After speaking with 31 different companies, I chose to join Rainforest QA for two major reasons. First, its product was solving a problem that I had witnessed first-hand. Second, Rainforest provided an opportunity to continue my career development as a sales professional. The following expands my thought-process in more detail.
I’m not an engineer. However, having worked at a number of technology companies, both large and small, I have witnessed the pain of manual QA. The aggravation that a company encounters in paying humans to manually test the User Interface (UI) to ensure that the software is functioning correctly is frustrating and expensive.
The big challenge facing software companies is that the speed of software development has increased dramatically over the past few decades. For example, Microsoft used to release a new version of Windows every three years. However, when the company announced Windows 10 last year, Microsoft officials also said that would be the final big release of Windows because they would be moving to a more iterative development model.
One of the reasons Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012 was because of Yammer’s methodology of developing new features quickly and releasing them every two weeks. This approach was highly attractive to Microsoft, enabling them to become a more agile software company.
Fast forward to 2016, and almost a third of software companies now embrace continuous delivery, enabling developers to push code out multiple times a day. Naturally, the problem for these companies is that they must pay humans to click through their software as if it’s 1996.
When I saw how Rainforest was solving this problem by giving companies manual QA at the speed of automation, I saw a brilliant product-market fit.
The second major reason that I joined the Rainforest QA team was the opportunity to continue to grow as a sales professional. Many years ago I was given the sage advice: “focus on learning...because what you earn today will have no impact on your net worth.” The various roles that I’ve had at different technology companies have all provided me with opportunities to expand my skills in selling different products, to different buyers, in different organizations, at different price points. These manifold experiences have enhanced my skill-set and sped up my career development. In Rainforest, I fore-saw another opportunity toward my continued development.
Rainforest has a product that involves full commitment from the technology team. Customers must have their technology leaders “buy into” how Rainforest will impact the way and speed at which they develop. A customer must also have at least one Rainforest stakeholder who will oversee the product during implementation. And finally there must be multiple individuals (test engineers, developers, PMs) who will be writing the actual tests. Put it all together and Rainforest QA is a comprehensive software initiative--and a complex sale.
Over three months in, I’m excited to be part of the growing Rainforest team and helping bring QA up to the speed at which software is being developed today. The problem is there to solve and we have a brilliant product to solve it with. It’s going to be another exciting journey of learning about a new product, expanding my skillset and growing my network of friends and customers who have enriched my career so far.