{"id":149,"date":"2010-06-13T13:25:26","date_gmt":"2010-06-13T20:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=149"},"modified":"2010-06-13T13:25:26","modified_gmt":"2010-06-13T20:25:26","slug":"why-i-write-and-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/why-i-write-and-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Write and Speak"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m planning to give an internal presentation this week on what I do. I\u2019ve been in my new job for three months, and although I\u2019m still learning, I have enough<\/em> of a routine that I\u2019d like to share it with a few peers across the company to get feedback and ideas. Most of what I do is my job (that\u2019s probably important, right?). I also still do a lot of cross company stuff (that\u2019s probably pretty important too!). <\/p>\n

With my remaining hours, I do \u201cother stuff about testing\u201d (I\u2019ve been thinking about calling this \u201cProject OSAT\u201d, but it\u2019s probably better to just call it \u201cother stuff\u201d). This includes writing books<\/a>, contributing to other books<\/a>, writing articles<\/a> and blog posts, interacting on twitter<\/a>, and participating in the overall testing community as much as I can find time for.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, colleagues ask why I write, or why I speak at conferences. It\u2019s not fame, and it\u2019s certainly not for the money. It\u2019s for ONE reason, and probably because of my lack of sleep due to 4:30am world cup matches, I\u2019m going to share my motivation with everyone.<\/p>\n

I write and speak because I\u2019m lazy and cheap.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I suppose I should explain\u2026<\/p>\n

How We Test Software At Microsoft<\/em> was written for one main reason. I talk to a LOT of people and companies about testing \u2013 many want to know Microsoft\u2019s general<\/em> approach to testing. I gave many of these companies the same answers. Over, and over and over again. Finally, I decided (with the help of a few colleagues) to write it all down and sell it for 25 bucks a pop (street price). There was just no way I could keep my sanity and continue to tell people about what testers do at Microsoft. Most of the articles and blog posts I\u2019ve written have been for the same reason \u2013 I\u2019m too lazy to give the same answer to multiple people, so when I start hearing the same question too many times, I write it down somewhere<\/em> (NOTE: this is often also a good heuristic for automation). <\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not forget cheap<\/u>. I hate paying to attend conferences (even if it\u2019s technically my employer\u2019s money). I do like to meet with other testers and talk shop (aka Project OSAT), but if I can get into the conference for free, I\u2019m all over it (sometimes I even manage to get flights or more covered). So I submit proposals to a few conferences a year, and I typically get asked to speak at a few more. I do try to do a good job when I\u2019m there (despite my laziness, I have a high bar for personal quality), but I go to conferences mostly because I get in for free.<\/p>\n

Just because I\u2019m lazy and cheap doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t care. I love writing, and I love speaking<\/u> about testing and sharing what I\u2019ve learned. I have worked, and continue to work extremely hard at both of these endeavors (see the note about my high bar for personal quality above). In fact, I\u2019ve never taken money for any writing or speaking (some of probably think this is dumb, but it\u2019s true). Way back when I first started writing for Better Software, I did this because not<\/em> getting paid was easier than trying to decipher the company moonlighting policy. These days, I\u2019ve found that I actually can<\/em> get paid for most of this stuff, but I still don\u2019t bother with it. When I consider how much I enjoy writing and speaking, doing it for free seems like the right thing to do (as long as you give me something free too \u2013 I\u2019m still cheap).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m planning to give an internal presentation this week on what I do. I\u2019ve been in my new job for three months, and although I\u2019m still learning, I have enough of a routine that I\u2019d like to share it with a few peers across the company to get feedback and ideas. Most of what I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}