Skip to main content

Career influences

This isn't necessary a QA centric post, but I felt that it's something that has affected me and I feel like I should say.

We all have career influences in life, people who we meet throughout our career who have a profound affect on the actual career path that we take. 

I am soon going to say goodbye (in that she left the company) to one of these people, she was someone who would always push me to do my best, and is partly the reason why you are reading this blog. She pushed me to get into blogging (along with others, and you can read her blog here), but she's had a major impact on my career and as such my family.

She's someone who really pushed upper management to recognise my talents, and helped them come up with a 6 month career development plan that I hope will get me to where I want to be. I owe her so much gratitude, and I don't think she realises just how much everything she has done for me actually means. (And to think she's not even a tester!) 

I will miss her an awful lot, and my company will miss her too, but there comes a time in everyones life when they have to move on. Hopefully our paths will cross again!

I hope one day I can have a similar effect on some people, but right now I'm eternally grateful for all that she has done for me, and I am sure that we will remain friends.

There have been other people who have had major influences on my career another person was someone who I met at a Hedge Fund, when I hadn't been in testing for long, but he made me realise that I could do so much with my skills, and made me realise that I am better than a lot of other testers out there. He made me believe in myself, and helped me on a personal level too with regards to buying my first house.

Let's not forget, another major influence and someone who will always be a major influence, my wife (I'd have got told off otherwise!)! Who has given me great support and given me the drive to be the best I can on a personal and professional level to provide for my family.

So, who's been your major influence on your career so far (like me it doesn't have to be a QA professional)? How do you think you've influenced peoples career for the better?
Labels:

Comments

  1. Srinivas Kadiyala28 June 2013 at 06:21

    Thanks for sharing wonderful post..It reminded my first company and my team including my managers and VP - They gave me the support to grew up in my professional and personal career.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gareth Waterhouse15 July 2013 at 03:43

      No problem, hopefully you will find more career influences as your career grows in QA. :)

      Delete
  2. Amar G Deogirikar2 July 2013 at 05:37

    Gareth, you are very lucky to have someone like that. Yes, I have my wife and parents to support me in my personal life but none in professional life yet. I am very jealous about this, but I guess it mostly got to do with hard work.

    All the best for your future!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown16 January 2018 at 13:59

    We need more such articles that we can read with such enthusiasm.
    resumeyard.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Testers: Be more like a Super-Villain!

Who doesn't love a Super Hero? Talk to my son, and he'll tell you how much he loves them, talk to many adults and they'll say the same! Deep down, we all love to be the Super Hero, we all want to save the day! However, I want to talk about the flip side of Super Heroes, the Super Villains... I often play Imaginext with my son, and I (unfortunately?) am nearly always the Super Villain! Be it Lex Luthor, Joker, Two Face, Mr Freeze or The Riddler! These are all great characters and great Super Villains, but why would I want to write about Super Villains? A while ago where I worked, we had a few Super Heroes, people who would be able to come in and "fix" things that had broken and help deliver projects on time. We then shifted, we decided to do away with the Super Hero culture and try and prevent from being in that position in the first place, whilst we didn't go as far as wanting to hire Super Villains, it's definitely a story that has stuck with me and t...
2 comments
Read more

QA is Awesome!

No real point to this post other than I have had the song stuck in my head and figured I could change it slightly and quite easily make QA is Awesome! Oh and I haven't even seen the movie all the way through! But for some reason that song is incredibly catchy! Not much point to this post in fact, just thought I'd put it out there :)
Post a Comment
Read more

What we (Asos Testers) are working towards this year...

At Asos we have a large testing team (30+ testers), they all work within their development teams, and the way development teams work can vary and understandably so. Helping the 30+ testers we have a number of Test Leads, of which I am one, recently we (the leads) all got together to come up with a plan of things that we feel we need to work on/define/have an idea of how to approach them for the next year to help improve our testing standards across the boards and improve the skillset of testers within the teams. To help with this we got together and came up with a mindmap, the plan going forward is for us to take ownership of one of the areas and come up with a strategy/approach/implement actions to help improve the areas and define whatever is needed. There's a lot there, and I'll probably write seperately about each one, and what we're doing, as it's always good to share ideas and get feedback... so watch this space!
2 comments
Read more