Ethel Evans

2,490 reputation

419

bio	website	linkedin.com/in/ethelevans
	location	Seattle, WA
	age	30
visits	member for	2 years
	seen	May 21 at 20:08
stats	profile views	59

SDET with 5 years of experience in software testing & BS in Computer Science. I'm also not very good at filling out "About Me" sections. I'm not as much of an expert as I'd like to be, so am trying to soak up knowledge as fast as I can while balancing work and "real life".

	2,490 reputation	bio	website	linkedin.com/in/ethelevans	visits	member for	2 years
419 badges		location	Seattle, WA		seen	May 21 at 20:08

summary answers questions tags badges favorites bounties reputation activity

103 Comments

suggestions reviews revisions comments badges posts accepts all

Jan 21	comment	Deployment Testing - when to perform Can the process of creating the RIP be automated?
Jan 21	comment	Test team names We ended up going with a fun acronym that includes "QA". It works for our company culture. We refer to ourselves as testers or SDETs (we're geographically close to Microsoft, so this makes sense). So we're kind of straddling the test / QA argument. Since two of the top 3 answers are defending testing, I'm picking the top test-defending answer. But, I think Joe's answer is a great response, too.
Jan 21	comment	Test team names I'd be less worried about internal reputation, and more concerned about external presentation - think hiring. Obviously the company knows what we do or can be educated to better understand it, but we want to send as many signals to potential new hires as we can that will help them understand if they might be a fit for our culture.
Dec 6	comment	How can my team move away from record-and-playback when not everyone has scripting experience? +1 for DSLs (Domain Specific Languages - like Cucumber's Gherkin) that allow people to write scripts in English or near-English with code-behind written by a developer.
Sep 20	comment	Is my pay fair, just based on the fact I have little experience Great answer. Career-building skills and experience are worth more early in your career than salary these days. At the same time, don't be afraid to move on if you can get a better offer - as long as you can learn in your new position also.
Jul 12	comment	Are Exhaustive “Brute Force” UI Tests Worth It? Another point on UI testing for the wrong reasons: Resorting to rigorous UI testing can be a sign of untestable code, that isn't being tested at lower levels well enough. UI testing should be essentially just making sure the UI responds the way it should - and not functionality testing (with some exceptions, e.g., end to end tests). Unit tests, API tests, component tests, etc. should cover functionality. UI tests should be a small part of the overall testing effort in most cases.
Jul 12	comment	Suitability of functional testing to problems with many interrelated inputs Do you know where you read this? A link might help us understand the context of what this person meant by "functional testing".
Jul 2	comment	Where should test fixture code live? Changed the accepted answer to match what I actually did in the end . . apologies if this has led to any confusion
Feb 14	comment	Resume and job seeking advice - career change from Development to Testing @gbjbaanb, MS isn't actually a bad place these days, at least not from a work/life balance standpoint. Flexible hours, options to WFH, and little to no overtime expected on most teams that I saw.They also have great HR and benefits support for mental health. If you are a manager or lead, there's a fair amount of pressure - but they generally do a good job of sheltering the individual contributors :) I guess they've learned from their past mistakes . . . they aren't a perfect company, but I thought work/life balance was one of their strong points when I was there.
Dec 19	comment	Is browser version matrix a thing of the past? One site I test skews heavily towards older browsers - we don't test IE9 and do test IE6 because of what we see in the web logs. We'll be keeping an eye on these numbers, but otherwise don't see major changes coming.
Nov 29	comment	Some Selenium tests fail on server but pass locally This is unlikely on a server, but might be worth checking. Does the computer go into sleep mode or hibernation? I don't know if/ how that would affect Selenium, but I've had issues w/ UI automation before from this.
Nov 29	comment	Some Selenium tests fail on server but pass locally that's exactly what makes me think a screenshot might help. If something external to your tests is interfering, it's likely to leave a visual clue. I'm thinking there might be something else happening on that server that is obscuring Selenium's ability to interact w/ the browser.
Nov 29	comment	Some Selenium tests fail on server but pass locally Can you take screenshots on failure? Being able to see what the screen looked like at the time might give you a hint.
Nov 29	comment	Some Selenium tests fail on server but pass locally Are there any patterns to the failures? Are they failing with the same or similar exceptions? Can you provide us with a sample of the failures?
Nov 29	comment	Keeping automation code away from application source code I would add to this that you still need communication about merges before they happen. That way, you can run your tests against other branches to see where code updates broke your tests before they are merged in, so that you have (ideally) zero test down time after merges for test maintenance due to feature changes (because you will have made changes already).
Nov 10	comment	Resume and job seeking advice - career change from Development to Testing A SDET position at a large company like Microsoft could benefit greatly from a tester with lots of development experience. IMO as an SDET with 5 years experience mostly at MS, you would be a great asset in such a role. I don't think you'd need to take a junior role in a coding-heavy test position.
Oct 31	comment	Load testing tools vs. making your own I tried one of the virtual labs on Friday, and it looks like a great fit. We already own VS 2010 Ultimate w/ an MSDN membership, so continuing with this technology makes a lot of sense.
Oct 28	comment	Load testing tools vs. making your own Thanks, Siva. This is really helpful.
Oct 28	comment	Load testing tools vs. making your own Thanks, this is really helpful. I took Steve's advice and tried out VS 2010 Load Test last night, using a Microsoft Virtual Lab. It looks pretty good, but I was wondering . . . do I have to run Web Tests? Or can any test / script be used as the basis of a load test? We do have an MSDN license, so that's good. Also, would it work with AWS? Our company has . . . issues . . . with getting a hold of hardware, or setting up VMs, so I need to work around those limitations.
Oct 20	comment	What proportion of different types of software testing does your team use? The issue with this is that it results in a list of various answers. A better question might be, 'What are good ranges of testing?', possibly with specifics about system types, team skill levels, etc. Something that can have a single 'best' answer. Also, what my team does is not what I would say is best; we take short-cuts and don't do things perfectly because our QA processes are not yet very mature.