Hey, want to become a Testing millionaire, are you using GitHub actions, looking for a good read on testing, Need tips on testing leadership, what skills do you need to work at some of the biggest companies like TicTok or Apple, Get the answer to these questions and much more on this jam-packed episode of the Test Guild news show for the week of August 22nd. 2022 So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this.
Savex & Applitools
First up in Automation Guild, SauceLabs partnering with a company called Savex. And the reason why I bring it up is that I learned about another acquisition that I missed earlier that I didn't know about. What the actual news article is that Savex technology announced a strategic partnership with SauceLabs. But really caught my attention was a tool called AutonomIQ platform, which makes a scriptless Test Automation solution that leverages I & machine learning capabilities to help users quickly and easily create and execute tests for modern low code applications. So it just looks like a push to help SauceLabs promote more of this usage of their platform, AutonomIQ.So I actually didn't know that SauceLabs had that feature. So that's one piece of news that you should know about. SauceLabs also getting behind Codeless Automation as well.
GitHub Actions
I also have been hearing more and more automation engineers I interview on my podcast talking about GitHub and specifically GitHub actions, how it's helping them automate a lot of the things in their software pipelines. So the latest article I came across was automating a software company using just GitHub actions. That's a really good article that goes into detail on how to break down actions, what are actions, how to use actions for unit testing, and how to incorporate them into your continuous testing pipelines and also has a section on End-to-end testing as well. So I think GitHub actions is a trend I see more and more of. So you should probably know more about it and definitely check out the article to take a hands-on approach to actually trying it for yourself.
Postman the Billion Dollar API Company
Another news item that caught my attention this week is that Postman is now valued at five point six billion billion dollars. So they just announced a series of D-funding where they got two hundred and twenty-five million, which values the company at five point six billion. And this article goes into why they think automation testing is so important, especially as we go into more of an API first world with micro-services and Internet of Things all working with APIs behind the scenes. They have a really cool comic book. They actually released to go along with this announcement as well, which I'll have in the show notes.
Become A Testing Millionaire
Speaking of making billions and billions of dollars, I actually came across another article where a Japanese software testing engineer became a millionaire after an acquisition by Spree. So thank you, Conor Fitzgerald, for sharing this. It's actually was an article in Forbes and it talks about how the president and CEO of Tokyo based Shifts has joined the ranks of the world's billionaires after shares of his software testing companies surged 88% over the past year, and this is all due because they offer software testing services. So it seems like it's a good time to be a tester. There's lots of money here as far as you could see by Postman getting all that funding and all these other companies getting acquired. And this recent article in Forbes, I think this article in Forbes actually adds to this as well.
Boozang API Testing
Also, speaking of postmen and API Testing I came across another tool that just made some of their functionality free to use. So I just noticed my friend Mats, the CEO of Boozang, he's actually been on my show, automation podcast show a few times. Boozang If you don't know is a browser-based test automation platform. They recently decided to make their API testing feature-free. And there's a link to the article on how API testing is available to you in Boozang how to use it, how to get started, all the types of things you need to know to be successful with this tool, with API testing. And as you know, I'm obsessed with automation tools that definitely give it a try, and let me know what you think.
And also this week, I'll be helping Applitools moderate, a roundtable discussion with a bunch of awesome quality engineering leaders talking about covering all your questions around quality leadership in this fast-paced environment we all find ourselves in. So def check that out in the link down below.
Q&A Testing Books
And last in automation testing news. I came across an article on books, some of the top books for quality professionals. You don't know as you can't tell by the background. I'm a Biblio Maniac. So of course this caught my attention. It comes to you via Christin Wiedermann You don't know Christin. Definitely check her out. She's another thought leader in testing. But this is from a blog post by Blake Norrish where you asked two hundred quality professionals for suggestions of their list of their best or favorite books.
New Load Testing Book
And speaking of books, this brings us to our performance & site reliability segment. Another book, I think will be on this list fairly quickly once it's released is Leandro Melendez just announced the release of his new book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to Load Testing Projects. Right now, it's actually available for preorder on Amazon. So definitely check it out. The book I wish I had when I get started with software testing, especially with performance testing. So if you want to learn about how to learn and understand and deliver load testing projects, this is the book for you. Leandro walks you step by step on how to accomplish a successful load testing project. And I also interviewed Leandro recently on this book that I'll be releasing this Tuesday. on my Performance Testing and Reliability podcast. Were we dive deep into all the chapters of this book and why you should get it – definitely check that out as well.
Performance Exploration Masterclass
One aspect I think testers really miss out on when they're doing testing is when they're doing exploratory testing now, focusing on other types of testing like performance testing. And that's why I'm really excited to release a new free master class at TestGuild on performance exploration for testers with the famous Mark Tomlinson. So you probably have heard about exploratory testing for functional testing, but what about performance in this masterclass? The PerfSherpa, Mark Tomlinson himself, is going to guide you through all the aspects of what makes up performance explorations to learn how to troubleshoot, why your application is slow and find bottlenecks and fix root causes of problems, and much, much more. Mark does an awesome breakdown of all these techniques using a whiteboard-style session. So you definitely want to head on over to TestGuild.com and grab that master course for free.
Skill to Have in 2022
And I don't know if I'm just a weirdo. But I'm always looking to see what skills I should be focusing in on. Even though I work now full time for myself, I'm always just trying to see if for some reason my business ever bombs I need to actually start working again. I'll have the skills needed to be able to get me a new position. And one of those positions that's really hot is reliability engineering. So I always look for different companies to see what their different requirements are for positions that they've currently posted. I notice one by TikTok, for a software engineer and site reliability and infrastructure. I think it's a really good thing that you should do every now and then and just go through even if your not looking to go through job descriptions and see what type of responsibilities and requisite prerequisites different companies are looking for. So you can see here they're looking for experience, configuration management, infrastructure, provisioning, Chef, Puppet ansible and experience, knowledge and storage concepts, network concepts, and database concepts. In another position I this was from Apple where they have a position for a manager for performance and reliability, which is a trend I've been seeing. So reliability is being lumped in with performance as well. And that's why I created the Test Guild performance & reliability podcasts. If you look at the position here, it goes into different skills and qualifications needed for this position as well. So it looks like Python, Java, different tools sets for SRE and the person should have skills both in scaling and lad testing, performance tuning, automation tooling, reporting, communication, etc.. And I found looking at probably quarterly different job descriptions every year to make sure I'm staying up to speed on the latest greatest and the type of skills that big companies around the world are looking for. Hopefully, you found that tip helpful.
Github AllStar
And last up is our security testing segment and coming full circle once again. This has to do with GitHub, GitHub just announced the introduction of all-star GitHub app. So this helps you to automate continuous enforcement of security best practices for GitHub projects with their new. Announcement for the GitHub app all star, so it's a companion to their security scorecards, which is an automated tool to assess risk to repositories and its dependencies, and it gives you continuous automated enforcement. And hosting multiple security testing podcasts. On my TestGuild security podcast, I found out that one of the biggest vulnerabilities to most software nowadays is due to open source vulnerabilities that people are consuming within their products from a lot of these open source projects. So using this tool will definitely help them hopefully eradicate those who have issues with their software when they release it to their customers.
You can also learn more about some of the top security vulnerabilities having to do with open source projects. From my interview with Jeffrey Martin on how developers are taking over application security and different trends in areas where you can help enforce security within your company's application software development lifecycle.
So that is it for the TestGuild new show. If you have any news items you like me to share in future episodes, all you need to do is drop me a line at News@TestGuild.com.
So once again, Joe, and my mission to help you succeed with creating e2e full stack automation awesomeness, as always, test everything and keep the good cheers.
