In chapter 17 of my book Get Back Up  I am now working at Microsoft. I started about as low in the company as I could, working in their test lab, where one of my jobs was to keep the lab clean. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter where you start as long as you start. I was in the door, and now I was going to prove to them that they were right to hire me, but to do that I had to first find out what the company and my boss rewarded and valued in its employees.

Everyone at PowerPoint used the lab, not just the testers and developers, but sales and marketing as well. I talked to everyone that came into the lab about the company and what they valued. I heard a lot about hard work and results but one of the most interesting things I heard was that Microsoft wasn’t a company where you said give me that opportunity and I’ll show you what I can do. No, here you had to show them what you could do first and then they might officially give you that job.

I didn’t mind working in the lab. It actually was a lot of fun but that isn’t what I’d come to Microsoft to do. I aspired to move into management, but before I could do that I had to move into testing. So, I talked to Suzie about this. I explained that if I wanted to be a software tester, I had to start testing their software, but I’d have to do this in addition to my current job, not at its expense. So I said from 9 until 6 Monday through Friday I would be the best lab coordinator they ever had, but from 6 until 9 Monday through Friday and 10 until 4 on Saturday, I would test their software.

My plan was simple: find plenty of good bugs, and when the group needed to hire another software tester, I would get the job. My plan worked, as a few months later they decided they needed to hire more testers. The test manager talked to one of the software developers and told him that she was going to put an ad in the paper. He asked her why she didn’t just make me a software tester. She pointed out to developer that I worked in the lab, but he also told her that he thought I was being wasted there. Thankfully she agreed and she asked me if I wanted to move into testing. Of course, I immediately said yes.

After just a few short months at Microsoft I was now a software tester, but this position wasn’t my ultimate goal either. I wanted to move into management as that’s where I thought I could have the most success. So, I had the same conversation with Suzie. From 9 until 6 Monday through Friday I would be the best software tester they ever had, but from 6 until 9 Monday through Friday and 10 until 4 on Saturday, I would take on more leadership tasks.

I began working with the other testers. We looked for problems to solve and better ways of doing things. Every tester on PowerPoint was assigned a specific area of the product. That area also had a developer assigned to it. The developer would write the code. The tester would test the code and when they found problems or bugs they’d assign them to the developer, who would fix them and return the code to the tester, who would retest the area. But when the tester went on vacation the developer would continue to write new code that no one was testing. When the tester came back, they would be way behind and would have to work hard to catch up. This didn’t make sense to me or my coworkers so we came up with an idea. When someone went on vacation someone else would at least do some cursory testing of their area so it wasn’t too bad when they got back. We called this buddy testing. We also began to get together in the lab and test together. We knew that bugs in software products tended to cluster together just like real bugs, and a fresh set of eyes in an area could uncover many more bugs, so we did what we called tag team testing.

Over the next few years PowerPoint continued to grow and soon we had twenty testers all reporting to the test manager. At this point the product unit manager decided that it was time that the test manager form another layer of management by making four of the testers test leads. The four test leads would report to her and they would each have testers reporting to them. However, when he told her this he said he assumed she would only have to pick three leads as I was already a lead. She replied that while I was a leader, I wasn’t actually a lead. He said well, he’s a lead now.

So, after just a few short years, I’d gone from being a lab coordinator to a software tester and now to a test lead, but I still wasn’t done. I wanted to be a test manager. To do that my impact and scope of influence would have to expand beyond PowerPoint but before that could happen, I had to get some help. I was assigned a few team members but to do the things I wanted to do I was going to have to bring in an old friend, and that was Chris Burroughs. He was the guy I met at Ashton-Tate who’d showed me how to test those printers, plotters, and cameras, and he was the guy I knew could help me with my current challenges.

I gave Chris a call and found out that he felt the same way I did a few short years ago about Microsoft. He had no desire to work there but after a few conversations I was able to convince him to give the place a try, and soon we were together again. As I said earlier, one way to be successful is to find better ways of doing things, and one of our areas of improvement was in the way we tested code. You see, everything was done manually. That is, the developer would write the code and then we’d run some tests. When a new build of the product came out we’d install it, create some slides by adding text and effects, and then print out the slides; basically making sure the product worked. Then we’d rerun the test cases that found bugs to make sure they were really fixed, and then we’d do some regression testing to see if these fixes created any new bugs. When a new build came out we’d do it all over again. It was a very repetitive process and didn’t leave a lot of time for developing new test cases. I told the test manager that I thought we could write automation for these tests. She wasn’t a big fan and said if we automated all this testing what would the testers do. I told her they could develop new test cases that would allow us to test the product more deeply and result in a higher quality product. She wasn’t convinced, but we decided to do it anyway. I was trying to ask for permission but thought in this case that it might be better to ask for forgiveness later.

Soon we had our automation in place and we decided to demo it to the test manager and her boss. I could see that she was nervous and frankly not very happy, but when her boss saw this automation run he was impressed and quickly thanked us and her. I was also quick to thank her for her foresight and confidence, and from then on she was our biggest fan. It never hurts to share the credit.

This was a big victory for me and my team but it didn’t get me any closer to becoming a test manager. In this Microsoft office the only product we developed was PowerPoint, and PowerPoint already had a test manager and she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Microsoft, headquarters was in Redmond Washington, and that’s where they developed all of their other products. If I wanted to move up in the company I was going to have to go where the opportunity was, and that was in Washington, but first I needed to get to know some of the people working there.

I decided that the best way to expand my scope of influence and impact was with the automation we had written. It helped us test PowerPoint in a much more efficient way and there was no reason it couldn’t also be used on other Microsoft products.

Every year there was a testing conference in San Francisco called Software Quality Week that many Microsoft testers and test managers attended. The PowerPoint office was only a few miles south of there. So, I suggested to my boss that we have an event at our office. We could invite the test teams visiting from Redmond to our office for a BBQ. It would be part social event and part work event where we could demo our tools and automation. She agreed that this was a good idea.

We held the event and it was well attended. One of the people who came was the test manager of Microsoft Word, and she was very impressed with our work, so much so that she told me if I ever decided to move up to Redmond, I should give her a call. That was exactly the opportunity I was looking for. Now I just had to go home and talk to Suzie.

Lessons:

  1. Find out what the company and your boss rewards and values in an employee and do those things better than anyone else.
  2. Do the job you want in addition to your current job, not at the expense of it.
  3. Look for problems to solve and better ways to do things.
  4. Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
  5. Be quick to give credit and slow to lay blame.
  6. Opportunity might only knock once on your door, but there are plenty of other doors.

George A. Santino helps people who want to break down barriers, including self-imposed barriers, to success. Check out his Amazon bestselling book, Get Back Up: From the Streets to Microsoft Suites.