From lawyer to tester in Yandex. The history of my internship
Hello! My name is Kristina lapkina Kocherina, I am a tester in Yandex.Market. Only six months ago I had the status of a lawyer and a large legal practice, I spent the evenings in the SIZO. But at some point I decided that it was time to do something that brings pleasure, not just money. And radically changed the profession.
Today I will tell Habr readers about how I became a tester, and also share some tips that will help pass the internship. And, perhaps, I will destroy the stereotype that testing is an easy way to “get into IT”.
Having decided to change my profession, I began to remember what I liked to do when I had not yet become a lawyer? The memories brought me to the school, where I was on floppy disks and disks from Hacker magazine and exchanged sacred knowledge with my classmates. It became interesting, what happened to IT in these 10 years, climbed for information on Habr, then got on DjangoGirls. So I learned about the profession of tester. As in the bar, in this area you need to be able to carefully examine the problem area and look for "bugs" in it.
')
I had a little knowledge. I chaotically, but very eagerly searched for any information about this profession, read blogs, books, entered testing courses, where I was able to streamline this knowledge. In parallel, I fit into the crowdsourcing testing of a single game project in order to put my knowledge into practice for the first time.
In November 2018, I came across an ad for candidates for the intensive “I'm testing Yandex”. To get to it, it was necessary to perform a test task - in different ways to compare the search results of Yandex and Google and fill out a questionnaire, talking about your background and interests. Those who successfully pass the intensive, promised to consider as candidates for internship. The requirements were quite simple: the attentiveness and knowledge of the book “Testing Dot Com” by Roman Savin.
Savin was read a long time ago, I was not deprived of my care, so I sent the task and waited for the verdict. On the appointed day I did not receive a letter that took me. “Well then,” I thought. "This is Yandex, and I am just a beginner tester without projects behind me, I'll try another time." But on the eve of the intensive one they contacted me and offered to come to the event. It seems that at this moment I pulled out a happy ticket.
Before the intensive they added me to the chat, where the participants got to know each other. The contingent, I will tell you, was such a thing that I was a little worried: ITMO students, HSE, SPbU, programmers, admins. Among all these cool techies was me.
The intensity itself was quite active: it was three days of lectures interlaced with bagaton. The lectures were exciting, but at that time I was just completing the testing courses, so most of the topics I already knew. This helped me not only to listen and memorize, but also to participate in the discussion. Perhaps, thanks to this, in December I was offered to undergo an interview for an internship.
I admit, I felt a little embarrassed and felt some distrust on the part of the interviewers, because we were from very different worlds, but it seems that my burning eyes convinced them. In more detail about the interviews themselves, I will tell below.
Work days began. Each trainee had his own intro-plan, the tasks in which were complicated as they were immersed in the project. I will not hide, it was difficult for me. Especially at first. Of course, I knew what Git is, how to use the console and other things, but it was pretty hard for me to understand the nuances. Sometimes I felt very stupid. My mentor helped me with this. We held regular meetings where I could ask any question. A mentor at Yandex is not an internship leader, but a completely different role. As I found out later, mentors specifically undergo internal training in order to help the interns.
It turned out that testing is not just a verification of the state of a product with what is written in “spec”. This is not about "pressing buttons and breaking everything." Testing is about a thoughtful and consistent study of the product, finding the missing information, and working closely with the developers.
We were not used for “bring-bring” tasks, but put in equal conditions with “adults”: the interns tested real releases and experiments. The excuse "I am just an intern" did not work here. Do not know something? Find a source of information and help you. For example, at the initiative of testers an internal intensive development was carried out on javascript and writing autotests. Opportunities to learn something new were literally at arm's length. The main thing - do not be afraid to learn.
My internship began in the project of internal, corporate Yandex messenger. Slowly, I plunged into the project, studied the internal kitchen, met with developers and managers. It seemed that there was still a lot of time before the end of the internship, and that it would not be difficult to prove yourself in this project. But exactly one and a half months later, they transferred me to a new project - to Yandex. Connect. Now I think this solution is the best for my entire internship. It mobilized me, made me get together and prove myself in a short time. In my new team there was not a single person from St. Petersburg, so it was more difficult (you won’t ask for advice here and now), but this taught me to work in a distributed team. Then, in the project, only autotesting was born, so even my modest experience of testing the messenger came in handy. This and useful internal rotation of employees between projects.
In the course of the internship, I realized that sometimes soft skills help to get out where there are not enough hard skills. Independence is important - you shouldn’t wait for someone to come and chew you, come yourself, no one will refuse you. Curiosity is important - half of all knowledge is in the internal wiki of the company, you can find it if you search. It is important to be able to ask questions.
I think that passing the exam for an international ISTQB certificate also helped me to successfully complete an internship. However controversial this system may be, exam preparation streamlines knowledge.
By the end of the internship there was a question about employment. In total, I took 10 interviews (including those that took place before the internship) prior to employment in the state, most of which were with the technical part. Tasks can be both about a pencil, and more difficult, demanding deep understanding of technologies of development. 3 more interviews were managerial - here they checked the understanding of the processes and the ability to navigate in difficult situations, found out if you were suitable for the team and if the team was suitable for you (in my case representatives of three different teams spoke with me).
I'll tell you a bit of “secret” information about interviews for a tester. To pass them, it is desirable to know and understand client-server interaction, requests and response codes, the difference between them. Interviewers may ask about the network, the difference in browsers and simple algorithms, testing artifacts and the testing process, sometimes ask questions about programming languages, if you say that you know a little about this.
And something else. There is no such book, after reading which you will immediately take to testers. Read the classic books on testing (I cited some of them below), but do not forget about forums and conferences, communicate with more experienced specialists. It is also useful to go to interviews , even if you have no plans to change jobs here and now. They are easy to see gaps in their knowledge and take them into account in the future. In general, look for any ways to constantly evolve.
Perhaps you know other useful sources of knowledge for testers. Share them in the comments. Thank!
Today I will tell Habr readers about how I became a tester, and also share some tips that will help pass the internship. And, perhaps, I will destroy the stereotype that testing is an easy way to “get into IT”.
Having decided to change my profession, I began to remember what I liked to do when I had not yet become a lawyer? The memories brought me to the school, where I was on floppy disks and disks from Hacker magazine and exchanged sacred knowledge with my classmates. It became interesting, what happened to IT in these 10 years, climbed for information on Habr, then got on DjangoGirls. So I learned about the profession of tester. As in the bar, in this area you need to be able to carefully examine the problem area and look for "bugs" in it.
')
I had a little knowledge. I chaotically, but very eagerly searched for any information about this profession, read blogs, books, entered testing courses, where I was able to streamline this knowledge. In parallel, I fit into the crowdsourcing testing of a single game project in order to put my knowledge into practice for the first time.
Intensive
In November 2018, I came across an ad for candidates for the intensive “I'm testing Yandex”. To get to it, it was necessary to perform a test task - in different ways to compare the search results of Yandex and Google and fill out a questionnaire, talking about your background and interests. Those who successfully pass the intensive, promised to consider as candidates for internship. The requirements were quite simple: the attentiveness and knowledge of the book “Testing Dot Com” by Roman Savin.
Savin was read a long time ago, I was not deprived of my care, so I sent the task and waited for the verdict. On the appointed day I did not receive a letter that took me. “Well then,” I thought. "This is Yandex, and I am just a beginner tester without projects behind me, I'll try another time." But on the eve of the intensive one they contacted me and offered to come to the event. It seems that at this moment I pulled out a happy ticket.
Before the intensive they added me to the chat, where the participants got to know each other. The contingent, I will tell you, was such a thing that I was a little worried: ITMO students, HSE, SPbU, programmers, admins. Among all these cool techies was me.
The intensity itself was quite active: it was three days of lectures interlaced with bagaton. The lectures were exciting, but at that time I was just completing the testing courses, so most of the topics I already knew. This helped me not only to listen and memorize, but also to participate in the discussion. Perhaps, thanks to this, in December I was offered to undergo an interview for an internship.
I admit, I felt a little embarrassed and felt some distrust on the part of the interviewers, because we were from very different worlds, but it seems that my burning eyes convinced them. In more detail about the interviews themselves, I will tell below.
Internship
Work days began. Each trainee had his own intro-plan, the tasks in which were complicated as they were immersed in the project. I will not hide, it was difficult for me. Especially at first. Of course, I knew what Git is, how to use the console and other things, but it was pretty hard for me to understand the nuances. Sometimes I felt very stupid. My mentor helped me with this. We held regular meetings where I could ask any question. A mentor at Yandex is not an internship leader, but a completely different role. As I found out later, mentors specifically undergo internal training in order to help the interns.
It turned out that testing is not just a verification of the state of a product with what is written in “spec”. This is not about "pressing buttons and breaking everything." Testing is about a thoughtful and consistent study of the product, finding the missing information, and working closely with the developers.
We were not used for “bring-bring” tasks, but put in equal conditions with “adults”: the interns tested real releases and experiments. The excuse "I am just an intern" did not work here. Do not know something? Find a source of information and help you. For example, at the initiative of testers an internal intensive development was carried out on javascript and writing autotests. Opportunities to learn something new were literally at arm's length. The main thing - do not be afraid to learn.
My internship began in the project of internal, corporate Yandex messenger. Slowly, I plunged into the project, studied the internal kitchen, met with developers and managers. It seemed that there was still a lot of time before the end of the internship, and that it would not be difficult to prove yourself in this project. But exactly one and a half months later, they transferred me to a new project - to Yandex. Connect. Now I think this solution is the best for my entire internship. It mobilized me, made me get together and prove myself in a short time. In my new team there was not a single person from St. Petersburg, so it was more difficult (you won’t ask for advice here and now), but this taught me to work in a distributed team. Then, in the project, only autotesting was born, so even my modest experience of testing the messenger came in handy. This and useful internal rotation of employees between projects.
In the course of the internship, I realized that sometimes soft skills help to get out where there are not enough hard skills. Independence is important - you shouldn’t wait for someone to come and chew you, come yourself, no one will refuse you. Curiosity is important - half of all knowledge is in the internal wiki of the company, you can find it if you search. It is important to be able to ask questions.
I think that passing the exam for an international ISTQB certificate also helped me to successfully complete an internship. However controversial this system may be, exam preparation streamlines knowledge.
Interview
By the end of the internship there was a question about employment. In total, I took 10 interviews (including those that took place before the internship) prior to employment in the state, most of which were with the technical part. Tasks can be both about a pencil, and more difficult, demanding deep understanding of technologies of development. 3 more interviews were managerial - here they checked the understanding of the processes and the ability to navigate in difficult situations, found out if you were suitable for the team and if the team was suitable for you (in my case representatives of three different teams spoke with me).
I'll tell you a bit of “secret” information about interviews for a tester. To pass them, it is desirable to know and understand client-server interaction, requests and response codes, the difference between them. Interviewers may ask about the network, the difference in browsers and simple algorithms, testing artifacts and the testing process, sometimes ask questions about programming languages, if you say that you know a little about this.
Useful materials
And something else. There is no such book, after reading which you will immediately take to testers. Read the classic books on testing (I cited some of them below), but do not forget about forums and conferences, communicate with more experienced specialists. It is also useful to go to interviews , even if you have no plans to change jobs here and now. They are easy to see gaps in their knowledge and take them into account in the future. In general, look for any ways to constantly evolve.
- Software Testing (Svyatoslav Kulikov)
- The Art of Testing Programs (Glenford Myers)
- Software Testing (Sam Kaner)
- “Testing Dot Com, or Handbook of bugs mistreatment in Internet startups” (Roman Savin)
Perhaps you know other useful sources of knowledge for testers. Share them in the comments. Thank!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/454140/
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