Tel me about yourself story - January 12, 2023

[mportnov]

Tell your “Tell me about yourself” story on the Portnov Forums
- Education
- Work experience
- Why career change?
- Why QA?
- How do you see yourself in 5 years from now?

[Muslular]

My name is Mustafa. I have a bachelors degree in Hospitality Management in Turkey. I have worked in hospitality for long time. After I moved to the USA, I started to work in hospitality industry as well since I have the experience in that field. When I was in Turkey working in hotels, I was trained as Hotel IT back up person. Couple years after I moved to the USA I found out I have more opportunity to work in IT business and I started to search about it. I got an offer for QA job for 4 months. This experience helped me to decide to switch IT career. As of today I would like to go deeper in QA field to learn and improve my skill to make some difference in software testing.

[Mariiiia]

HI! Im Mariia ! Im linguist .
I worked in American IT company as customer support agent for last 7 years from Ukraine .
Im refugee and now Im in California. I need good job in USA, so I made a search and I found that QA will be great for me.
After 5 years I see myself older for 5 years (Im joking). I have a lot of plans and I do not want to stop . My friend offered me Portnov.net so Im here and believe that I can.

[Darina Silchenko]

My name is Darina and I have a Master's degree in English and German from Kiev International University. I've been working for 3 years as a supervisor in an American appliance repair company.
4 months ago I moved to the USA from Ukraine and I found that QA testing is of interest to me. I found it interesting to hear from people who are already working in this filed .I don't yet have QA skills but I am a fast learner and ambitious and my study is already on the way. And sure I will be happy to see myself successful in QA testing in future. Im always happy to learn something new and get new skills in different fields.

[Khrystyna Serhiienko]

Hi! Let me introduce myself. My name is Khrystyna and I’m 20 years old. And I’m a teacher of English language and literature. To make myself clear, I’m a 4th-year student in Ukrainian university and I’ll get a Bachelor degree in less than a half of a year. But who cares about diploma. Experience I have - that’s what counts.

I’ve already worked more then 3 years as a tutor of English, I run a small store on Instagram for 2 years as well, was a seller in grocery store being 13 (in that moment, I understood, that the only thing I need to do is to educate myself, not to work physically, to work mentally). Right now I’m a bartender/server/waitress (call me, whatever you like), living and working in LA, California.

On 24th of February, my life completely changed (war started). Imagine yourself being 20 and being ready to die, because you “aren’t afraid” and everything in this way. Sometimes we need a dose of reality and I got it. I took off the pink glasses and such idea came up in my head “I’m not ready to die, I love my family, my country, Ukrainian people but I still not ready to die for politicians, whose children left country ten days before 24th of February. How can I trust people if they don’t believe in the country they govern?” For someone I’m a hero, for someone I’m a traitor. Anyway, once my boyfriend said me “Let’s go to America. Let’s start our life from the scratch”. I had no doubt, packed my baggage. Couple of months in Germany and finally we are here, none knows us, but we know each other. “Successful people make important decisions early in their life and then, they manage those decisions the rest of their life”. If you know what I mean)
What’s wrong with my previous profession (teacher)? Nothing wrong, the point is, I have a new reality right now. New environment, wide range of opportunities, blank paper and new gel pen to write a story of my life. New problems need new solutions.
What’s wrong with my current occupation (server)? Nothing wrong, I’m just exhausted working with diverse range of people, some of them emotionally unstable. And it’s not that kind of stuff I’m ready to do until my death.

Why QA? If I tell you smth. like: I’ve been dreaming of this whole my life or it’s my dedication, I’ll be the biggest liar on planet Earth. Money - the only reason and motivation. Also, ability to get into profession and gain necessary skills in relatively short period of time, to work remotely. We live in fast-moving world, with a great amount of advanced technology, so QA testing will be always in demand. “Money isn’t important” said me a person with a million dollar bank account.

“Guess what, maybe you’re right. But my curiosity says me, that I need to check” said I.

How do I see myself professionally in 5 years?
Bulgakov in his masterpiece “Master and Margarita” shows that it’s so difficult to be responsible even for our today’s evening.

The only thing I can say and thing I’m sure in that our future is based on our day-to-day actions. Due to the amount of efforts I do on a daily basis to become as best as I can in software QA testing in 5 years I expect to be (at least) Senior QA Engineer, living my happiest life and managing decisions, I’ve already made) Working remotely from my little house on Hawaii!

[Karina Ivanova]

Hi! I'm Karina.
I'm a nail salon owner and a licensed Nail Technician based in Utah. I've realized my current career path isn't for me and decided to go back to IT field. Portnov School and QA testing in general was brought up as an option by my family, I've looked into it and decided to give it a try. I hope to get deeper into IT field and find a job that will suit my lifestyle!

[Marina Voronina]

Hello! I am Marina.
I have a Medicine Doctor's degree.
My work experience is 11 years.
After moving to the USA, I can not continue my practice as it takes 5 years or more to confirm my education. I don't have that much time. For a while, I didn't know what to do here. I talked with people, analyzed and my choice fell on Software Testing. I like my future profession as I can easily find mistakes, especially in what I am a professional. But my love for medicine is alive, so I plan to work for a company that develops medical devices.
In 5 years I want to be someone who makes a difference in software testing.

[Alex-GB]

My name is Alexander, I live in the USA since 1993, originally from Moscow
- Education: BS in Information Technology Management, AAS Computer-Aided Design, IT & Programming, more…
- Work experience: 15 years – 2D/3D CAD Designer/Engineer, last 7 years – Business Owner
- Why did the career change? Due to COVID-19, my business collapsed;
- Why QA? QA & IT are some of my passions considering my Software/Web Developer background.
- How do you see yourself 5 years from now? Financially independent doing what I love to do.

[LoraFl]

- I have university degree in Economics.
- I worked as an accountant for many years (I have 18 years of experience in accounting)
- I feel unhappy and I am tired to be an accountant. At some point I started to feel burnt out, I wanted to change my career path
- Qa and job in IT is more appropriate for me because I want and I can work remotely. I want to work in IT and I have transferable skills
- Professionally I want to become good QA engineer and be helpful in creating in huge amount useful apps; In 5 years from now I want to be someone who makes the difference in Software Testing and I want to enjoy every day at work and being appreciated as a contributor

[yunnes9395@gmail.com]

My name is Ruslan, living in USA 6 month, removed from Russia on green card lottery immigration program.
- Education: MS in machine engineering, BS in economy fields
- Work experience: 3 years of pre-construction management in petroleum company, 2 years QA engineering of Hyundai manufacturing , currently Production manufacturing lead in Tesla GFTX.
- Why did the career change? Preferable return to work in QA field, however more related in computer science.
- Why QA? Making an inspection and following all quality standards - one of my best skills. QA in IT seems to me pretty interesting job where I can improving my skillset every day. And I like a work environment which people create around themselves.
- How do you see yourself 5 years from now? High qualified QA engineer or manager of the team with still highest goals and using all the latest trends in the professional field

[NataliiaR]

My name is Nataliia.

* I have a bachelor’s degree of Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts and a master’s degree of Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

* I have 13 years of experience in TV-news as a journalist and a TV-host and more than 10 years of experience as an author and owner of the information website talia.com.ua I created this project from an idea, requirements, and testing. The first few releases had many bugs which I had to test and ask a developer to fix.

* Now I decided to change my career and challenge myself in an absolutely different field. I think this job is perfect for me as I always see mistakes in everything.

* I choose QA because I believe the future is with technology, so I was asking my husband to change his career from a TV-director to a web-developer for many years and he did it successfully 8 years ago. Right now is my turn.

* In 5 years I hope to make my own business in this field.

[IrynaKostiuk]

Hello! My name is Iryna. I am from Ukraine, have a higher education in small and medium business management and worked in this field. I have been in America for 2 years and am currently on maternity leave. I hear very often from my friends about software testing and I really want to learn this field and working from home is my big desire. in 5 years I see myself as a Google employee

[ArtemUskov]

My name is Artem, I have degrees in engineering, economics, and finance, I have lived in London for 12 years and have worked in consultancy, finance and asset management. I feel I need to make a change in my life. My life experience is that IT (broadly speaking) has brought the most positive change and innovation to people's lives in the last 50 years. My dream is to do something with my own hands or to teach people something useful and valuable.

Consulting and finance used to be areas where I could work with my hands and mind and change people's lives. Now it's not so easy because IT technology has changed the world. It will continue to evolve. That's why I decided to return to IT (my first engineering degree was in Software Engineering) and get involved in producing products and services that affect tens and hundreds of thousands of people. I want to do something that is important and meaningful.

I have been lucky to meet good people in my life. And my acquaintance (so far in absentia) with Mikhail Portnov and his school is one of those meetings. I am glad to have joined the school and I hope that it will change my life and that I will be able to share the results with others, as Mikhail does.

[Andrei Danilkin]

Greetings,
My name is Andrei Danilkin (aka Andrew Power). Currently, I’m a Head of QA department in a large international finance company. I’ve always been close to IT. I have obtained a Master degree in engineering. And used to work approximately 10 years in sales software, from Microsoft and Oracle to Adobe and CAD products.

In 2018 got acquainted with software testing. And it’s turned out that it is exactly what I’m wanna do rest of my life. I found Portnov Computer School in Palo Alto, CA and took a course. In a couple of months, I was hired. Officially, as a support team’s technical specialist. I learned our applications, websites, technologies, mostly managed Active Directory, Jira and Confluence. Involving in testing process, I began to write test cases for regression one.

Soon, in 2019, I was noted by the Head of Analysis department and became an analyst, working with product managers, developers, writing requirements and arranging testing to deployment. In the same year I got promoted to a Team leader and then, in 2020, to a Deputy of a Head of the department. Often communicated with stakeholders and organized the whole process of providing changes, I have developed the communication standards (including workflow in Jira) between different teams: various group of developers, analysis, project managers and the support.

Meanwhile, I persuaded my employer that we need testers (that times those duties were executed by analysts). I hired a couple guys, taught them and it was extremely successful. Separated process has presented us great, deep requirements and, on the other hand, an expertise in testing. The quantity of testers was increasing, we developed mobile apps.

And, at the end of the day, in 2021 we decided to base a QA department with myself as a Head. Currently, it’s more than 20 employees in 3 teams. I developed KPIs, integrated new department in the lifecycle and implemented a math model for calculating resource’s load and release planning in the Group of companies, begun an auto testing process, integrated TestRail with Jira, therefore significantly increased testing transparency and a confidence to the QA department.

(More information about me as an experienced QA engineer, including my way you can find on my personal site)


Accordingly the fact that I recently have moved in U.S., in 5 years I want to be an experienced local middle/senior QA engineer in a great company like yours; someone who makes the difference.

[OlenaS]

Hello.
My name is Olena and I’m from Ukraine. I moved to the USA 4 months ago with my 2 children.

My husband is staying in Ukraine, he is military, so I must do everything for me and our kids here.


I have a bachelor’s degree of the National Pedagogical Drahomanov University. 
But I didn’t work my specialized.
Last 6 years I had an online store.

I have friends in the US who recommended me QA, so I know that I can learn it and do everything to get this job.



After 5 years, I want to feel calm for my kids, me, and our future. I want to have the opportunity to move my parents to US and give them happy life here.