[Libreoffice-qa] QA and QA Analyst - from Timur

[Timur Gadzo]

Hello fellow QAers

Along my LO time, I saw many folks coming and some disapearring
(wondering why). Now I was faced with that, I decided to send this
message, to explain why it makes no sense for me to be in QA team
anymore (1).

I was OO user and casual bug reporter since 2005, and then LO user and
reporter and increasingly tester for 10+ years now, by nick of Timur.
Reporting some hundreds of bugs, but testing much more. I always tried
to make a bug clear, retesting and closing or duplicating, renaming,
hiding excessive comments. Doing bibisects or more of them in the
single bug, with all bibi repos and torments with old versions, using
different scripts for automated bibisects. For that I had 2 Windows
and 3 Linux with some specific settings as different UI, dark mode,
e-mail sending, domain, proxy etc. Sometimes I'd add to wiki. I didn't
advertise my work or single bugs in chat/Telegam, I just worked more.
Last few years I increased my work so that took me 4 hours/workday, 20
hours/week.

Then I saw a vacancy for QA Analyst (2) and applied because I mostly
was doing all that already, save reporting. During the next few months
I worked on this full 8 hours/day to see how it looks with 40
hours/week. Doing so I finally amounted to 6434 bugs I gave some input
to. Although I was regularly in QA reports with my 4 hours, in
September I really topped (3).

Later I learned I wasn't selected which came as a shock just because
of this objectively available input and reports. I wasn't informed who
was, I first thought it may be someone who also had a great QA work,
like Julien or Rafael or Raal, those who I could also see all the time
in reports and Bugzilla while not being part of TDF or companies, like
Justin or MIke etc.
I asked for something that could be helpful to me: what were my
shortcomings that overturned my years long work, and consequently what
were the crucial advantages of the chosen candidate. To add an insult
to the injury, I got no explanation although I asked the same twice.
I'm especially disappointed that Xisco didn't respond in any way,
after so many years.

Recently I learned who was selected for the position of QA Analyst,
someone by nick of stragu. Seems that he was active in LO for years,
with input to some 735 bugs by the time of selection. While it's
considerable, it's not near my devotion and input nor it was in the
1st tier of LO QA. Unless there were some other values in selection. I
don't doubt that selected candidate can achieve expected level, but he
simply wasn't there at the time of selection, as seen in the previous
and the most recent report (4).

Lesson learned in the harder way is that it's approximately of the
same value in TDF to triage 100, 735, 6.434 or 16.434 bugs. For later
volunteer can spend years and detriment personal life but it's only
appreciated by word, not really advised. Instead, after some hundred/s
of bugs, it's better to go on with personal development/growth as
listed in (5).
Since this was not correct to me, it makes no sense to go on doing the
work that someone is now chosen for.

(1) https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Team
(2) https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2022/07/22/join-the-libreoffice-team-as-a-quality-assurance-analyst-m-f-d-40h-per-week-remote/
(3) https://qa.blog.documentfoundation.org/2022/10/11/qa-dev-report-september-2022/
(4) https://qa.blog.documentfoundation.org/2022/11/10/qa-dev-report-october-2022/
(5) https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/GetInvolved

Regards
Timur