QA Hates You

If you want to combine software with barbecuing, we have a job for you:

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(I know, they probably mean the AWeber e-mail software package, but that’s not what it says, is it?)

In Minneapolis, apparently they’re looking for software carpenters/remodelers:

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But you know what?  I start out every morning with a brief internal prayer of “If I Had A Hammer” myself.  Except we don’t get to verses about songs or bells, and it’s Thor’s hammer I’m wielding, and….

In a cast-a-wide-net e-mail from recruiter, I note three distinct bullet styles:

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We have:

• Hyphens (-)
• Xs
• No bullets

I love the amount of conscientiousness spent here trying to woo a quality professional.  You know how they say that when you interview with a company, you’re interviewing the company, too?  Well, I say when you send me your documentation about a job, I see your resume.  And I’m not going to call back something this rife with errors.

Because this recruiter would no doubt take as good of care of Applicant 9748 (that would be me)  as he did of Blast E-mail 298.

Off topic, but here’s an ad on Craigslist for a Technical Writer:

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That many exclamation points might indicate:

• The bar for writing excellence at this employer is very low.
• There is a slight danger the subject matter experts will add exclamation points to manuals.

Personally, that many exclamation points in three sentences makes my teeth hurt, and the only remedy I have is to read the sentence in a Waynesworldian fashion, substituting NOT! for each exclamation point:

We are looking for a Tech Writer to join our team-NOT!

Job listing asks for relevant experience:

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You know, they might mean Point of Sale, but they might mean the other.  And we all have experience with that, hey?

Perhaps they should have followed the best practice of spelling out words before using abbreviations.  But the simpleton recruiter suffers from the same hubris that designers and developers (and some defect writers) do:  you know what I mean syndrome.

A job posting asks for someone who can speak two languages:

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This bilingual job candidate needs to speak Arabic and Urdu.  In a bilingual speaker, that leaves no available slot for English.

But the posting goes on and points out that actual QA knowledge isn’t required, either, so we’re not dealing with the most literal or logical of employers anyway.

Job posting:

 
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Maybe it’s an add for a detrigonometry position.

What kind of company wants desiners?

The kind of company that has a desgin process and works on brand indetity:

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And that lacks a standard for presenting Web site as one word or two:

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That is to say, ultimately, a company like all the rest.

I’ve never encountered a compensation package of Opened before this:

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You know, beer might be better than some of the other compensation packages you see listed on Craigslist.

Someone was probably playing in a WYSIWYG editor to come up with this Monstrosity:

 
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It looks all right in IE, which means two things: 1, that IE is more forgiving of extraneous <span> tags, and 2, whomever built this page looked at it in IE but not in Firefox/Safari/Opera/Anything Else.

Ha!  Just kidding.  #2 is not necessarily true.  It’s entirely possible no one looked at it before posting.

Co-blogger sends a lead to this craigslist job listing and probably counts the lead as his annual post:

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I know you’re thinking, “How can a compensation of $1 depend on experience. Brother, it’s all in the picture on the dollar?” If you’re just out of college, you get the Zimbabwean dollar; if you’re a low level tech rock star, with things like MCSE and MIT on your resume, you get a loonie.

Speaking of which, he’s hunting for a job in the Minneapolis area. If any of my demicanadian readers know of a QA or, apparently, system administrator/PC technician positions available, drop me a line at thedirector at this domain.

Well, it’s a purported “job posting” for a IT Program Quality and Compliance Manager, but the compensation offered tells a different story:

 
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Many jobs on Craigslist cover the fact that they pay nothing relative to the professional scale by using terms like market or depends on experience.  This company, on the other hand, comes right out and says it.

If you’re interested, remember to put JOB TITLE in the subject line of your message.

Ever wanted to commute to a QA job in your own Gulfstream? This Craigslist-found job opportunity is for you!

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That’s a lot of extrinsic value, friends.

Job posting on Craigslist for a Graphics Designer eligible for Security Clearance:

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To misquote Wesley, No good. I’ve known too many designers. 

Graphics designers tend to lead very interesting, exciting, and unrepressed lives.  Good luck clearing any of them.

A posting on craigslist in the Software Jobs section:

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This is a quality assurance for manufacturing, not software quality assurance, but one wonders if the recruiter knows the difference or cares as long as he or she gets a warm body and the percentage off the top.  Manufacturing quality deals mostly with established processes and procedures designed to help manufacturing large numbers of the same things day in and day out.  SQA, as you know, deals with a single SNAFU evolving over a long period of time using unproven technologies wielded by hubris-riven kids out of a four year program in learning Visual Basic.

Some of the skills can transfer over in the abstract, I’m sure, but I canceled my ASQ membership because it was so manufacturing and pharmaceutical intense and I did not get much insight I could apply to SQA except maybe some terminiology to impress my boss and to throw around statistically-based meetings, if I cared to throw them.

To do an SQA job effectively, you’ve got to be rat-mean and weasel-devious to figure out how to go outside the lines that the business analysts and developers have drawn.  You’ve got to suss out crazy alternative workflows and incomplete paths and intermediate states to try to grab as many of a practically infinite number of points of failure.  It’s a little different from looking at a graph and thinking, “Hmm, maybe we should lubricate the punch press every 16 hours.”

Also, when contacting the recruiter, remember not to call their contractors “Kelly Girls.”  That violates their trademark, which instead of being violated is mostly forgotten in the 21st century.  Way to protect a trademark!

Jr Software Tester, if you can get away with it:

Description:
*Maintenance of the environments for the SE system test systems. *Execution of testing processes prior to live deployment. *Interaction with other organizations to get sufficient support from the instructions for PM, Planning and Validation team and all others necessary throughout our portion of the testing life cycle. *Oversee and direct workload from US day shift to offshore resources *Defect management and problem resolution for testing errors

Those whacky jobs posted on Craigslist.  When you manage people, it’s like called a management sort of position in most places.  Perhaps this job poster doesn’t equate furriners as people.

If it’s the philosophy of the hiring firm to indeed have someone come in off of the street and manage the offshore team, perhaps the job heading should be more appropriately titled Scapegoat wanted! with a description Make slightly more than you would managing a gas station, but with more ulcers.