You've got Questions, I've got answers.

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

Matt — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 16:44:00 GMT

In response to your answer to "How does it work at Microsoft for a job change to occur..", my question is: since a functional change from ste to sde requires a formal interview, does already working for MS as a ste give you any advantage over someone from outside the company?

I heard that when someone tries to switch from ste to sde they are assigned a mentor to help with the process, is this true?

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

adamu — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 18:22:00 GMT

I'd like to say, no, it gives you no advantage, that every internal and external candidate are given the same opportunity for each job opening. That said, being able to see reviews for an internal candidate (with their permission), speaking to their manager (with permission) and knowing that they have already demonstrated what Microsoft calls core competencies and company values(no matter what discipline you are there are a core set of things that everyone needs to succeed at: communication, integrity/honesty, conviction/courage, etc,) should eliminate the need to drill into those areas, and allow the hiring manager to focus primarily on the technical skills for the position. With someone external to the company applying for a job, you'd have to spend time drilling into those areas and a candidate may have strong technical skills but not get hired because of those core competencies or company value concerns.

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

Matt — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 19:31:00 GMT

Thanks Adam.

How do you recommend someone gain the technical experience neccessary that is required by MSFT for:

1. Being an STE?
2. Being an SDE?

Is a computer science background + MCAD certification enough for SDE?

What type of background is adequate/recommended for STE?

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions.

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

adamu — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 21:57:00 GMT

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the follow up questions. I'll speak to the path of both campus candidates and industry candidates in my next post, and hopefully answer your questions about technical experience in a more general fashion.

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

Chris Dickens — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT

People always seem interested in the move from Test to Dev. I understand this idea, in most of the industry test isn't respected as a career path and a solid technical contributor to the process.

I'd like to go on record and say that it's a much better world at Microsoft. Testing has always been the most interesting part of the software lifecycle for me, and I interviewed with a lot of companies when I graduated from school. Most of them were shocked that someone with my qualifications wanted to work in test. Only at Microsoft did I get the sense that they really take testing seriously as a technical discipline.

I know there were companies I missed, so I don't need to get in a conversation about who has what kinds of testing. But I do want to once again reiterate that testers here aren't the second class citizens they are in most development orgs.

Chris

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

Dave — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 02:07:00 GMT

Chris & Adamu:

Have any of you read 'Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: What I learned in 10 years as a Microsoft programmer' By Adam Barr? (ISBN: 0595161286)

Adam describes testers to be "on average, less qualified" (pg. 67) and "for a variety of reasons they are viewed as lower on the pecking order than program managers and developers" (pg. 50)

He further rants negatively about testers especially in chapter 4.

Considering Adam worked at MSFT for 10 years, its disconcerting how he describes testers. It would be great if Chris or Adamu could comment on this book.

Thank you.

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

adamu — Sat, 19 Jun 2004 03:19:00 GMT

I haven't read it. I commented in a previous post that many developers are pretty arrogant about being developers and mentioned this post as a typical example. http://blogs.msdn.com/exchange/archive/2004/03/25/95992.aspx

A lot has changed since 2000, and it continues to evolve. The move away from large quantities of contract testing is one positive step.

Since Adam Barr was as MS from 1990 to 2000, I would say yes, during most of that period, MS didn't understand the true value of a technically excellent testing organization. I would say that 30% of the people on campus were contractors when I started in 1996. 50% of the first test organization I was in was contract testers. That is no longer the case. I've had exactly 2 contract testers in the last 4 years on the projects I've worked on, and those were for brief periods.

Last week I went to the 2nd Engineering Excellence day at Microsoft, and all the content, just like last year, is about 'pushing quality upstream'. How do we get QA more involved earlier in the process?

Quality matters, and getting technically strong people in QA roles is important, and we as a company are finally getting it right.

My take on pecking orders? They are too group and personality dependent to make any generalizations. I've seen groups dominated by QA, by PM, and by Dev in my 8 years.

Any functional discipline at Microsoft in any organization, if it doesn't hire carefully, can fill itself with mediocre talent, and the results can be long reaching.

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

Adam Barr — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 05:38:00 GMT

I'm the author of "Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters", and I happened to find this post when I was trolling around looking for references to the book (which is what authors do when they are bored).

Anyway, the point of what I wrote about testers was to try to COUNTERACT the prevailing feeling that testers are second-class citizens. It's would take a while to summarize my argument here, but basically what I am trying to debunk around p. 67 is this myth that testers are people who are fully qualified as developers but just have a different bent, they like to break things, etc. This has always been presented by management as the reason why testers should be respected -- "because they are just as qualified to be developers as the actual developers". What I am saying on p. 67 (to complete the quote) is that this is false, that testers are less qualified AS PROGRAMMERS. This is not meant as a knock on testers, it's just that if you try to base your "testers are important" argument on this fallacy, it destroys the whole notion that testers are important.

(I don't want to get into a big argument about whether testers are less qualified as programmers or not. I think the basic fact is that if someone is qualified to be a developer, they will be hired as a developer. The move from test to dev is viewed as a promotion; the move from dev to test is a demotion. It's true that many SDETs are extremely good programmers who could be working as "full" programmers at other companies, but at Microsoft they are not).

So what I am trying to argue in the book is that testers are just as important as developers, in fact they may be more important, but it's not because they are as good developers as the developers, it's because they are good testers! That should be reason enough to respect them. In fact I make the claim that Microsoft started out in the "era of the developer", moved to the "era of the program manager" around 1990 when Windows 3.0 shipped, and has now moved to the "era of the tester" -- except nobody realizes this, and it is hurting the company.

[As an aside, William Poundstone managed to completely misquote me about testers in "How Would You Move Mount Fuji?", getting my argument backwards and making it sound like I was bagging on testers].

Anyway you can read the book (it's linked to online from my website if you don't want to buy a copy) to get the full argument, it's scattered throughout chapter 3, on pages 40-60. But please understand that I was trying to raise testers up to equality with dev and PM. I'm not sure what "He further rants negatively about testers especially in chapter 4" means but I don't recall doing any negative ranting about testers. I rant negatively about the ATTITUDE towards testers. The quote on p. 50 about "for a variety of reasons they are viewed as lower on the pecking order than program managers and developers" is not me bragging about the way things should be, it's me lamenting about the way they are.

- adam

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

Adam Barr — Thu, 22 Jul 2004 05:44:00 GMT

I was just looking at the book and the discussion of testers continues into chapter 4, pages 61-69 or so.

- adam

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

Larry Osterman — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 15:31:00 GMT

Yo Adam, when're you going to create your blog and start writing again?

What are main benefits of test automation?

swetha — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:30:00 GMT

this is software testing question

re: You've got Questions, I've got answers.

Adam — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 16:32:00 GMT

Great question, and I'll answer it in my next post.

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