I submitted my first pull request today

This year Xactware turned 30. We've been rocking the insurance software scene for a long time. One of the reasons I initially got my foot in the door at Xactware is because they employ a significant number of manual software testers. No coding experience required. Months ago when I knew that code was my future I began to look around Utah County for manual testing positions so I could get started somewhere. Among all the startups that I perused it seemed that they were only interested in test automation engineers. 

It makes sense why manual testing positions are few and far between. Code written by an automation engineer can do the work of dozens of manual testers in a fraction of the time. Not only is it more efficient but in most cases the test results and feedback are more accurate and beneficial in churning out a better product. 

Just a few years ago Xactware finally started  taking automated testing seriously. Only a month ago we named our first Director of Test Automation. I personally believe that there is no better time to get into automation at this company than right now. Imagine the impact I can leave on the products I'm testing while we are all charting new territory in automation.

From day one I made it clear that I want to work in automation and now the day that I accept that position feels closer than ever. 

I took a huge step towards becoming an automation engineer today. For the last three weeks or so I've been meeting an hour or two every week with one of the test automation managers. He's been really helpful and patient by walking me through the process of writing simple tests and building/updating the testing framework.

I wrote six tests and I added two pages to our testing framework and damn am I proud of that. We managed to get all of these tests to pass and the framework updates and additions I made are solid. After cleaning up the code, pulling down changes from our remote repo, merging my additions with those, and finally pushing everything back up to the remote repo... I was ready to make my first pull request. Pressing that button felt like I had stepped into a new world and it felt good.

I never imagined that just getting my foot in the door of a tech company would afford me so many opportunities or that I would find so many people to help me along the way. If you are interested in learning how to code and eventually making a career out of it consider a manual testing position or something similar. Make your aspiration to move on to bigger and better things from the beginning. Hopefully you will find as many opportunities as I have at Xactware.