"For me, it is about giving back now, that’s where I am in my professional journey, it is so important to share the challenges. Everybody likes to share successful stories, but we really learn from failure stories. We put so much pressure on ourselves to make sure everything is perfect. Perfection is something we create for ourselves, it’s not imposed on us. It’s ok to not be perfect", says Maryam. Maryam is Quality Engineering Manager at Booking.com, a creator and enabler of QA functions taking special interest in metrics, in order to determine product and release quality. Also, she’s one of the go-to leaders for ideas on guiding quality improvement with strong data and for building quality in throughout the DevOps loop, an amazing international public speaker and a keen advocate of diversity of thought. Alex Mocioi is our Host for the SHIFT Happens Podcast at the Romanian Testing Conference 🎧 - a professional with 20 years of experience in software engineering and 10 years of experience in tech training. 🚀 Shift Happens podcast is supported by Nagarro.

I started as a developer and the first 2 months were incredible for me. And then I got really bored. I thought: this is really boring and I need something else. Everybody was telling me this is not the right choice to make because being a developer is so much cooler and it will be worthwhile in the long term. I just knew that I needed to do something else. And I started my testing career. I’ve been changing my career constantly: development, testing, team management, sales”. Alex Mocioi is our Host for the SHIFT Happens Podcast at the Romanian Testing Conference 🎧 - a professional with 20 years of experience in software engineering and 10 years of experience in tech training. 🚀

“A lot of people ask “Is the testing industry dying?” I think testers are the perfect changing enablers. We need to focus on this part. I was a software developer for 11-12 years and I was extremely bored”. Lena switched then to testing. Lena Nyström shares with us her story about change, career, testing and personal growth with us at Shift Happens podcast. She is the author and creator of “Would Heu-risk it?” (card deck and book), an avid blogger, international keynote speaker and workshop facilitator. Her day job is as Engineering Manager where the combination of skills learned are put to work on her teams and the engineering department. Alex Mocioi is our Host for the SHIFT Happens Podcast at the Romanian Testing Conference - a professional with 20 years of experience in software engineering and 10 years of experience in tech training.

"A professional athlete spends 7-8 hours a day training, identifying the weak points and engaging in deliberate practice to improve their skills. I don’t see that much happening in the IT space”, says Andrei Conțan, our content manager, co-founder and organizer of the Romanian Testing Conference. At Shift Happens Podcast, Andrei shared for the first time how he finds his inspiration in sports and transfers his learnings in the testing space from organizing Romanian Testing Conference to TestingScool trainings and performing testing work for international companies. “My impact in the testing industry is about making clear that testing is a profession, a set of abilities that we all can build upon and have a successful professional career as testers. We are here, after 13 RTC editions trying to send the same message, that testing is a profession, is something that you can be very successful from and that’s a message that we barely can find in the IT space and we feel like we are building the community and a niche to propagate this message”, admits Andrei Conțan, one of the co-founders of the Romanian Testing Conference and our adrenaline junkie. Alex Mocioi is our Host for the SHIFT Happens Podcast at the Romanian Testing Conference - a professional with 20 years of experience in software engineering and 10 years of experience in tech training.

“I bring a deeply human perspective to technical work. I value and I think that we don’t spend enough time thinking about the people that use our tools, that use our software, that experience what we build. So I hope that people would say that I bring a very human perspective and a real concern for the people that use our software”, says Jenna Charlton, software tester and the director of product for Functionize. She has over a decade of experience in the testing space. In this episode, Jenna speaks about enabling change, bugs, test skills and tools. Our host is Alex Mocioi, a professional with 20 years of experience in software engineering and 10 years of experience in tech training.

”I don’t know how we all got jobs. There were two of us in the team who made sure we all worked, the rest of us were absolute clowns. It was enjoyable, there were really good teams and I learnt a lot there. These days, the budgets for these games are similar with the ones for a Hollywood film, it’s not small money and it is more serious and credible”, says Vernon. Vernon Richards shares ideas, memories and information from his career. Vernon is a Quality Coach & Tester that helps organizations, teams & individuals understand the relationship between quality & testing, to help them build better products & deliver more effective services. He has been testing since 2002 starting with video games on PS2, Xbox & PC (it may not sound like a real job but it’s the truth!). By day, he is a Senior Expert Quality Engineer at a health tech, and by night night he runs Abode of Quality. He believes that quality & testing problems are actually people problems in disguise! Often the cause of these problems is misaligned goals, different perspectives, low empathy for colleagues, and the list goes on. Using his coaching skills in the quality & testing space, Vernon believes the most effective way to serve the business is to help teams & individuals gain new perspectives about themselves & their teammates. Our host is Alex Mocioi, a professional with 20 years of experience in software engineering and 10 years of experience in tech training.

Director of Engineering at Trustpilot, based in Copenhagen, with 11 years of experience in software development, leading teams and scaling systems, Dana Aonofriesei answered a lot of (good) questions about testing, AI, IT, productivity. She moved from Romania to Denmark because she was curious to work in a modern company, with progressive mindset, in a company that was building its own product. Hit the PLAY button and listen to all the discussion! A few ideas: “Leaders and also employees look for the productivity gain by using AI in their job. I am not concerned so much about AI taking jobs, I think it will help us in doing our job better and working smarter. With every new technology out there, there will be a need for new jobs. For sure, in a few years there will be jobs we can’t even think of at the moment". "My hope is that with the rise of AI and machine learning, we will be able to be more precise in saying the areas of your product that have the higher risk and what your testing budget should be. Now it’s not so precise. Imagine you have machine learning looking at your historical data about areas with the most problems, production incidents, bugs and so on and then you can have a clear answer before you ship the production that you should test in this area because this is where you usually had the most problems and the most challenges”, says Dana Aonofriesei, speaker & chairperson for the Romanian Testing Conference 2024. Listen to the podcast here and feel free to share your point of view in the comments section. Shift Happens podcast is supported by Nagarro. Our host is Alex Mocioi, a professional with 20 years of experience in software engineering and 10 years of experience in tech training.