Friday w/ Testers - #002 - Ioana Chiorean
In Friday with Testers, we feature QA experts from our community who share their love for quality. This episode is about Ioana Chiorean, which is a Community Lead and a fervent volunteer contributor at Mozilla.
Tell me a bit about your job as a tester
I started by chance in this domain 9 years ago testing some navigations systems. In like one year after I was gallivanting with some developer work as I finished my thesis, I realised I like testing more and decided to stick with it. I’ve change the company I was working for by that time and focused all my efforts in and started building the best tester I could be. In short time I’ve took a leadership role and now I am managing 3 teams around mobile, web compatibility and web testing. My technical expertise is around mobile mostly, in all flavours possible.
Pick a super hero to define your testing skills
Definitely super women!
But a bit more dressed up I think. Also I love this cute design regarding it. Sometimes in IT, I do feel like a super women when I find myself surrounded mostly by men. I also have to admit that I am not a big fan of super heroes, not that I don’t like them but I did not watch nor follow many of their stories.
How would you describe your job to a child?
I am playing with different programs or things in a serious way. If something malfunctions, breaks or it is hard to play with - I don’t throw the toy away - I report what doesn’t work and look after it to be fixed so I can play happily more and easily.
You had a great day at work today. Which is the first thing that comes to your mind?
How to make sure my workmates will experiment the same feeling. I can literally picture myself, leaving the office with a big smile on my face - many of my workmates telling me that I'm giving them confidence when they see me entering all meetings with a smile - and thinking that tomorrow I should spread this great feeling through my teams and make sure they all will have great days.
If you could time travel, where would you go?
I would go into the future. As much as I love the bohemian times, I would love to have a sneak peak of what’s coming, specially to see where we are headed to, what gadgets will win, what innovations will we embrace. I think 2030 would be the year.
What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your resume alone?
That I am a funny and optimistic person. Or at least I try to be.
A world ruled by testers would be…
Definitely a safer world. Or at least I would like to think that. I know that finding bugs doesn’t necessarily fix them, but if we would rule the world we would probably have the authority to get more fixes. Yes, I know the joke about how many testers are needed to fix a light bulb :).
How many times a day do you type something into Google?
Depending on the day, I think between 5 to 15 times a day. Some busy days might not give me time to explore the world wide web but I find myself very often catching a new name of a person, a thing from either a book I read, an article or podcast, or a discussion I have and I am that person who likes to read more (like I will go to the end of the internet) about new stuff to have a better context.
What would make you leave testing?
It is more like a lifestyle now. Honestly I try to report things even after work - like in the city community, the places I regularly visit and many others means. When they launched the Cluj Bike system I was among those testing it, both the software behind it or the hardware, in this case the bikes. I try to “report things” with the hope that this way of constructive feedback will help others grow. But to leave my job as tester... Probably an offer that I could not refuse on community management side.