We can't test!

So its all going belly up. If I get the rumors right, Mega Enterprise is never going to make it. It basically comes down to this. For every day we test, we add three days onto the end date. If I do the math right, then we will finish the test cycle mid 2010. That's before you add in the re-opend bugs, so that puts us towards the end of 2010.

So we have to help QA. It sucks. Basically every day we get a list of bugs to verify because the lazy pieces of crap in the Applications QA team can't do it, they are "too busy". Sure, I love to make a latte in the morning, but I don't need to make three and then discuss the merits of Amber versus the New Indian Chaat Cafe before I log onto my machine in the morning.I twitter about it instead, that way my friends and colleagues get it on demand.

So I get my list of five bugs assigned each day, we have "testing hour" at noon. I'm there with a bunch of the other engineers not at happy with doing QA's job. As the QA Manager told us, we are "taking one for the team". Sure, I fell better about it already.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 0 (no more drinking!)
Shots : 0 (no more drinking!)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 181 lbs

QA has vanished!

Well, saying that all of QA were marched away Nazi style, taken to a field, shot and then their bodies placed in a deep hole and then covered up would not be a real reflection of what went down. That would not have captured the whole Tony Soprano "whacking" thing, in that Italian mobster "Iz far da family".

The reality is that the layoffs are brutal. QA lost 70% of their staff. And that's not just my team that across the whole company. The VP was taken out (it took some days to find him) and all the teams folded back under Engineering. The justification seems to be that they had completed all their automation and so were excess baggage, given the economic downturn were a drag on our cash position Henry said.

Now a bunch, if not all of them, were on Visas so they are totally f**ked. Sun, Cisco and every other man and his dog on Techcrunch are slimming down right now. A few old timers said it would be great, the commute times of the 101 would come down and life will be easier.

I'm not sure that computes. If we don't have QA and we are still adding features how on earth will be maintain our exemplary customer satisfaction record? We are going to be that moth heading towards the bug zapper without QA!

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 10 (same as last week)
Shots : 10 (down 6 from last week)
Dinner : 0 nights (no more dinners!)
Weight : 187 lbs

I built the product!

Three weeks. Wow. I built the product. This is so friggin' awesome. I asked one of the QA guys if I could run the regress on the product, you know, just to make sure that I built it correctly. He said "You will need to schedule that, we do it all by hand here".

I thought about that. I think its really cool that we hand test all our releases. Its a real commitment to quality. Most places I have seen they automate it and then you spend all the time fixing the scripts when you change the code. That involves people, so they might as well be adaptive and apply themselves to testing by hand. Hand crafted like a Rolls Royce. Its probably why we have a ratio of 1.5 QA for each Engineer. But that's cool, they are all cheap and on H1 visa's so they are not going anywhere or costing us!

I love this company.

This weeks food and drink
Beer : 2 bottles (down two last week)
Shots : 1 x Tequila, 1 x Bourbon (down two from last week)
Dinner : 4 nights (4 x pizza)
Weight : 156 lbs