I spent over a decade as a software development engineer in test before I formally changed my job discipline to that of programming writer. Many friends and family have asked or guessed why I made this change and most of the guesses tend to land in the "something easier than testing" bucket but that's not the case at all. I actually moved from test to content is because I discovered a true passion for teaching, especially for teaching processes and I've always had a knack for organizing data and information into a coherent flow.
In my daily work life, I've always been a writer in one way or another. I would be the person who would write out test processes, or would help design test architectures. I wrote and taught several internal classes when I decided I could do a better job than the current versions being offered. Then in the midst of the first real push toward software security and security testing, after I had sat yet another junior tester down and explained the what SQL injection was, I told my husband that I could write a book on security testing. He challenged me and the idea too hold in the guise of a dare. I wrote the book and sold it, despite the market theory there was no room for books on testing. It sold and still sells a bit.
I count that book, Testing Code Security, as a turning point in my decision to change job disciplines and it taught me several things:
- I learned that I really did love teaching others what I knew and did. I loved researching things I didn't know as much about and putting that information together as well. Heck, I had to love it to spend nearly 5 full months working on this book every night at home, after dinner and after my youngest son was in bed.
- I learned that writing an instructional book is a huge amount of gathering and organizing raw data, developing a structure and a fair number of false starts before a good balance is struck and the subject matter flows into a coherent whole.
- I learned that, while I loved testing, I loved the ability to talk directly to my users in the instructions I wrote and to feel like I'm trying to solve their problems even more.