SHE DID IT!

I bloody well did it!! I’m now an SDET

For anybody who doesn’t know my story, I’m a 47 year old mother of two who has spent the past 18 months on a personal journey into coding with the goal of becoming an SDET (Software Developer Engineer in Test).

Back in November I received the news that my promotion had been approved and as at 1st January 2023, I would be an SDET. As you can imagine the celebrations were wild; one glass of fizz and I then fell asleep next to my youngest whilst putting her to bed at 7pm!

Just as we were celebrating my news in my team, I received the news that my fellow SDET and mentor on the team had also gained a promotion to a Principal QE. Whilst this was fantastic news, it threw my head into sheer chaos. Not only was I stepping into the new role in the new year, I would also be the sole SDET until a replacement could be found.

Well January arrived and at the same time I commenced a new online course studying Node.js with Express, MongoDB and Mongoose. As we are mainly a backend team, I thought it was high time I started studying backend development to assist me in my new role.

As I worked my way through the lectures, the missing pieces of knowledge started to fit into the jigsaw in my mind and I began to understand a lot more.

My confidence in the team grew massively and the learning curve, now no longer feels as steep. I found my voice in refinements and I’m comfortable pair programming with the developers. I’m writing my own integration tests and I’m no longer anxious about being the sole SDET, in fact, this has done me a world of good because my crutch has gone. I’ve had to step up and thank goodness I haven’t sunk to the bottom of the pool YET!

I’ve still more personal development to go, I’m no where near finished my journey yet. By day, I’m hoping to get stuck into learning how to implement an Automation Framework from scratch into our repos and by night, I’m hoping that by the end of this year, I can build a project of my own that incorporates both front end and back end development.

Goodbye internal saboteur, it’s time for us to part our ways! Hello future as a successful SDET.