Originally I intended to write this blog as a way to sort of showcase the things I can do and what I’m working on while trying to find work. I look at everything. I follow every lead. Throughout this process and the course of submitting probably 200 or more resumes, I’ve had to interface with different HR people and do interviews and all of the typical things that one does while they are looking for employment. The more I do this, the more I realize that I am interviewing them. They are checking my qualifications, trying to understand whether I am friendly, trustworthy and motivated and are comparing me to all of their other applicants.
Their goal (this is a generalization) is to identify who is the most qualified individual, the most reliable individual, who will work for the least and who will be a yes man all day long.
The entire concept of working on something that I don’t want to be doing, somewhere I do not want to be while I could be working on something exciting and what I want to be doing is utterly revolting.
I strongly believe that a lot of the time my resume isn’t even being looked at. No one is reading it. If people in HR do read it, they don’t know what it means. I’m a complex person and it’s impossible to take two pages of paper, format it neatly and summarize my personality. No. The truth is, I’m evaluating them. I’m testing them to see if I believe in their mission statement. I’m testing them to see if they believe in the words that are written in their mission statement or if it’s just marketing and content to fill out their “about” page on their website. I’m checking to see if they’re a worthwhile company to spend my time on.
I’ve already been tremendously successful (according to my definition) although I’m not tremendously successful right now. What made me successful was going against the grain. I wouldn’t let anyone tell me no.
What brought me down was listening to others. Listening to critical opinion and letting it influence me. Listening to other people tell me what to do. I bent over backward for them and they weren’t there after. I won’t do that again. Ever. For anyone. Ever. All it did was prove that I was originally correct when I wasn’t listening to them in the first place. Once I caved it was over. I allowed people to effect me emotionally because I am a good person and the end result was that no matter what I did they would find fault with it. I may have a bad attitude in certain situations but I’m also extremely fair. The only way to be successful is to make a decision and stick with it. Follow it through until you simply cannot any longer. Keep going when others would have quit. I have never been and will never be anything less than what I am. Now I just have to figure out how to correct myself.
I’m all for hard work and if you’re the company owner, it’s okay that you make more money than I do but don’t expect me to DO more than you. I’ll match you. You put the time in and so will I. You stop caring and so will I. I am not a subordinate. I am an equal. I need a business partner and not a position of subordination. I deserve it. I won’t settle for anything less.
For the past few days I have been looking through all of the requirements for the ISTQB exam. I detest that name by the way. It has far too many letters. I’ve been reading and thinking quietly to myself, all this is, is a bunch of lingo and definitions for things that I’ve already done. There is no hands on component.. you just read a bunch of stuff and then you run through the test questions which are multiple choice. I did all of it. While I agree that it’s nice to have a language to define software testing, you cannot bottle creativity and just reading and parroting answers is not going to create a good software tester. Neither will tools. Tools will definitely help, but testing is about a pattern of behavior. It’s about combining weird interactions and processes to generate an unintended result or fault. It is also, in contrast checking that the correct and anticipated result occurred. It is about meticulously documenting everything. Just because someone has a certification… all that certifies is that they know the language that programmers and testers use to communicate with each other. It doesn’t mean that the tester will ever find a single bug. Most of the craziest bugs I’ve ever found were discovered by accident. You cannot teach a person how to be a klutz.
There is a parallel mindset between these two totally unrelated topics. In each case you have companies trying to coerce people with the promise of success while simultaneously compelling them to qualify to a rigid and biased set of guidelines.
Success comes from within.
Russell Rockefeller 