8.3 If I Could Write a Letter to Me: Timothy Western

My mind’s been wandering today, and a thought came to me. Were there early warning signs that I could be a Software Tester or QA style professional? If so what behaviors, characteristics, or approaches have I used before I ever even thought about going down the Software Testing path?

I can’t speak for everyone, but I know, for a lot of young people, it’s HARD to figure out what you are good at, what you have skills for. I remember taking two or three different career tests, from the ASVAB, PSAT, PLAN, whatever. One of them even broke your skills and interests into little slivers of a circle; in my case I had one that barely bordered engineering, but others that included the medical field. At one time I contemplated a career in medicine, believe it or not, but my strong math skills I felt would go to waste there, and well I couldn’t resolve the idea of being around Sick people all the time. Oh yeah, but the rub is that now I work with sick computers or sick software all the time. Ask me now if I knew that which I’d choose? It’s not an easy answer.

What helped me make my choices were trying to figure out what subtle skills I had that fit into various fields.

- Programming seemed a winner as part of a career path because my mind seemed well organized for it, and it was interesting, until I found out 90% of the Enterprise stack is essentially a rehash of previous Enterprise software :/ Or it surely seemed that way after a while.

- As a Freshman at College, I broke my glasses right before a retreat. When I returned home the next weekend I went to pick out a new frame exactly like it so I could just transfer the lenses in place, and I found one just like it. Except, I remarked, this frame isn’t the same size as the others. The clerk swore up and down that wasn’t likely, but after i tried them on, looked at them, held them together I was convinced in my observation. She went and looked the numbers up. Sure enough, it wasn’t just a style # difference, it was about 3-5 millimeters smaller. Call that an early warning sign, as I often observe things that others in their normal daily life either ignore, or are oblivious to their existence.

-Tim