Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
The world did not end on 21st December.
Ajoy Singha

The world did not end on 21st December. Somebody forgot to test the prediction.

It is the time of New Year. I recently read a wonderful work by Neil Gaiman. It is about New Year wishes. When we wish someone we wish him to do well in the New Year, we wish for the very best of everything he does. Neil says we should wish they made mistakes. "Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you and all of us, and my wish for me. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

With this wonderful thought, I wish you make lots of mistakes in the New Year 2013. And next time when someone predicts the end of the world, get it tested from testers.

- Ajoy Singha

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Hiring Practice in Testing Industry - Can we change it?
Ajoy Singha
This is my last blog post for this year. In this post I would like to make a point about hiring practice in IT industry specially in testing.

I have been a part of hiring process for my current and previous organizations. I have taken interviews for my project, my client, walk-in interviews and also for fresher hiring at college campus. What did I learn from these interviews? 

Most of the resumes are shortlisted by HR persons and then are sent to us for technical evaluation. Then we talk to the candidate to evaluate him. The evaluation process is generally a set of questions starting from “Tell us something about yourself” to some technical questions about testing/non-testing area. If the candidate is able to answer most of the questions fairly well, we select him or pass on to the next level of interview. If he cannot answer the questions – we simply convey – “You can leave for the day.”

This is a traditional way of evaluating a candidate for a job. Is there a problem in it? I seriously feel yes. Right from the short listing of resumes to offering a job – the system goes through some pre-conceived procedures/filters. I have seen many bad testers passing through these filters easily and many good testers, just because the filter itself is bad-shaped, get rejected.

Bad Shape of filters –
1. Resume Short listing – Resumes are short listed by non-technical people. I don’t know how most of the HR people collect the resumes and hence short list them. My friends’ resumes forwarded by me never got short listed though L. (It is important to have a good repo with HR guys if you want your friends to get a call.)

2. Just in time Hiring – Just in time hiring may sound good to reduce bench strength of the organization. But think of a situation where the person leaving your organization has a particular skill and you do not have a similarly skilled person in bench, you will need to hire from outside. I am not against just in time hiring. I am against initiating the hiring process late. When you know someone has resigned, why don’t you arrange to hire and replace the resigned candidate in the beginning of the notice period? Believe me, 95% of resigned candidates will not take back their resignation. Why try till last date to take him back? If you offer to give him carrots when he resigns, why did not you give that before he had actually resigned? Most of the organization will not allow its employee to leave before they serve their full notice period. But still these companies will want the employees from other companies to join them in short notice. 
Warning – The candidates who can join in short notice are actually fake employees or they are not working anywhere or they are too bad resources. Except, the only situation where he had resigned before your interview process started.
I have even received emails from hiring firms mentioning – “relieving letter not required.” What kind of ethics these firms are practicing? 
If you are forced to hire in short time span – you are bound to recruit bad/fake candidates. So start early.

3. Knowledge of the Interviewer – It is important to judge the knowledge of the candidate. But it is more important to know how much fit the interviewer is to judge a candidate. Bad interviewers just screw up a hiring process and the filters get more bad-shaped. 

4. Questions asked at Interview – If I list down 100 questions for software testing and commonly asked behavioural questions from internet and if I can remember them all, then I think I can clear most the software testing interviews that happens now a days. All I have to do is get someone who can give me answers for those questions and I will have learn like a parrot. I can just repeat the sentences in front of the interviewer and get the job. 

5. Candidates with Certification – Passing an IT certification exam is easy. Please read my post “Investigation on Certification”.  I am not saying certification is bad. I am saying certification has just become very easy and I know few guys who have never tested any software and still they cleared certification exams. It is high time we thought of other methods of certifying people. So don’t just believe that having an IT certification makes someone a good candidate for the job.

Need for a better hiring practice-
What are things that we can do as industry thought leaders in testing? (Sorry, I am not a thought leader yet in testing or any other industry. I am just a follower of good practice.) This is what I suggest – if you care to agree.

1. Follow a hiring practice that companies like Moolya follows. Ask candidates to test an open source product and send the test report. Brilliant process. What you will get is real tester with real result. Bad apples automatically get filtered out. However, this method will need discipline and ethics from the hiring organization. Also you will face challenges as a large service based organization to reach out to more number of candidates. Walk-in type of interview will need more planning and resources. 

2. Do not care about what is written in resume. Do not care about what certificate they have. Do not care about what educational background they have. Just care about if they can really test. Clue – Good testers are thinking heads. Challenge them with problems. See how they have solved problems in real life. 

3. See how passionate the candidate is about testing. Is it just another job (money earning machine) or he really thinks about testing? Ask him what he wants to do in testing or what he has done in testing. 

4. Do not discriminate people from another industry. Do not just throw him out just because he is from BPO, Medical sales or HR background. I am a Mechanical Engineer and had worked for a year in chemical industry before moving to full time testing. If you think I have done something in testing, then every other guy from other industry has a potential to do magic in testing. 

5. Do not discriminate people with gaps. We tend to filter out people who have gap period between two jobs. Investigate why there is a gap. I have seen many female testers who left their jobs because they got married and they had a kid to care about. Now that the kid is grown up, they can join back testing job. They face lots of challenges in even getting an interview call. I understand that those who have not worked for last few months/years may not be as smooth in working as compared to those who have been working continuously. But a passionate tester can ignite the passion anytime. You just need to give them a chance.

6. Do not ask lots of definitions during the interview. Do not care about skills which can be trained. Only care about skills/traits that cannot be trained. Attitude, interest, motivation, commitment, vision – these can be changed but it takes time. Think what you want – a person with full of definitions or someone who wants to learn and can be moulded to do good testing. However, do check if the candidate knows about coding if you are hiring a white box tester for example. Special skills are important too.

Testing is not everybody’s cup of tea. It requires thinking. Passionless testers will get bored in few years of testing. Choose good people for testing, not just another job seeker. Today, testing is not regarded as a class one job in IT industry. ‘They’ think testing is a low skilled job. You know what I meant by ‘they’. 

It will take time to convince everyone to change their hiring practices. Thanks to Pradeep and Santhosh. Moolya has started the trend. Others will follow. Let us make a New Year resolution – to uplift the image of software testing professionals by adopting a good hiring practice and not to be the same as what other bad recruiters are doing. Do you support me?

I promise to offer my free professional help to organizations who want to change their current hiring practice and adopt new better practice. Write to me.

I have used ‘he’ in this post to mean the “3rd person singular” gender. ‘He’ here is just a pronoun meaning both he and she. And I do not intend to discriminate male and female. 
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Checklist Before Going On-site (Abroad) !!
Ajoy Singha

Official:
1. Passport validity date.
2. Visa Expiry date.
3. Invitation letter from the company for which you will be working.
4. Buy some dollars or euros (check out the conversion rate with respect to Indian Rupee).
5. Air Tickets (Both ways, if applicable), keep photo copy of all papers in a separate folder in case you misplace something, this will become handy.
6. Note down the address for Indian Embassy offices for that particular country. You will find this in any tourist guide books. Note down the telephone numbers.

Personal:
1. Determine how long you will stay in that country.
2. Study about the weather changes.
3. Take clothes suitable for that weather. I suggest taking clothes from India unless they are cheaper in that country.
4. Make sure that your baggage weight is less than the limit allowed by the airlines. There will be some fine if your baggage is heavier than allowed limit. Check out with local airlines authorities.
5. Take commonly used medicines with you. Most of foreign countries require a doctor prescription for buying any common medicine.
6. If you are interested in Photography, buy rolls from India only. Rolls will be costlier there (I am talking about Europe/UK/US).
7. Buy a prepaid tele-calling card as soon as you arrive at that country, unless you have international roaming mobile. For most the countries if you need to make ISD calls you have to use prepaid calling cards. You can insert those calling cards in any public call booths and make calls to anywhere.
8. Know about the food habit of that particular country/City. Prepare yourself according to the local norms. Lots of people find it difficult in first few days to adjust food habits. For example you will find difficulty in finding daal rice/chapati in Europe city unless you are familiar with the city whereabouts first. Take help of local guys. Vegetarian guys take special attention of this.
9. Don't forget to adjust your watch to the local time as soon as you reach there.
10. Also you have to take care of the sleeping time cycle. It generally takes 48 hours to adjust to local time.

At the airport:
1. Try to arrive at the airport 3 hours before departure time. Keep your tickets, passport with visa, and any other relevant documents with you. Don't keep these things in your luggage. Once you check in you will get a boarding pass which will also mention your seat number and gate number through which you have to board the flight. You have to fill a migration form and submit to the customs before boarding the flight.
2. Don't take heavy lunch/dinner before the flight. Drink lots of water. It will save you from dehydration during the flight.
3. Don't leave your baggage and walk away. Submit the baggage at designated airline baggage handling department. Take proper receipt for it. Generally they will give a barcode sticker once you submit the baggage. You can take a small hand bag with you inside the flight.
4. After reaching your destination airport, don't forget to collect the baggage. Perform all necessary activities particular for that country for visa stamping and migration check.
5. Ask your friend/company to send someone to pick you up from the airport itself. Otherwise take a prepaid cab to the destination/your hotel.
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Sitting Late Vs Working Late !!
Ajoy Singha


Recently I came across a good email which was forwarded to me by my colleague. It is about staying late at office, specially in IT organisations. I have seen, in my small career in IT industry, that lots of people stay back in office after normal office hours (9am to 6pm). Why do these people stay back in office after normal office hours?

I can list down some of the reasons:

1. 45 hours a week: Most of IT companies work 5 days a week. So you need to spend 9 hours a working day. People come late to office at 10am or beyond that. So to compensate 9 hours they have to stay back in office.
2. Personal Work: Lots of people indulge in personal work while in office. It is done better when most of the employees leave after 6pm. With no managers and colleagues around, it is fun to surf internet, chat over the office telephone keeping aside free coffees and Air conditioned rooms.
3. False Impression to Manager: Most of the managers think who stays back at office after office hours put extra effort to project. They misinterpret sitting late as working late. People leaving the office at late hours are considered as hardworking and dedicated.
4. And lots more..

So is it a good practice?

I don't think so. Let me tell you why.

1. Sitting late should not be confused with working late.
2. People who stay late do not know how to manage their work, finish work in time. If you cannot finish your work within normal office hours, you are a slow worker or your manager does not have good estimation skill.
3. People who come to office late are late risers. Late rising is not a good habit.
4. Flexi hour does not mean coming late to office and staying back without any reason. Flexi hour gives you flexibility to compensate missing hours when you have some urgent personal work in the office hours that you cannot avoid.
5. Staying late at office will cost your oraganisation with extra energy spent for office lighting. USA has Daylight Saving Time (US Energy Saving Act). They work one hour ahead during summer so that they can save energy. Give earth a chance !
6. I don't know how ethical it is to do personal work in office hours. When internet is so cheap, internet cafes are available at every corner of your locality, why do we need to spend so much time in checking gmail, orkut, yahoo and youtube in office and doing ALT+TAB when project manager is around? Oh yeh, I forgot to mention, internet cafes do not have firewalls and IT Administrator watching your browsing behavior.

I had a manager who used to come to office at 8am and leave office at 5.30pm. I have always appreciated this habit. This gives a lot of advantages. You come to office with no one around, less traffic in road, perform the important tasks quickly. If you find any problem there are plenty of time remaining within the day. Leave office early before the peak traffic rush hour. Go home quickly; spend time with your family. Watch your favourite TV programs.

So please complete your work within time. Don't make a habit of staying late unnecessarily. Once you do this and make it a habit, your manager will take it for granted and expect you to do this every time. And think when you get family life and leaving office early (on time) your manager will think that you are no longer dedicated as earlier. You are a looser then.

Vinit Nayar, President, HCL Technologies, says, "Big is not equal to Best." Let me say - "Sitting late is not equal to Working late. Working late is not hard working, it is hardly working." It is a myth just as Ram Setu.

OK, now you can throw on me flower pots, chairs, rotten eggs and chappals.
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Let Your Boss Know Your WORK !
Ajoy Singha
Is it enough to just work hard in order to succeed? Maybe not. Making your boss aware of your merit and contributions is important too...

WHY do many of us feel unrecognised, unrewarded or underpaid, compared to what we think we deserve at work? Why is it that boss-bashing is a popular pastime? A nasty one goes “Boss is a double sob spelt backwards!” Management research also confirms that, by and large, employees join organizations but leave bosses.

The boss represents the organization to us and has a major influence in shaping our perception about the organization, its culture and career growth opportunities. So, do you continue to remain at the mercy of ‘bad bosses’, or is there something you can do to alter their perception?

Organizational life differs from academic life in one fundamental way: unlike in school or college, your success in an organization is not dependent on you alone. While your efforts and contribution certainly count, the impact of inter-dependence, support and other environmental factors is significant.
As part of the hiring and induction drill, organizations will consistently and liberally use phrases like ‘meritocracy’, ‘performance-based’ etc. But truth be told, reward and progression are not based on performance, but on the perception of your performance. Whose perception: yours or your supervisor’s? Clearly, the boss is always right! So you have to perform AND be seen performing. You may believe that results or numbers speak for themselves, but bosses may need hearing aids! Remember that while bosses have multiple subordinates, you have one boss, or maybe two in a matrix setup. So clearly, you have far more at stake in making the relationship with the boss click. In fact, the boss is quite likely focused on impressing the super boss!

To help your case, you could increase your interaction with the boss. That does not mean you hang around his office looking busy and neglecting your work! Create a context for meeting and generate valid data for his decision making. Provide a crisp one-page progress update, with what American MNCs term, a ‘Hits’ (achievements) & ‘Misses’ (shortfalls) report, possibly adding a brief section on plans and issues going forward.

A common complaint one hears is about the lack of objectivity in their evaluation process, often ending with an exasperated “It’s all so subjective!” While objectives or targets have a role in assessment, evaluations demand subjective judgment calls by managers. If performance could be objectively measured, managers would have long ago been replaced by a computer software programme! Managers are paid to make decisions based upon their subjective evaluation. One sees many unhappy employees moaning that they perform well, but the boss “always rewards or promotes his favourite(s)”. This is often a case of misalignment with what the boss expects. You may do a brilliant job of some assignment, but if it is not in line with the priorities of the boss, you may not get due credit. Most bosses prefer a competent and aligned subordinate to one who’s brilliant but misaligned, which would require high maintenance!

It is extremely important that you recognise and accept that the boss has two prerogatives in any organisation: Prioritisation of your work, ie, which activity needs to be completed first and Resource Allocation, ie, how much time, money, materials, manpower you will get to complete the assigned work. Sure, you can negotiate to push back, but the boss finally decides. Some bosses may keep quiet while you stray from the agreed priorities, but come assessment time, they will surely take stock.

**Times Life/Sunday Times of India/18-03-2007
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