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Admin
You know, "Experience Your Own Support Stories" might not be the best way to market yourself on a website where "support stories" mean "tales of clueless idiots working front-line customer service"...
Admin
On the upside, people who do respond are very motivated if they still want to do this whilst knowing what they get themselves into.
That or they're certifiably crazy.
Filed under: Also INB4 "both"
Admin
Fair point... although it seems a lot of the support stories are from the other perspective.
Anyway, you know makes a fine single malt even nicer? Having it at the conclusion of painful/difficult support experience.
Admin
This part:
Sounds like something we've discussed in another thread. But instead of paying $40, I get paid? Sounds too good.
Admin
This is quite nice. Coming out of college, I was still intimidated and uncertain if I could be an actual developer. (It turns out I can.) So I went into QA where I started writing tools to assist QA. But at that first job, the QA was overworked and under-appreciated. So, on to contracting in QA. Finally a number of years later, I get to work on automation, C#, Selenium... it's been great! And I've found out I'm really pretty good at this programming, developing thing. I'm not going to be happy going back to writing test documents and manual testing.
My point is that it is good that there is a company that provides a quick path to build confidence, training, and mentorship in development through these alternate paths. These alternate paths also produce a more rounded developer (as they understand the QA or support world.)
Admin
I'm loath to help equate programming with years of experience, but there's a notion in the gym world: the trick to looking like you've been lifting weights for five years is to lift weights for five years.
Now people progress at different rates, and there are ways to speed that up, and you can certainly spend a lot of time and get nowhere. That said, at the end day at it's function of the time and effort put into it, and you can't avoid that - freaks of nature and extremely well executed steroid regimes notwithstanding. You won't get turbo ripped in six months off a piece of equipment, or a particular diet, or some suddenly huge actor's workout. You don't get rich overnight. You don't learn a foreign language in six weeks. Workplaces don't see 10x increases in productivity by adopting _____.
Programming really isn't that radically different on a certain level, and saying you'll pick up 10+ years of coding experience in radically less than 10+ years of time triggers "scam scam scam."
Now this isn't to say that this position isn't useful, though I don't know if a site about programming wtfs is the target audience. I've known some phenomenal software engineers who have backgrounds in QA; who went from QA to writing testing scripts to straight development. Maybe this position could give you the skills & resume to apply for straight entry/mid-level-ish developer positions. I'll definitely buy that it's a better use of time than trying to get a second degree.
Let's not pretend, however, that you can work @ Inedo for a year and "reach expert/mastery level." Given the conditional "you could reach," I also think we both know this. I'll even take it a step further and say the handful of freaks of nature who could reach expert/mastery level of experience quickly don't need this position at all; they just need to get serious about learning.
Admin
Any idea how I can attract people like you? I'm having trouble finding good QA contractors in my area >.>
Admin
Like many primarily-mental activities, it takes around 10 thousand hours of diligent effort to achieve mastery in computer programming. For most people, that in turn takes about 10 years to do (because life and goofing off take up the rest). Be better at sticking to the required type of learning and you might shorten the number of years a bit, and spend your time not learning and you'll never get to 10k hours.
Admin
Admin
You don't need to do all that. After all, you don't need to be an expert. ;)
Admin
A little bit pedantry and dickweedery should just get the job done
Admin
"We need a support analyst, but don't worry, you won't be on support forever!"
Admin
Am I the only one that think "purising" spirits is wrong? Anyways, you should also hire a proofreader for your website.
Admin
After all, we have to pull the plug at some point, it's the only humane thing to do.
Admin
Definitely not, and that's why I tried to keep it non-specific ("you could reach an expert/mastery level in a very short time"). I think, absolute miminum, 3 years; and that's dedicating most nights and weekends, and working closely with mentors. But more realistically, 5 years... and largely a result of longer days and a low bullshit-to-work ratio.
Just checked, and both Merriam and Webster agree with you. So, I fixed it. Thanks.
Admin
Obviously people like him don't stay in QA long enough to be recruited. And he also said he ain't going back (unless he can't find another dev job).
I also had my start in QA. At first I was astonished at how the dev at my company could produce such complicated things. So I told myself (and others) that if I went into dev, it probably wouldn't be at the company I'm at. Fast forward (checks linkedin profile) ~5 years and I made the jump to dev because I felt I was doing enough debugging of problems and my automation was better than some of the production code. So, it is nice to have a place to spring board. My only regret was going from being some all-star QA to just another dev.