Friday will complete my last day with the company that got me to move halfway across the country to take a job. I’m going to miss this place. It was my first foray into a non-game development software environment. I met a lot of good people, many of whom I hope to remain friends with after I’ve turned in my badge and walked out the door for the final time.
Why leave then? It came down to an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. As has normally been the case when I’ve changed jobs without the impetus of either a layoff, or an impending layoff. In this case, it was a chance to move into a Software Engineer role after eighteen years in various QA and Production roles.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve come to enjoy the QA world, especially after returning to it in 2013. As I wrote after attending Agile + DevOps East last year, I think that QA roles have a lot of exciting growth coming thanks to the proliferation of AI, machine learning, Test-Driven-Development, Continuous Integration, and other upcoming technologies and development styles. However, as a Test Engineer, I found that my favorite parts of my job were all coding related. And again, Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
So it’s off to a new adventure. Maybe this will mark my final exit from the Quality Assurance world. Then again, maybe it won’t. I said I was done before, and it didn’t stick. Either way, it’s closing one chapter and opening another. Only time will tell where this direction takes me.
