New Job

I'm starting a new job next week.

[That sentence should be read to the sound of trumpets in the background. It's a big change in my life, and I want to make sure you read it accompanied by a sufficiently impressive soundtrack.]

My new job will be at a small startup founded about eight months ago. I will be their 11th employee. They're still in stealth mode, so I can't tell you much about it yet -- even the name of the company is still secret at this point. However I can tell you that the company's main product will have a similar flavor to Endeca's: high throughput, large data volume, multithreaded, distributed, server-side C++.

My new job will allow me to take on more responsibility than I have at Endeca, and that's my primary reason for moving. I will start as the tech lead for a small group, and if things go well, I will probably have the opportunity to grow into more of a management role in a year or two.

I will be leading the QA group, so my initial tasks will be to design test harnesses, the test system, set up the nightly tests, get code coverage metrics, do performance measurements, etc. I've been thinking about how to ensure code quality for a while now (Debugging with Code Coverage, Sacrificing Quality, QuickCheck), so I'm looking forward to being able to focus on this aspect of the engineering process. I've got a few ideas that I want to try out.

Some people think of QA as just "pushing buttons" to try to make a program crash, but that's not what I'll be doing -- if that's all they needed, the company could have hired someone for a lot less than what they're paying me. Instead, my focus will be on automated testing (unit tests, regression tests, etc), and I will also be continually looking for ways to help ensure that the code is written correctly the first time (clear requirements, design reviews, designing for testability, encouraging test-driven development, etc).

I'll also, of course, offer any advice I might have on building scalable systems, since that's what I've been doing for the last four years.

One of the things I'm really looking forward to is working with the VP of Engineering at the new company. She has offered to help mentor me with the management aspects of my new job. I'm not a complete beginner when it comes to management, but I'm still on the steep part of the curve, so a mentor will be very helpful.

Another thing I'm looking forward to is having a broad strategic view of where the company is going, and what challenges it's facing. Because the company is still so small, I'll be able to know what everybody is working on. Longer term, I expect that that kind of broad understanding will come in handy in the rest of my career.

Posted on February 18, 2004 08:13 PM
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Comments

Hey, congratulations!

Posted by: Jesse at February 18, 2004 08:47 PM

I remember reading the original Fuzz Report back in 1990 and thinking that was a very cool way to test applications (plus just how bad some Unix apps were written). You might want to check it out for your new job.

Oh, and congratulations.

Posted by: at February 18, 2004 09:13 PM

Congratulations, Kim! Way to go, that's /fantastic/ news! Can't wait until your new company uncloaks so we can hear all about it. In the meantime, may your new job kick absolutely stunning amounts of ass - and, once again, congratulations!

Posted by: Gnomon at February 19, 2004 12:38 AM

Congrats! This sounds like a great opportunity to help grow a culture of quality at a new company that's not already stuck in a bad equilibrium.

Posted by: Darius Bacon at February 21, 2004 05:50 PM

I remember some posts along the line of "I want to talk about some subjects, or I did talk about some subjects, but my beloved corporate masters disapprove...". Since you now have a new set of beloved corporate masters maybe you can go back and revisit some of those topics.

Posted by: Ralph Richard Cook at February 25, 2004 01:13 PM

I expect to revisit some of those subjects. In particular, I might revive the Diamond Wiki, since it seems to be popular (about a dozen incoming links and 100 hits a day, even though I haven't been advertising it). I was told that the main reason the wiki was causing trouble was because I was an employee there -- since that is no longer the case, it seems like fair game. I'll probably also restore the "Why Faceted Navigation is Hard" page after a few more months.

However, anything I do will be moderated by the fact that I still have several friends at the old company, I want the company to be successful, and I may have to work with someone from there again someday. Also I expect my interests to start changing now that I have a different job description, and my hobbies tend to follow my interests.

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