Automation QA Engineer is a profession that requires meticulousness and critical thinking

In this article, Irina and Valeria share their career path to IT, the peculiarities of Automation QA Engineer work, as well as, tips for beginner testers.

Irina Gâncu - Test Consultant at Endava, 9+ years of experience in testing, graduate of the State University of Moldova (USM), specialisation in Applied Informatics.

Valeria Gandrabura - Test Consultant at Endava, 7+ years of experience in testing, graduate of the Technical University of Moldova (UTM), specialisation in Information Security.

Entering IT

Well, let's start with Ira, since you're the oldest and first in IT.

Valeria: Actually, I was the first one to go into IT 🙂 I knew from eighth grade that I would go to college for Computer Science, while Ira went to university for economics. She only then went to study IT after economics. But I was the first to decide that I would be a programmer back in eighth grade, when I participated in the Furnica Olympiad. But in ninth grade we started learning Pascal, and then I disappeared (laughs). I decided that I would go to the college of computer science, then I went to the technical university to specialise in security information.

Interesting turn out 🙂 Ira, how did you realize you wanted to go into IT? 

Irina: I entered the Faculty of Economics. I didn't pass the competition, but there was a specialty "Applied Informatics" at the university. It turned out that we were at the Faculty of Economics, but we started studying computer science. And it turned out that C++ turned out to be interesting for me. At school I did not like informatics at all. But at university, on the contrary, I liked it and decided to stay in computer science. And plus you were my muse (laugh). You were already in IT, and when you were talking about manual testing, I thought, "Oh, so I'm not going to write code, that works for me. Now I don't know how to live without it."

Yes, I remember advertising the testing profession and trying to get you involved 🙂 Valeria, how easy was it for you to get into IT? 

Valeria: After university I went to America, I thought about what to do next and I decided: "Let me go to Ira at Endava for an internship" (laugh)

Irina: Yes, she was so eager to go back. I told her, "Go on, start studying something, you'll come back, you have money, you can study. You'll see if it's for you. You know, she liked it, she decided to stay and she is still at Endava.

Why testing?

You've been in this field long enough. What is it that attracts you to testing?

Valeria: I like it best when I find rubbish from others than when someone else does from me (laugh). Second: you have to think of things that nobody else has thought of. When I interview candidates, I ask them to test a pillow. They look at me: What do you mean, a pillow? Yes, yes, yes, the pillow. How do you test it? And after the internship, I ask them that question again, and they start suggesting lots of options. It's so creative. You can test anything.

Irina: You understood how I came to IT. Because of you (laughs). I liked what you were talking about. I like to analyse as well. As a developer, you have a framework, you know services and all that. And as a tester, you're thinking about how to break it. A developer might not know how the whole flow works. I see the whole picture.

Testing tools

Share what you use in your work? What programming language, services?

Valeria: I've always written in Java. On internship we used Selenium and Cucumber. And already, starting from the first project, Spring Hibernate is a very big framework. We can say that it is even more than a development framework. Then REST assured, UI Selenium - all this in parallel. And the current project will soon be 5 years I've been on it and I learn something every time. I was lucky enough to work with Openstack, Azure Cloud, Google Cloud and many other services.

Irina: We use various services that allow us to cover as many parts of the product as possible with tests. And with the help of Mountebank and WireMock we write so-called mocks, which can be reused to cover other parts and don't have to write code again. 

Valeria: Also, we do resilience testing, which not many testers do. 

Irina: And performance testing with Jmeter.

What product are you testing, if it's no secret?

Irina: Payment system. There is Google Pay, Apple Pay, integration with banks and much more.

I realize that the level of responsibility is quite high. The cost of a mistake is high. Remind me, did you start out with automated testing?

Valeria: I am, from the beginning.

Irina: I started with manual work. Already in the first project I became interested in automation and tried to write test cases myself. My managers were very surprised that I could figure it out on my own. As a result, I decided to take Java courses at Endava. Then I was transferred to Valeria's project, and I had to go through a difficult period to understand how everything worked there. There were tears and moments of despair. But it was good that my sister was there to help me understand.

Valeria: And then I went to you with questions (laughs).

It's really good to have someone to ask. How do you guys work together in general? No arguments?

Irina: We're a great team, actually! I remember one time we were preparing the system for a demo. Something didn't go according to plan, and Lera and I dealt with the situation. It was fun!

So your sister's guidance is good for you. Would you like to run the team yourself?

Valeria: Ira has a team, and I monitor the work of several, including her team.

Tips for aspiring testers

What advice do you have for beginner testers? Should one go straight into automation, or should one work as a manual tester first?

Valeria: There is little demand for manual testing right now. Our company hardly recruits such specialists. But in any case, you should know the basics of testing. I always tell newcomers that even though you have come to automated testing, you are still testers. You still have to analyze cases and only then write code. If you want to write only code, go straight to programming.

Sounds more complicated than the work of programmers.

Valeria: That's how it works, because you first have to understand the system, test it manually, write tests, and also find errors in the programmers' code. So when guys come to us on internship, they learn manual testing from scratch. And only then automation. 

What do you pay attention to in job interviews?

Valeria: On how a person thinks. I had many examples of guys who had hardly heard anything about testing, but they answered my questions well. Now they are some of the best testers. And it was the other way round, people came in who answered the theory clearly, but when you ask logical questions, people get lost. There is also such a thing as intuition. Sometimes 10 minutes is enough for me to tell whether a person will pass or not.

Irina: Yes, I agree about intuition. I had a situation when I interviewed a candidate and she did well in both theoretical and practical questions. At the same time I had not very positive feedback about her work from my colleagues. But the final decision had to be made by me. I decided to hire her by listening to my intuition. Now I can say that I made the right choice because I get only positive feedback from my colleagues.

There are a lot of people nowadays who want to get into the IT field. How do you realize that it is testing that you should try? 

Valeria: I'm often asked "What's the easiest way to get into IT?" and I say, "The easiest way is the way you like it." Because everyone thinks it's easiest to start with testing. But it isn't. So my advice would be to explore all areas, figure out what resonates more and start moving in that direction.

Irina: Yes, for example, go to a job site and go through the offers of IT companies. Read the job duties and realise which profession you like the most. Then listen to experts on Youtube or ask people you know. If you don't know anyone, then attend various events to meet experts in the right field and ask them everything in detail.

Thank you for this interesting discussion! I'm sure it should be useful not only for beginners but also for those already in the profession. Maybe you have something to add lastly?

Valeria: Testing is very challenging, you need creativity and patience, but it is very interesting.

Irina: I would advise not to be obedient. That is, if the developer says it should work this way and that's it - double-check everything, take a broader view of the problem and keep learning new things.