Pros
Was employed full time for 2 years as the only Software QA Engineer on staff. Was hired as a Senior level QA Enginer to independently lead up and manage the software QA test process for the software coming out of the Austin, TX office. Initially reported to a Director. The position was later absorbed into the SW DEV team. The job was initially enjoyable as I got up to speed on the software product line, initiated a new company QA process to be incorporated as a company standard, and implemented a test automation framework. Great continuous interaction and cooperation with the Product Management and Operations extended teams.
Kontras
1. The job became undesirable after it was evident that the SW DEV team would not follow any type of a QA process. Ultimately, this was a mismanagement issue that started out bad and became worse. 2. Many software bugs found by QA and entered into the bug tracking system were usually either flat out ignored, or else refuted as non-bugs, by the SW DEV management. 3. QA requests for developers to explain their new software features were many times flat out denied, as if QA didn't need to know how the software was supposed to work. The requests often left DEV hostile and full of attitude, that I had to tolerate. Escalated the lack of cooperation issue to SW DEV management, who completely ignored the escalation attempt. Was obviously not a priority to management, did nothing. 4. QA requests for developers to modify code so that it be compatible with an industry standard test tool was flat out denied. The request left DEV hostile and full of attitude, that I had to tolerate. Escalated the lack of cooperation issue to SW DEV management, who completely ignored the escalation attempt. Was obviously not a priority, did nothing. 5. SW DEV management refused to support an industry standard and company sanctioned QA process, that I was asked to author and implement in a previous year. My complaints to SW DEV management about the refusal to follow the process went completely ignored, and instead, management offered to "change" the QA process to suit the non-compliance. 6. All of these factors directly impacted and compromised overall QA quality. Rather than accept a consistently compromised QA process, I chose to resign. A side note that deserves mention: 7. During mt 2-year tenure, corporate IT staff was continuously unprofessional and had a history of going "rogue" with personalized temper tantrum emails and other online communication that was targeted at various employees on my team, to include me personally, for failing to follow undocumented and nonexistent IT procedure that they conjured up on their own, during the course of performing software development and QA tasks for the business. This continuous unprofessionalsim was caused by poor mismanagement of these corporate IT staffers, not related to the management at the Austin office.