Interview with Samuel Nitsche
Samuel Nitsche
Twitter: @Der_Pesse
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-nitsche-457ba3158
Interview
Where are you in your testing journey?
I’m not really a tester, I’m a software developer, but I test my code and since we’re a very small team and I’m the one directly in touch with the customer, I’m kind of the final quality gate before shipping. Therefore I’m pushing a lot towards stuff that improves the code quality and correctness BEFORE the final delivery phase, because that means way less stress.
Where is that in my testing journey? I have no clue. I might want to shift more towards being an officially labeled test automation engineer, but that depends. Until then, I’m on an ongoing journey to increase the quality of the software I’m working on.
The best bug you have ever found?
I had a very weird bug a couple of months ago which everyone said happened randomly. I found out that it only occured when I clicked something in the UI and did not move the mouse after that at all. When moving the mouse or clicking or doing any input, the program worked as intended. If not, it completely froze.
With that observation, my coworker was able to narrow the problem down and ultimately solve it.
Advice you would give to Testers?
Collaborate with people. I know a lot of testers do so already with the (app) developers, and this is great. But do you also do that with the database folks (may it be developers or administrators)? In many companies, they are still a silo, independent (you could also say ignored) by the rest of the company. That’s so sad, especially because database people share a lot of goals and values with testers, sometimes a lot more than testers share with app developers.
So go find your database people (or the people who are responsible to make sure the data applications use, collect, store, compute) and start talking to them :D
What does winning mean to you?
I really like winning, not from a competitive side, but from the recognition aspect of it. I thrive on feedback, and winning “Tester of the day” means feedback and acknowledgement for something I’ve done, which is exactly the kind of appreciation that works very well for me. So - thank you, it means a lot to me!