Five for Friday – October 18, 2019

When I’m interviewing experienced candidates (for any software role), one question I frequently ask is, “What’s your super power?” I like hearing answers like, “I can learn new things really quickly”, or “I’ve found over 1000 security bugs”, or even “I’m a batch file (or other language) wizard”. Recognizing super (or special) powers in yourself…

I mentioned this at TestBash a few weeks ago (and on a yet-unreleased ABTesting podcast) – and probably on twitter too, but my third “secret” project in a row at Microsoft (following Xbox One and the science project to make Android apps run on Windows Phone) was finally announced to the world on November 2nd….

It’s been an odd week with lots going on…and little going on at the same time. I’m taking some time off, starting with a ski trip next week that I hope goes as well as I imagine. In the meantime, as usual, I found a few things worth sharing. That’s all for this week. Next…

Clearing out some random news and thoughts. None of them worth a post, but worth sharing…probably. A few days ago, I reposted the Microsoft SDET personas I originally wrote (5? years ago) for the MSDN tester center. They could use a bit of updating, but they hold the test of time fairly well (link here)….

In my last post, I wrote a bit about what it takes to build a great team, and how it takes a great team to build great software (which also covers about half of what I spoke about at STAR West in October). In this post, I’ll see if I can cover the other main…

Once again, I’m a day late, but who am I kidding – you read these on Monday anyway. This is a great article on why we’re so bad at software engineering As a self-proclaimed change agent, this article on change programs was interesting Ministry of Test is doing some podcast interviews with upcoming speakers. This…