New beginnings look like old ones, sometimes.

It’s true: I’m back at Discovery testing their managed asset architecture. My time at Lirio was short, and I will miss my friends there for sure, but I learned so much during that time that it can’t be counted as a loss at all.

One of those things that I learned: I am not quite ready for a big-picture role like QA Manager. I never really fell into a groove or felt like I was as productive as I should have been. This entire situation has been a learning opportunity, and I don’t want to just brush it off and say “let’s pretend the last six months didn’t happen”, because they did, and there were definite benefits:

• Met new people. Crazy how you can work in the same industry in a small town (let’s face it, Knoxville is small compared to the tech regions around us (Nashville, Raleigh, Charlotte, Chattanooga)) and still constantly meet people who will show you opportunities for improvement in yourself. That old adage of surrounding yourself with people who make you better is certainly true.
• Learned a new technology stack
  • Working on a Mac isn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, and I actually am going to continue on one while I get better at scripting and working in the terminal.
  • Working in the terminal isn’t as difficult and cumbersome as I thought when I was on a Windows machine. I am embracing the tools available to me, and have stopped fighting things just because they don’t have a shiny user experience. ASCII art helps, though.
  • I started learning about Docker and Kafka, and learned an entire new architecture in CQRS (command query responsibility segregation). These new technologies will no doubt be useful to me and my testing in the future.

So now I get to look to the future as well as the past. I’m blessed to be ble to return to a company that made me feel so comfortable and welcome, and I know that I am lucky to be able to jump right into work without having to spend a week (or much, much longer) getting up to speed on the company’s architecture, tools, and processes.

Yours in learning.

-R