool we're using internally that gives the score of the resume.
00:27:13 --> 00:27:15 It's like, okay, this is this, this person is 80 percent match.
00:27:15 --> 00:27:26 This person is 90 percent match, So that's how, that's how you're going to do because after all consultancy is working with people you're working with people daily and people have good mood sometimes some days and they have bad mood.
00:27:26 --> 00:27:27 And.
00:27:27 --> 00:27:29 You better not trigger their bad side.
00:27:29 --> 00:27:37 You know, the other funny thing about hiring that like I hired people for, for years, so I knew I was able to transfer the skill to other places.
00:27:37 --> 00:27:39 And at one place I was at.
00:27:39 --> 00:27:45 I interviewed a candidate and I was like the technical expert interviewer I don't ask me why they weren't.
00:27:45 --> 00:27:51 It's complicated, but they were the hiring manager and I was the technical expertise and I interviewed the person.
00:27:51 --> 00:27:59 I was like, man, this person was really like, I don't know if they're not enthused about this job or what it was, but they just came across as real low energy that they really weren't.
00:27:59 --> 00:28:03 And they weren't like happy to talk or whatever they kind of just and then the hiring manager was like wow, really?
00:28:03 --> 00:28:19 Like they were completely the opposite of that when I was all the time to us I said well I started looking at the schedule of all the like I looked at the calendars of all the candidates that that person interviewed and then I interviewed immediately after and it turns out The hiring manager would interview them first thing in the morning.
00:28:19 --> 00:28:26 I would interview them at like three 30 or 4:00 PM at the end of the day's, the worst time I was like, come on guys, come on.
00:28:26 --> 00:28:33 Like you're sending people to me after they're drained out from working a full day of work and trying to do an interview at the end of their work day.
00:28:33 --> 00:28:34 it's a slump time right there.
00:28:34 --> 00:28:38 So the research proves that if in, in medicine, don't go see a doctor in the afternoon.
00:28:39 --> 00:28:42 Around three o'clock because there's a bigger chance of them making errors.
00:28:42 --> 00:28:43 Go see them first thing in the morning.
00:28:43 --> 00:28:51 The economy was booming and they will fly in people from, from across the world to the outside for the four hours interview with the team.
00:28:51 --> 00:28:56 And they will do one hour l33t code on the white paper, on the whiteboard, you know and they will do like a culture feed.
00:28:56 --> 00:29:00 HR will ask questions like, what will you do in this situation?
00:29:00 --> 00:29:01 What color do you like?
00:29:01 --> 00:29:07 And these people at the, Three hours after, four hours after, they will be drained, literally, and that was crazy.
00:29:07 --> 00:29:15 But the company should want to take this risk, because there was a shortage of developers, and the economy was booming, it was really hard to find good people who will be willing to move forward.
00:29:16 --> 00:29:18 to this expensive areas where these fan companies are located, right?
00:29:18 --> 00:29:20 And they will just fly in, it will be cheaper.
00:29:20 --> 00:29:22 Whatever, you spend a thousand bucks on a person for an interview?
00:29:22 --> 00:29:22 Yeah.
00:29:23 --> 00:29:23 It's alright.
00:29:23 --> 00:29:26 Those guys are also playing by a completely different playbook.
00:29:26 --> 00:29:27 Of course.
00:29:27 --> 00:29:27 Than the rest of the world.
00:29:28 --> 00:29:29 Those guys, I mean, they seriously overhired.
00:29:30 --> 00:29:34 During COVID because they were afraid that the competitors would hire all of the good talent.
00:29:34 --> 00:29:38 So they just hired people that basically had no job for them to work and be like, what are you doing today?
00:29:38 --> 00:29:39 I don't know.
00:29:39 --> 00:29:40 I'm going to get lunch all day.
00:29:40 --> 00:29:41 We watch those tick tocks.
00:29:41 --> 00:29:45 I mean, when I watched a bunch of tiktoks of people like this during that era working two jobs, three jobs.
00:29:45 --> 00:29:47 People in their twenties, a product manager at a FAANG company.
00:29:48 --> 00:29:53 And I'm like, I worked on development teams for more than 10 years before I became a product manager.
00:29:53 --> 00:30:06 So I completely, I mean, I had a good understanding of software architecture and the process of software development and how the business needs to interact with software development and how to vet again, quote requirements, right.
00:30:06 --> 00:30:07 How to find the value.
00:30:07 --> 00:30:11 I don't know how you do that with no experience as your first job straight out of college.
00:30:12 --> 00:30:18 I don't understand it those yachts all by themselves If you spend a fortune on your MBA, you gotta monetize it somehow.
00:30:18 --> 00:30:22 I like the angle you had on embracing to fail.
00:30:22 --> 00:30:26 If you're learning from that, you're not failing.
00:30:26 --> 00:30:31 So for me, the FAIL is really just an acronym that's Fast Attempts at Learning, right?
00:30:31 --> 00:30:33 If you're learning quickly and failing quickly.
00:30:33 --> 00:30:34 that's the fail I want.
00:30:34 --> 00:30:38 I don't want the fail where you do it and you go, well, it didn't work that time.
00:30:38 --> 00:30:38 Maybe it'll work again.
00:30:38 --> 00:30:41 That's insanity because you're just repeating the same mistake, right?
00:30:42 --> 00:30:48 It just also gives you a boost like in your career, in your business, whatever, like if you fail, you're like, I'm better than this.
00:30:48 --> 00:30:50 Well, those are the people that are learning and moving ahead.
00:30:50 --> 00:30:57 I mean, that's the problem with getting stuck in a very large organization where everyone's trying to play a game of deflecting blame and doing that.
00:30:57 --> 00:30:59 I mean, they're basically failing to learn at that point.
00:30:59 --> 00:30:59 That's right.
00:30:59 --> 00:31:01 That's what's scary about those cultures.
00:31:01 --> 00:31:02 But they could retire there if they want.
00:31:03 --> 00:31:06 I could have retired at a large company starts with I ends in M.
00:31:07 --> 00:31:08 You couldn't get fired.
00:31:08 --> 00:31:13 It has one letter in between you can get fired for you know, for, for buying from them.
00:31:13 --> 00:31:13 Right.
00:31:13 --> 00:31:16 But you were in a box a year later, I'm not growing here.
00:31:16 --> 00:31:16 I'm bored.
00:31:17 --> 00:31:17 So I left.
00:31:17 --> 00:31:21 If you bored, try to take a challenge, take ownership, because I didn't want to go to management.
00:31:21 --> 00:31:24 For example, you went to management because He was a challenge for you.
00:31:24 --> 00:31:25 That was the only way up.
00:31:25 --> 00:31:26 Yeah, exactly.
00:31:26 --> 00:31:27 That was the only way up.
00:31:27 --> 00:31:29 He was either that or transfer out of QA.
00:31:29 --> 00:31:42 And I didn't want to do that at that point in time in my career cause I had hired the whole team, so I didn't want to leave my team I mean, in retrospect, maybe I would do, if I could do it again, maybe I Take different career paths to get to where I am now faster, right?
00:31:42 --> 00:31:45 And like, even the younger generation are doing that left and right.
00:31:45 --> 00:31:48 I mean, they don't, the younger you are, the less time you stay in a job.
00:31:48 --> 00:31:51 You know, these days they flip every 18 months.
00:31:51 --> 00:31:53 I mean, the culture's changing which I I'm fine with.
00:31:53 --> 00:31:54 Yeah, it's good.
00:31:54 --> 00:32:05 I think it kind of stopped like before it was like really I was talking about like company stealing from employee from one another and people were jumping from one work to another work every two years now I think it's happening less people just want stability, especially in this market.
00:32:06 --> 00:32:06 Yeah, that's true.
00:32:06 --> 00:32:15 People don't want to switch jobs because I've seen so many stories where People were getting offers for say 20 percent upper salary and they will say I'm living in two weeks.
00:32:15 --> 00:32:16 They will give a notice.
00:32:16 --> 00:32:21 And then for a start, they offer get rejected because the budget didn't get that right happening all the time.
00:32:21 --> 00:32:23 So people kind of staying low right now.
00:32:23 --> 00:32:24 This is cyclical, right?
00:32:24 --> 00:32:27 We saw this during the boom days of the Internet.
00:32:27 --> 00:32:32 Well, VC money was ripe and people will flip jobs every like three months, right?
00:32:32 --> 00:32:33 And then the bubble burst.
00:32:34 --> 00:32:36 Do you think it's going to get back to normal eventually?
00:32:37 --> 00:32:37 I don't know.
00:32:37 --> 00:32:39 I think this is going to keep repeating, honestly.
00:32:39 --> 00:32:45 I think it's a cycle, Well, that's why I keep saying like, when internet was invented, people were like freaking out.
00:32:45 --> 00:32:47 Okay, internet is going to take my job now.
00:32:47 --> 00:32:49 You know, people were like AI is going to take my job now.
00:32:49 --> 00:32:55 Like if you are working at the office, taking phone calls and I was like, okay, this internet is going to make things easier because people are just going to book online.
00:32:56 --> 00:32:59 But you go to the dental office, there's still people sitting there taking phone calls, you know?
00:32:59 --> 00:33:07 And same thing with cloud computing, they were like people who are managing the physical servers, like physical infrastructure, they were like, okay, I was going to take my job.
00:33:08 --> 00:33:10 It didn't actually, it actually created more jobs.
00:33:10 --> 00:33:13 Yeah, for people who can manage the cloud and who can sell the cloud.
00:33:13 --> 00:33:17 They will create multiple companies on this industry and the same thing is going to happen with AI.
00:33:18 --> 00:33:20 Well, we've seen a precursor of that though, right?
00:33:20 --> 00:33:24 When robotics came around the first time, people were scared, what if it's going to take our jobs?
00:33:24 --> 00:33:26 You know, and it didn't really happen.
00:33:26 --> 00:33:28 There's still manufacturing jobs out there.
00:33:28 --> 00:33:29 Oh, there is.
00:33:29 --> 00:33:29 Everything is there.
00:33:29 --> 00:33:31 Same thing with AI will happen.
00:33:31 --> 00:33:34 AI will eventually take someone else's job.
00:33:34 --> 00:33:36 That's true, but actually will create more jobs.
00:33:36 --> 00:33:39 So you have to be adaptive to be, to stay alive in the market.
00:33:39 --> 00:33:41 I would love for the robot to take my job.
00:33:41 --> 00:33:42 You're hired, robot.
00:33:42 --> 00:33:43 Take my job.
00:33:43 --> 00:33:43 Take all my jobs.
00:33:44 --> 00:33:46 Especially all the manual labor jobs that I do.
00:33:46 --> 00:33:47 My spare time.
00:33:47 --> 00:33:48 You can take all those.
00:33:48 --> 00:33:51 But in order to do AI to do the job, you have to give them clear requirements.
00:33:51 --> 00:33:52 And no clients has that.
00:33:52 --> 00:33:53 No clients have that.
00:33:53 --> 00:33:54 I don't see that changing.
00:33:54 --> 00:33:54 Clients dunno what to do.
00:33:54 --> 00:33:55 Yeah.
00:33:55 --> 00:33:56 I don't see that changing.
00:33:56 --> 00:33:56 Yeah.
00:33:56 --> 00:34:04 speaking of the future I'm interested to know what your opinion about the future of QA, the career field QA, the role, but what is the future?
00:34:04 --> 00:34:07 Like with a salt and pepper of AI on top of it.
00:34:07 --> 00:34:14 There are QA AI tools out there they will not be as common as Selenium, for example, right?
00:34:14 --> 00:34:14 Yeah.
00:34:14 --> 00:34:15 Because Selenium is everywhere.
00:34:15 --> 00:34:18 And right now even Selenium is actually losing battle against Playwright.
00:34:19 --> 00:34:21 Playwright is a tool implemented by Microsoft, right?
00:34:21 --> 00:34:21 It's free.
00:34:21 --> 00:34:24 we use Playwright I don't know if I'll leave that in the podcast, but we use Playwright.
00:34:24 --> 00:34:27 my engineers without my, I said nothing to them.
00:34:27 --> 00:34:30 Cause again, I used to Java and Selenium used to be my stack.
00:34:30 --> 00:34:32 And I said nothing to them when they were like, well, you know what?
00:34:32 --> 00:34:34 We need to automate this testing.
00:34:34 --> 00:34:37 this is a pain and we don't have any budget to hire somebody.
00:34:37 --> 00:34:39 So we need to automate this testing.
00:34:39 --> 00:34:40 And they landed on Playwright.
00:34:40 --> 00:34:41 I was like, good job.
00:34:41 --> 00:34:42 It's actually a really good tool.
00:34:42 --> 00:34:42 Yeah.
00:34:42 --> 00:34:44 I'm quite surprised.
00:34:44 --> 00:34:48 We did some couple of projects on Playwright and I was quite impressed with the capabilities.
00:34:48 --> 00:34:49 It's pretty easy too.
00:34:49 --> 00:34:49 Yeah.
00:34:49 --> 00:34:50 It's free, easy to set up.
00:34:50 --> 00:34:53 So yeah, I think eventually so manual QA jobs.
00:34:54 --> 00:34:58 Still will be there in my opinion, but there will be less of them.
00:34:58 --> 00:35:05 Ideal combination for scrum teams will be one QA, one manual QA, one automation or QA generalization.
00:35:05 --> 00:35:07 Who can do both manual and automation.
00:35:07 --> 00:35:07 Right, yeah.
00:35:07 --> 00:35:09 So I think the ideal scenario will be like this.
00:35:10 --> 00:35:13 There will not be teams with only manual QAs eventually.
00:35:13 --> 00:35:15 Because the company has to grow into it, you know.
00:35:15 --> 00:35:16 Yeah.
00:35:16 --> 00:35:19 But I think eventually there will be some AI involvement for sure.
00:35:19 --> 00:35:25 More automation, QA role will be more involved with infrastructure work, setting up the CICD pipelines.
00:35:26 --> 00:35:40 Making sure that the lower environments are healthy and checking the logs and dealing with creating new testing environment and tearing them down on daily basis so they don't consume so much cloud credits so I think eventually this is going to happen.
00:35:41 --> 00:35:43 Yeah, because it's been happening already.
00:35:43 --> 00:35:46 I think this is what we expect from our quality assurance team.
00:35:46 --> 00:35:49 Also like to have some understanding of automation.
00:35:49 --> 00:35:55 What about performance testing, stress testing, load testing, those kinds of things lend themselves to concentration testing, ai using the same people.
00:35:55 --> 00:35:56 Perhaps they just learn.
00:35:56 --> 00:36:04 These skills, so you don't have these individual roles necessarily, so you don't have a manual tester or automation test or performance tester, right?
00:36:04 --> 00:36:09 Maybe one person could do it all depending on what's needed on a day, right?
00:36:09 --> 00:36:09 They can flex.
00:36:10 --> 00:36:11 That's what I see going forward.
00:36:11 --> 00:36:13 Yeah, there's all types of testing, as I mentioned, right?
00:36:13 --> 00:36:17 You mentioned the performance testing, load testing, functional testing, API testing.
00:36:17 --> 00:36:26 For the sake of saving money, companies will push QA engineers to learn all these skills themselves and just to stay them relevant and QA engineers, same thing.
00:36:26 --> 00:36:28 If you want to get a job, diversify your skills.
00:36:28 --> 00:36:41 I hope that somewhere sprinkled in there, there's also this cognizance about the process about being involved earlier bringing your QA people in earlier and have the, having them have some kind of.
00:36:41 --> 00:36:52 Maybe not say over the system, the quote system, but what we try to do with scrum masters is, well, a scrum master is supposed to be able to coach the team, but they're also supposed to be able to coach up into the organization.
00:36:53 --> 00:36:53 Correct.
00:36:53 --> 00:37:00 To try to deal with some of those systemic problems in the organization that are affecting your software development and your, the quality of your software basically.
00:37:00 --> 00:37:05 It'd be nice if some of that crept into the QA career field permanently.
00:37:05 --> 00:37:06 Yeah.
00:37:06 --> 00:37:11 But what's the extra measures that Scrum Master can take if team is not coachable?
00:37:11 --> 00:37:14 Team just can ignore your request and it's like, okay, yes, I understood.
00:37:14 --> 00:37:18 And they actually, they need to be empowered to do their job.
00:37:18 --> 00:37:19 What measures can you take?
00:37:19 --> 00:37:20 Yeah, it's difficult.
00:37:20 --> 00:37:27 It is difficult because typical Scrum Masters on a team level aren't really empowered to coach up in the organization, but they're supposed to.
00:37:27 --> 00:37:28 It's kind of hard, right?
00:37:28 --> 00:37:30 Cause they have no pull.
00:37:30 --> 00:37:33 I mean, the minute they go outside of the team, no power, right?
00:37:33 --> 00:37:34 Yeah.
00:37:34 --> 00:37:36 So then leadership's going to say, well stay in your lane, right?
00:37:36 --> 00:37:37 Stay with your team.
00:37:37 --> 00:37:39 You're a scrum master for that team.
00:37:39 --> 00:37:39 Stay there.
00:37:40 --> 00:37:41 It's like, come on.
00:37:41 --> 00:37:42 I think we've discovered.
00:37:42 --> 00:37:45 A great topic for podcast number three.
00:37:45 --> 00:37:47 Lenar like he had come back a third time.
00:37:47 --> 00:37:50 So I want, I want to talk about the, the marketing and sales apparatus.
00:37:50 --> 00:37:51 I want to talk about promotion.
00:37:51 --> 00:37:57 The final question I have is you know, what advice would you give your younger self, let's say 10 years ago?
00:37:57 --> 00:37:59 How would you have done things differently?
00:37:59 --> 00:38:01 I would say it's a good question.
00:38:01 --> 00:38:02 I often think about myself too.
00:38:02 --> 00:38:06 I think the one advice I can give myself take a risk when you're younger.
00:38:06 --> 00:38:07 Awesome.
00:38:07 --> 00:38:08 You have nothing to lose.
00:38:08 --> 00:38:08 Come on.
00:38:08 --> 00:38:09 Take a risk.
00:38:09 --> 00:38:10 Do new stuff.
00:38:10 --> 00:38:11 Explore new stuff.
00:38:12 --> 00:38:12 Try new stuff.
00:38:12 --> 00:38:13 Try new professions.
00:38:13 --> 00:38:15 Try living in different cities.
00:38:15 --> 00:38:39 You know, like meet new people, get out of your comfort zone and just try new things that's the only advice you can give to 20 years old, because that's the only way you can find your passion, you can find your path in your career, and that's the only way you can get Try , being successful like whether it's a career success or whether it's an entrepreneurship or family success you have to try different things, see what's working out It's great.
00:38:39 --> 00:38:40 If you're happy, why not?
00:38:40 --> 00:38:42 You keep it as a full time career, right?
00:38:42 --> 00:38:46 Because I don't come from technical background, but I enjoyed this field.
00:38:46 --> 00:38:47 I stayed there.
00:38:47 --> 00:38:47 Awesome.
00:38:47 --> 00:38:48 Great response.
00:38:48 --> 00:38:49 Thank you.
00:38:49 --> 00:38:49 All right.
00:38:49 --> 00:38:52 Well, I think that's it for all six of you.
00:38:52 --> 00:38:53 They're still with us.
00:38:53 --> 00:38:53 Thank you.
00:38:53 --> 00:38:57 Don't forget to like and subscribe down below and let us know other topics you'd like us to discuss.
00:38:57 --> 00:38:59 We'll be happy to consider them at least.
00:39:00 --> 00:39:01 Thanks guys for having me.
00:39:01 --> 00:39:02 Thank you.
00:39:02 --> 00:39:02 It's great to be here.
00:39:02 --> 00:39:03 Yeah, thank you.