I never actually read Radical Candor. Several years ago, my company decided everyone should read Radical Candor. They bought copies for everyone and organized discussion groups where we'd talk about what we'd read and how we could apply it. I remember asking my manager if he wanted me to read it too. He laughed and said, "No. I'm worried what would happen if you read it with how candid you already are." If you know me, that's probably not all …

One of the first things I learned after getting into QA was that finding a bug and communicating a bug are two completely different skills. Finding a bug is exciting! You found something broken and know it needs to be fixed. Now comes the hard part. You have to explain it well enough that someone else, who wasn't sitting next to you when it happened, can understand exactly what went wrong. When I write a bug report, I like to …

If you've spent any amount of time around software development, you've probably heard the terms bug and defect used interchangeably. For all practical purposes, they're the same thing. Some companies prefer one term over the other, but they both describe the same idea: something isn't working the way it was intended to. That sounds simple enough, but one thing I've learned over the years is that not every unexpected behavior is actually a bug. Sometimes the application is behaving exactly …

Risk-based testing is one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot in QA. If you've been in testing for any amount of time, you've almost certainly heard someone say they use a "risk-based approach," but I don't think it's always obvious what that actually means. It isn't a testing methodology, and it certainly isn't an excuse to skip testing. It's simply a way of deciding where your time is going to have the biggest impact. The unfortunate reality …

If you're looking to invest your own money, or to jump out of an airplane for the first time there, etc are tons of questions you ask yourself. Can I afford it? What are the reviews of the company? Is it safe? What am I risking? Why do you go through all of these questions, and why is the risk one of them? Because risk is a big ass deal - risk matters. Now, think of companies and how much …