I installed at 800x600, decided it was too small, and quickly switched to 1024x768. The trash can didn't move right. (Or, in other words, why to test as a new employee)

It's ideal to spend a little time testing shipping products as a new employee, even if it isn't in your specific job description, because you have a fresh perspective on the products. So testing is fun if you are reasonably good at technology and have a light sadistic side. You can break things by figuratively poking small holes in them, and help the company improve its product as well.

Once a person has been in the company for 3 or 6 months or so, s/he has gotten used to the "way things work" and cannot as easily put him/herself in the seat of an end user. Being able to empathize with the end user is critical for finding many of those annoying, nit-picking little bugs that separate the good products from the great products.

The bugs I'm talking about are more cosmetic, ergonomic, look-and-feel bugs, and possibly overall design flow issues. The UI, the flow of the program, and the way customers will interact with it are generally designed by programmers for themselves. Not that they don't take others' needs into consideration, but all of our views about others are colored by our own experience. A developer who has worked on the same program for three years may only barely test the new account wizard - s/he only needs to verify its functionality, not its usability. S/he will only ever use it once or twice - for an expert on the program, a new account wizard, or something similar, is a hindrance, not a benefit. But for end users, it may be one of the most critical pieces of the package.

Which brings me back to a new employee. Even if this new employee is in Marketing, such as I am, s/he can give valuable feedback during the first few months. I found an installer bug earlier today, and just found a small KDE bug. I then found another bug in http://qa.mandriva.com/ while trying to post the KDE bug 8-). All of this helps make Mandriva and their products a little better.

Starting a new job? Start testing the software! Of course, make sure you let people know what you are doing and why, and be careful that you don't overzealously get on everyone's nerves through this (it's ok to rock the boat, but don't go overboard! your coworkers may wish you hadn't been hired!).

A great book on software testing

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