work

I’ve worn a few hats in the last fif­teen years. I’ve been test­ing soft­ware for over nine years now. I’m cur­rent­ly at Seek­Well (1–800 Con­tacts), work­ing on ware­house soft­ware that helps our asso­ciates get their work done quick­ly. Oth­er teams I’ve been on have worked to cre­ate a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence for con­tact lens­es, eye exams, and (my proud­est moment) cre­at­ing a new line of busi­ness in a new tech stack for glass­es. My team is ener­getic and sol­id, I like what we’re work­ing on, and I’ve been immersed in CI/CD, which is quite fun.

I sat on the board of the Asso­ci­a­tion for Soft­ware Test­ing for two years as the trea­sur­er.

I was at Anony­ome Labs, which cre­ates apps that pro­tect and enhance pri­va­cy, for a year. I was the test lead on its flag­ship prod­uct, MySu­do (iOS), as well as a com­pan­ion prod­uct for web. It was an incred­i­ble place to work.

Before Anony­ome, I worked for a finan­cial com­pa­ny that uses and devel­ops finan­cial soft­ware. They gave me my start in soft­ware test­ing, and I enjoyed work­ing on their mobile app team. My col­leagues were great, I learned tons, and I got bank hol­i­days!

I ran a start­up called Arts­Fuse, which deliv­ered art to TVs. We nev­er made it past our beta, in large part due to career changes for all three founders. We loved our idea, even as it mor­phed into dif­fer­ent forms, and I loved being able to cham­pi­on con­tem­po­rary, local artists. I ran the day-to-day oper­a­tions, test­ed the soft­ware, and worked on strate­gic part­ner­ships with artists, arts orga­ni­za­tions, and cus­tomers. And did the finan­cial stuff—blech.

Before all that, I was a lawyer. I appeared in court, but I spent most of my time behind the scenes doing research and draft­ing many many doc­u­ments. My career as a lawyer was nei­ther ful­fill­ing nor prof­itable. After prac­tic­ing in main­ly three dif­fer­ent areas of law (plus the for­ays into oth­er areas that just come with the job), I decid­ed it was­n’t the right career for me, and I left.

work-related writing outside of my blog

public appearances

  • (upcom­ing) Agile Test­ing Days 2025 (Berlin, Ger­many): keynote, “Orches­trat­ing Chaos Into a Sym­pho­ny”
  • (upcom­ing) CAST 2025 (Salt Lake City, Utah): talk about sys­tems think­ing
  • Test­Coast 2025 (Gothen­burg, Swe­den): keynote, “AI: Utopia or Dystopia?”
  • Test­ing Por­tu­gal 2024 (Lis­bon, Por­tu­gal): keynote, “Real Life Is Not an Edge Case”
  • Test­ing Por­tu­gal 2024 (Lis­bon, Por­tu­gal): work­shop about using AI in test­ing
  • Agile Test­ing Days 2024 (Berlin, Ger­many): musi­cal, “The Owl Prob­lem”
  • Agile Test­ing Days 2024 (Berlin, Ger­many): talk about lead­er­ship as an indi­vid­ual con­trib­u­tor
  • Test­ing Unit­ed 2024 (Vien­na, Aus­tria): keynote, “AI: The Good, the Bad, and the Bias”
  • PNSQC 2024 (Port­land, Ore­gon): talk about train­ing new soft­ware testers (record­ing)
  • PNSQC 2024 (Port­land, Ore­gon): work­shop with Carl Kibler about using AI in test­ing
  • Roman­ian Test­ing Con­fer­ence 2024 (Cluj-Napoca, Roma­nia): keynote, “Real Life Is Not an Edge Case”
  • Agile Test­ing Days 2023 (Berlin, Ger­many): work­shop with Lisa Crispin about using AI in test­ing
  • Mini-CAST 2021 (vir­tu­al): keynote, “Real Life Is Not an Edge Case” (record­ing, not my best work)
  • Agile Test­ing Days USA 2019 (Chica­go, Illi­nois): keynote, “Real Life Is Not an Edge Case” (slides)
  • CAST 2019 (Cocoa Beach, Flori­da): work­shop with Lisa Crispin about cog­ni­tive bias­es
  • CAST 2018 (Cocoa Beach, Flori­da): work­shop with Carl Kibler about mobile test­ing

pod­casts

lack of modesty

I asked col­leagues to write LinkedIn rec­om­men­da­tions for me, and they turned out in full force. If you’ll for­give the lack of mod­esty, here are a few of my favorites. To see all of them, my LinkedIn user­name is racheljoi.

As a QA, Rachel con­sis­tent­ly exceeds expec­ta­tions with her metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail, com­mit­ment to deliv­er­ing qual­i­ty code and ongo­ing efforts to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo. She’s been a big force in help­ing my team improve our qual­i­ty by pre­sent­ing on test­ing pat­terns and best prac­tices. In fact, she’s done so well at this, that the com­pa­ny can’t help but move her from team to team, where each time she leaves a per­ma­nent mark on all of us.

As a leader, Rachel is trans­par­ent, com­mu­ni­cates her expec­ta­tions well and is will­ing to have hard con­ver­sa­tions. She’s shown a gen­uine con­cern for the growth of oth­ers around her. She’s cre­at­ed a com­mu­ni­ty of women with­in 1–800 Con­tacts which speaks vol­ume to her com­mit­ment to diver­si­ty and inclu­sion. She not only brings peo­ple togeth­er but also active­ly fos­ters col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­ni­ty. Thanks for every­thing you do, Rachel.

Cal­li Elor­rea­ga, devel­op­er

I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with Rachel on mul­ti­ple teams, both as a cowork­er and as a man­ag­er. I high­ly rec­om­mend her. She has con­sis­tent­ly gone above and beyond. She is an invalu­able mem­ber of our orga­ni­za­tion. Her ded­i­ca­tion and pas­sion have not only improved our tech­ni­cal process but have fos­tered a stronger sense of com­mu­ni­ty. Here are a few areas where she real­ly excels.

1. Tech­ni­cal Lead­er­ship: Rachel’s tech­ni­cal exper­tise and lead­er­ship are an inspi­ra­tion. She not only excels in her own tasks but encour­ages the rest of the team to strive for a high stan­dard of excel­lence.

2. Train­ing Oth­ers: Rachel has shown a remark­able com­mit­ment to train­ing and men­tor­ing her peers, oth­er asso­ciates want­i­ng to get into an IT field, and the greater test­ing com­mu­ni­ty. She devel­oped the test­ing cur­ricu­lum for our inter­nal train­ing pro­gram. She speaks at con­fer­ences. She has orga­nized sev­er­al indi­vid­ual train­ings, work­shops, and mod­er­at­ed dis­cus­sion pan­els.

3. Com­mu­ni­ty Build­ing: Rachel has been instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive and inclu­sive work envi­ron­ment. She has an abil­i­ty to encour­age teams to build com­mu­ni­ty in a way that feels nat­ur­al and invit­ing. In addi­tion, she has a nat­ur­al tal­ent for boost­ing morale and inspir­ing oth­ers to do their best work.

4. Relent­less Dri­ve for Qual­i­ty: Rachel has an uncom­pro­mis­ing com­mit­ment to qual­i­ty. She has an unyield­ing com­mit­ment to ensur­ing and advo­cat­ing that our work meets the high­est stan­dards of qual­i­ty. Her atten­tion to detail has saved us from many poten­tial dis­as­ters.

Trevor Tubbs, devel­op­er and engi­neer­ing man­ag­er

It is incred­i­ble to work with such a knowl­edge­able soft­ware tester as Rachel. I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work togeth­er with Rachel at Anony­ome Labs. Her extent of knowl­edge in soft­ware test­ing is astound­ing. Rachel’s dri­ve to gain knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence, and bet­ter her­self sets her apart. She also has a lot of aware­ness of diver­si­ty and pro­vid­ing a soft­ware prod­uct that is open and avail­able to every­one. Rachel is amaz­ing and strives to be the best at every­thing she does.

Nicholas Cloward, devel­op­er

I’ve worked under Rachel’s lead as a mem­ber of a ven­dor team. Rachel is nice and easy going, active lis­ten­er and team play­er, very com­fort­able to work with. As a leader, she val­ues her team’s opin­ions and effort, and works hard along­side towards the com­mon goal — good-bet­ter-even bet­ter qual­i­ty. Her pas­sion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism in test­ing are inspir­ing.

Iry­na Dzho­la, tester

Rachel is a quin­tes­sen­tial qual­i­ty assur­ance pro­fes­sion­al. Her thor­ough and proac­tive approach to ensur­ing a rig­or­ous lev­el of qual­i­ty with­in the soft­ware she is test­ing will be a huge asset to com­pa­ny and prod­ucts with which she engages. Rachel is a tal­ent­ed and sea­soned pre­sen­ter with­in the field of qual­i­ty assur­ance, which has the side ben­e­fit of being high­ly con­nect­ed with­in her indus­try. In sum, point her at prod­uct and watch the qual­i­ty met­rics sky­rock­et.

Jeff Poul­ton, prod­uct man­ag­er

I have a list of test­ing resources I like on Github. I wel­come pull requests! I don’t have any­thing else inter­est­ing on Github, at least for now.