Thursday, November 23, 2017

My team is looking for a manager

I love my team, and I love my manager. My current manager however has come to the realization, that having 50 direct reports is too much, and while he always has time for me, there might be others that need different type of support from a manager and don't get the same access.

At first, he opened two manager positions internally. Both my manager and my team encouraged me to apply for the one for us, but I have other aspirations as I plan on being the best tester there is, and if I move, I will become a software architect. A trip (again) to management sounds like the wrong move for me. Everyone else had similar ideas internally, so we ended up where we are now: we are looking, externally for our team manager.

We're a really truly self-organized team (no product owner experiment ongoing, the team decides) and need a manager who understands what that means. And an ideal person for the role would be someone who is half tester (or dev) and half manager, and would like the idea of working as part of the team for some of their time.

As we were discussing this yesterday with the team, devs expressed that they'd love a tester. Well, they have good experiences of testers. And to clarify, they said it could be either someone with manual testing or test automation background.

So I call out to people I know: would working in Helsinki, in a half tester half manager role with awesome team becoming more awesome all the time be something you'd aspire for? If so, this is the position you should apply for.

Just a few words what usually happens: my manager screens candidates and discusses the manager part. He involves the team in another interview.

We're also looking someone with good understanding of full-stack development into another similar position for team that does Java/Javascript/AWS.  And if you're like the team members we have now, aspiring for learning more on how to build awesome products and you want to spend time with an automation emphasis, we're also looking to replace one of our full-time testers as they turn into a cyber security consultant.

All these 3 people end up in what I consider the product I work with, consisting of 7 teams. If you'd like to try out something further from me, my manager is also looking for a tester for cloud protection solutions.