We 1E-ians 🙂 , we simply adore 1E as a company for various reasons. To list a few:
- Diversity: We are a culturally diverse organisation with more than 32 nationalities working together across four offices on three continents. Amazing for an organisation the size of 1E.
- Product: We produce cutting edge technologies, used by some of the world’s largest organizations every day, and every individual that works here gets an opportunity to play a key role in their creation.
- Collaboration: You may have heard of some organisations where QA and Development work separately, running on parallel tracks – but not here!!
- Knowledge Culture: We have a learning and knowledge sharing culture that is practiced by every single individual and promoted by all up to and including the CEO.
Having been involved in the QA field for many years now, I have had opportunities to work with several organisations during my career – some small and some big, including several very well-known names in the industry. But the learning and knowledge sharing culture is something that I only got exposed to once I had joined 1E.
At 1E, there is no differentiation between QA, Development, or DevOps personnel when it comes to technology competency. They all enjoy the same learning opportunities. Hence we are not known as the QA team, the Dev team, or the DevOps team, rather we are a collective – the Engineering Team.
There are no barriers or protocols that need to be followed when it comes to learning. Of course you still need to make sure you are meeting your project commitments but that’s a given. Anyone can ask/learn any technology from anyone. And this is all on job. A pair of mottos which are followed across the Engineering team are “No question is a stupid question” and “Not knowing is not a bad thing” because they enable you to get another person to explain to you anything you feel you need to expand your knowledge on.
A culture where people happily invest their personal time and effort to teach you is something, seeking nothing in return, is something I’d never experienced. But here, when new technologies are being adopted, there are opportunities for all of QA, and Development are encouraged to research and share information.
Primarily, I come from a manual testing background and have worked for some big companies with restrictive practices. Sometimes a QA resource was not allowed to prepare their own test environment but was made to go through the infrastructure team (believe me there are many organisations which still follow the same practice). It was a sort of culture shock for me at 1E, when my QA Lead asked me to prepare a whole testing lab involving installing operating systems and SQL server from scratch. Having never done that before, I was a little unsure and maybe lacked confidence. But then the culture became apparent, with everyone in my team helping. Not even once was I made to feel that I knew nothing.
Having been a manual tester for many years and then facing having to attempt to explore the automation world, is huge in terms of pressure, and I’d all sorts of pessimism, but for me that ongoing transition has really been smoother than I ever imagined it could be. While it’s still a work in progress, I’m continuing to learn and improve my automation skills.
If someone told me five years ago, I would be attempting automation testing, I would have laughed but it’s only been possible because of the learning and knowledge sharing culture at 1E.
When I look back at my career I can’t help but think, why did I not join 1E earlier? 🙂
That’s the magic of learning and knowledge sharing culture – I’ve not just grown and learned new things, I’ve been encouraged to do so.
By the way, did I mention that it is not only tech-learning, but also meditation, swimming, DIY, and the list goes on… 🙂
Learn more, share more, and spread the 1E sunshine 🙂
