San Francisco needs Trish Khoo

Update: Actually I changed my mind and decided to move to the United Kingdom! Ah, life is funny, is it not?

In the last couple of years I’ve gone through such amazing changes as a person, and along the way I’ve discovered who I am, what I’m capable of doing and what I want to do next. I need a new challenge and a new city. What could be better than the technology centre of the world?

So, I’ve decided to move to San Francisco.

This is all well and good, but Campaign Monitor is a Sydney-based company. So in order to move, I’ll have to sadly say goodbye to the awesome people at Campaign Monitor and look for a new employment in the Bay Area. That’s right folks, I’m looking for a job.

What kind of job, you ask? Well, I’d like to be doing stuff that’s new and interesting, with people who are really passionate about what they are making. I want to be hands-on, doing testing, but my version of “doing testing” means that I use all skills at my disposal to test the product in the best way possible. So it doesn’t just mean “writing automation” or “doing exploratory testing”. It means, figure out the best way to test it, and then do that. I’m more interested in seeing what people need me to do, rather than describing a silo that I want to fit into.

I have a great big heap of skills, wrapped up in a likeable tester exterior. Here’s a sample of what I can offer:

Test automation experience. I’ve written test frameworks and test suites from scratch using Java, C#, WatiN, Rational Functional Tester (Robot), WebAii and Selenium. For several clients, I’ve analyzed, maintained and refactored existing automated test suites to make them more efficient and effective. I’ve integrated test suites with FitNesse, TestLink, Team Foundation Server and Team City (continuous integration). In addition to creating traditional test suites, I have also developed tools that have helped testers and developers to test effectively. Being a developer-skilled tester is about more than just automating test cases; it’s about using technology to make the whole testing process more efficient.

“Trish has a knack of building some incredibly simple, yet deviously smart testing tools, with ‘clicky thing‘ being a classic example.”
– Bruce McLeod, Automation Test Manager

Software development experience. I’ve worked as both a PHP Developer and a .NET Developer in the past, and I’m currently learning Ruby on Rails by writing a Rails application from the ground up. I can’t emphasise enough how much these experiences have helped me in testing web applications. There is so much more happening in a web application beyond the GUI. Understanding how web applications work gives you a greater understanding of how web applications *don’t* work.

“Trish is logical, methodical, and has an excellent memory for detail. She has demonstrated she can both think like an end-user, and at the same time have sound technical knowledge; vital, as all but the most trivial testing methods are tool- and technology-intensive. Her experience has clearly given her insight into the likeliest places to find bugs. Lastly, she also takes the time to build good relations with developers and designers. We will miss her!”
– Mark Langsworth, Senior Software Developer

Solid testing experience. I’ve invested a lot of time in improving my manual testing skills so that I can find important information as quickly as possible. I believe in a context-driven test approach – tailor the solution to the problem. As part of my training, I have been coached by Anne-Marie Charrett and I have taken James Bach’s Rapid Software Testing course. Good testing, at its core, is about exploring, learning, analyzing and reporting.

“Trish has always been a pleasure to work with at Campaign Monitor. Her attention to detail always shines through, every step of the way through a project. She’s an invaluable resource to a user-experience designer; especially in the early stages of wireframing, where it’s easy to forget about the many edge cases that are sure to arise.

Bugs — no matter how small — never seem to get past Trish. I often moan and groan having to fix them all, but it always makes for better experience for the end user; and that’s what matters.”
– Jesse Dodds, Lead UI/UX Designer

Leadership. Despite my continued insistence on being as hands-on in the testing process as possible, I still gravitate towards leadership roles. I like to provide as much guidance as is necessary to enable teams to be productive, while still encouraging them to take a proactive approach to their tasks. I have achieved amazing results when I have involved the whole test team in shaping a test approach. Other testers’ brains are the most valuable testing tools that money can buy.

“A far cry from the command and control mentality that plagues much of the software management landscape, Trish enables and encourages testers to do the most valuable thing possible: Ask questions and think creatively.

My time working at Campaign Monitor was one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my testing career, thanks largely to Trish’s formidable ability as both a tester and a manager. Trish removed roadblocks and bureaucracy, motivated and inspired us with creative solutions to problems but knew when to get out the way so we could do our best work as a team.

I would work with Trish again in a heart beat.”
– James Martin, Software Tester

Want to know more?
Listen to my podcast at Testcast.net.
Read some of my most popular blog posts and publications.
Follow me on Twitter.
Check out Campaign Monitor, the web application I’ve been testing for the last three years.
Or just contact me via email at trishkhoo@gmail.com.

Oh, and if you’d like to meet me in person, I’ll be at SF Agile Conference from 2 – 8 June this year.

See you on the other side of the world. :)