How software testers think about learning outside work

Intro

Hi!

My name is Jonas Breisel, I’m located in Gothenburg and I’m a devoted software tester with a burning interest of always learning new things, and the last couple of years it has been through learn others. I will herby start my own blog, I will mostly blog about test related subjects, it will be both about hard and soft values, which have become more and more important.

Pay some extra attention to soft values

If you just think about your current workplace or when you last time started at a new workplace. How much of the challenges you were facing was tool, test techniques related and how much was it a people problem? As Jerry Weinberg use to say, “No matter what the problem is, it’s a people problem”.

For example, one person is very dominant in the team and no one dares to challenge the person. Or the group is disagreeing about different things and you are thrown right into the mess. It’s here the soft values come into the picture and why they are so important. In this situation it’s useful to be able to both handle your own feelings but read the groups feelings and act from that. I will get back to tactics to use for this kind of problems in later blog posts.

Activate yourself outside work

I have been working as a software tester for more than 8 years now. Mostly within the embedded software industry. I’m main responsible for the meetup group Passion for Testing that was started by Martin Jansson and he is still participating, it is also partnered with Ministry of Testing.

During this time, I have also been very active outside work in different meetups and other constellations. This have been helpful during my different assignments, for example at Husqvarna I developed both my testing and strategic skills very much, thanks to this. During my latest stay at Volvo Cars I developed my soft skills, where I needed to be good at handling people with strong will and very different views to agree to the same idea. Here I also had help from a mentor, which is a method I can recommend.

How people act differently regarding further education

From these different experiences I have learned that there are 3 categories of people when it comes to learning. The majority that only goes to work and do what they are told then goes home again. The second biggest group are what I use to call “taker” they are interested in learning new things and activate themselves outside work to do so. It’s 1 out of 10 that belongs to this group. Then the minority is what I call “giver” it’s the persons that are willing to give presentations, arrange meetups or workshops to learn others. I consider myself to belong to the “giver” group. Those are 1 out of 10 from the “taker”, so 1% of the total belongs to this group. It’s too bad since there are many skilled people out there that don’t share their knowledge with others.

“3 categories of people when it comes to learning”

I don’t mean to offend people with “taker” or “giver”, it just an acronym for that you get knowledge, or you share knowledge and you need to be a “taker” to become a “giver”.

What do you think about this categorization?

I love to share what I’m doing hence the self proclaimed “giver” title, so please don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to know more or ask me something.