In September, I'm leading a masterclass on influence at MoT, covering what I've experienced as the leader being influenced rather than the person doing the influencing 🤯
In October, I'm giving a talk at MoTaCon on how teams share ownership of quality. Double 🤯
Both are on the calendar. Both are real. I even have a countdown on my desktop telling me how long I've got left to write my slides ðŸ«
A year ago I was unemployed and wondering whether I'd find a job, let alone one that I loved, after leaving a job that treated me well at a company I'd been proud to work for. I didn't have anything else lined up but that was the whole point: I was so burned out, I needed that "lack" so I could fill it up with things that brought my joy/drive/excitement back. It happened but took a while.
During that time I started this blog and spent my days swinging from one interest to another. I lost hours in documentaries about UAPs and aliens, rewatched old tv series that brought me comfort, tried to stay away from the news (enough to keep my anxiety in check without going full ostrich). I savored my mornings alone while my kids were in school and took in my evenings when they were home and I was surrounded by chaos and love. We still did daycare drop-offs and soccer camp, a family trip to Florida that had been booked months earlier. All the while I was doing math in my head that I wasn't saying out loud to anyone. I'd map what's left in savings against job post salary ranges, calculating how much longer before things would get "bad" and scroll LinkedIn/Bluesky/Blind/Reddit at 2am, trying to get the internet to tell me I was going to be okay.
Late one night, in a fit of desperately wanting to be somewhere else, I bought a ticket to visit old friends in San Francisco who I also used to work with. Right after I clicked purchase there was a moment where I wondered whether the trip was a good idea. Would I regret spending that money soon? I calmed my nerves - there was a 24 hour cancellation policy so I could undo it if the trip still felt like a bad idea in the morning.
The next day, as I was doomscrolling LinkedIn, I saw something about a new Maven course starting soon. "The Art of Telling Stories with Data", taught by Gulrez Khan, a data science leader with almost two decades in the field. I'd been following him since he published "Drawing Data With Kids" off a Kickstarter back in 2023.
I read the syllabus - four sessions to help me make sure the message I mean to send is what actually lands (if you want to check it out yourself, highly recommend it: The Art of Telling Stories with Data). Still in a funk and thinking this would be a smarter, more defensible way to spend money than an impromptu solo vacation, I signed up intending to cancel my flight and hotel.
By the time I thought about the ticket again, it was thankfully just past those 24 hours 😅
In an effort to make my vacation dollars work for my job search too, I decided to try and network with the QA and testing community while I was out there. After asking around and searching for meetups or other testing/qa events during my visit and coming up empty, a friend and longtime QA community builder convinced me to hold my own. He hooked me up with a local meetup group, chose a venue, made up a custom invite banner ("for social!" ofc), and talked me down when I questioned whether people would actually show up (reassuring me that he'd at least be there).
The night came together at Standard Deviant, the brewery Tristan had scouted. Turnout was small: Tristan, a guy he knows through his work with the Salesforce community, and a good handful of my own friends and former coworkers. The version of the night I'd been dreading (strangers quietly judging whether I'd pulled off a "real" meetup) never happened. Instead, people who really liked me showed up just because I asked.
I was on my way to the bathroom when Tristan caught my eye. "You hungry? Let's get something to eat. I know exactly where to go". A round of goodbyes later, I followed him out the door and up and down the hilly SF streets, until we walked right into a street fair. There were live bands, people dancing in the street, and food and vendor stalls dotted around. I had my first soup dumpling standing on a corner and burned the roof of my mouth immediately (I was later told this is a rite of passage 🙃). We wove in and out of vendor stalls and storefronts where local artists were selling all sorts of beautiful things, including a beautiful handmade silver ring I bought myself.
Then Tristan started down a dark street, lighting up the painted walls with his phone flashlight. He explained that it was Clarion Alley, a stretch of the Mission covered wall-to-wall in murals that rotate through different artists over time. A few blocks later we ducked into a storefront that also turned out to have its own little gallery inside. Then we took my very first Waymo ride over to El Farolito.
At El Farolito, Tristan ordered a stack of extra burritos and handed them out to a few homeless folks nearby on our way out, passing me a few and pointing to another group of folks huddled nearby. He said hello, clearly recognizing and greeting a few of them. There was no speech, very little explanation, just something he did. A second Waymo took us to Pop's, an old Mission dive bar where he knew all of the employees. We stayed, chatting with the regulars, until it felt right to go and I said goodbye with a full heart.
The next morning it was just me. With no plans, I decided my only agenda was to visit the SFMOMA. On the way there, I serendipitously passed by an art gallery with the door propped open. I stepped in and looked around, noticing that most of the walls were bare and most of the art was on the floor. I started to head back out when a man called from the back, smiling. "Hi! We're still setting up but you're welcome to take a look around!" (!!!) I walked around feeling like I'd been given a free private pass backstage somewhere, took some photos, and thanked him before heading back out - how lucky!!
Inside SFMOMA I wandered, standing in front of the pieces that stopped me for as long as I wanted and even going back to look at some twice. After years of working and momming and burnout it felt almost indulgent. Afterward, I walked for hours around the city, letting my avoidance of the hills pick my direction, thinking of ways to take this feeling back home with me.
After I got back home I started applying for jobs and interviewing again, with an open mind to anything adjacent to work that I'd done before and pushing myself to apply for roles that felt like a bit of a longshot.
Thankfully one of those interviews worked out, and I joined a cyber resilience startup as their only Program Manager. I spent the first couple of months figuring out what I should even be doing. The answer was: everything that helped build connective tissue between engineering and everyone waiting on them to ship. Then this past June, I took on management of the QA team too.
Almost a year in to my non-QA-then-QA-again role I more confidently stand behind this: QA and program management are two sides of the same quality coin. QA is about the quality of the product. Program management is about the quality of the process: how we work together, how information moves.
About a week ago I was cleaning out my Notes app (I've self-diagnosed as an information hoarder) and found one from October 2019 that listed public speaking as a skill I needed to work on "that also low-key terrified me", with a to-do list below laddering up to an ultimate goal of giving a talk at a conference. I read it and thought: holy shit. It really happened.
I didn't follow this list on purpose. I'd actually completely forgotten about it, although I do remember writing it now. I also remember thinking: gosh, it'll take me at least 10 years for this to even feel remotely possible and not scary. But I did do those things. I led the meetings. I presented to the teams. I found topics that I cared about and shared what I knew. And somehow I actually stopped being someone who was scared of public speaking and became someone who does it (and sometimes even enjoys it?!?). In September I'm running that masterclass. In October I'm giving that talk. 2019-me would've read that sentence and said "huh, maybe", while really thinking "haha, totally not happening".
Submit for conference ✅