Hello /r/CSCareerQuestions,
This is kind of a long shot and I'm not sure if this is even the right subreddit for this, but I feel like it might be more relevant to CSCareerQuestions than something like ITCareerQuestions.
My name is A. I am a career manual software test engineer and over the last 6 months I have applied for all kinds of QA positions without so much as a single callback, but more recently I've been feeling more like I may just outright be in the wrong career entirely.
I currently live in Everett, Washington and work in Redmond on-site at Microsoft, although I'm just a contractor not an FTE of Microsoft. Aside from like 7 years of experience in food/customer service, I have a Bachelor's of Fine Arts in Game Art & Design (I had originally hoped to get into the creative industry but ended up a game tester instead), and 5 years of manual QA experience with 4 of it as a QA Engineer in games and 1 as a Senior QA Engineer in software. While I enjoy the salary ($60k) and benefits of my current job, I feel like the fact that 100% of my experience comes from Microsoft has completely ruined my skills and resume as I literally only know Microsoft tools and software and I'm not sure where to even begin to fix it or expand into other skills without going back to school, which I can't afford.
What I enjoy:
Bug investigation, exploratory testing, reporting, business intelligence (Power BI/Excel), leadership, training new hires, writing documentation, and especially communicating with customers and other teams. Basically anything testing related that also rewards creativity and/or communication. Additionally, I do have 2018 ISTQB Foundation Level Certification.
My restrictions:
The only skills I'm not very interested in are programming/scripting. While I can write some basic functions in batch/powershell, I've always found programming and scripting to be like nails on a chalkboard and as such picking up test automation or programming -- while being the next logical career step -- just sounds like the wrong move for me. The only other limitation I have is that the minimum pay needs to be similar to my current $60k for me to be able to continue to pay my bills.
I'd love to find a way to branch out into a role that allows me to cooperate and engage with other people, whether it be leading a team, working closely with teammates, or directly engaging customers. Does anyone have any ideas for careers in related fields that I might be able to transfer into -- or am I just kind of stuck until I can pay off my loans and go back to school for something like business analytics, communications, etc.?
Submitted August 02, 2019 at 01:26AM by PM-Me-Your-Bears https://ift.tt/2YkokDH
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