The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

[This has been cross-posted to the Tucows Blog.]

We’ve got another job opening here at Tucows: QA Analyst!

Wait…didn’t you already announce this job opening?

You’re probably thinking of this position: QA Analyst/Performance Testing. That’s a position that calls for a little more experience and has a little more responsibility. This one is just plain old “QA Analyst”, minus the “Performance Testing” part. That position called for 2+ years experience with test panning, test development and web application test execution; this one calls for 1+ years. If you didn’t have the experience for that job, you might want to consider this one!

The Job Description

Here it is, straight from HR’s mouth:

Main Purpose

Tests software to ensure that developed products meet design specifications and are within total quality management limits and standards. Communicates with product developers. Operates under some supervision.

Key Responsibilities

• You will be required to do code development to support test automation and other testing tools
• Plan and perform required testing activities
• Develop testing documents to verify Tucows’ services and applications

Ideal Candidate Profile

Related experience / Unique skill set:

• Solid understanding of test methodology and testing lifecycle
• 1+ years Test Planning experience
• 1+ years Test Development experience
• 1+ years Web Application Test Execution experience
• Comfortable in testing application in Unix and/or Linux environment

3 or more of the following:

• Automated testing
• API testing
• GUI/Functional/Installation testing
• Performance testing
• Security testing

Special consideration for:

• QA or Test Certification
• Fluent in one of the web testing tools
• Courses in Oracle (asset)
• Participated in test tool evaluation and deployment process

Education:

• College or University degree in information technology or equivalent

Interpersonal skills:

• Strong organizational and analytical skills
• Comfortable working to tight deadlines; strong team player
• Sense of job commitment
• Good communication skills

Other things you should know about:

• Once a month Friday night/Saturday morning code promotion testing

So What’s It Like at Tucows?

Since I wrote about it so recently, I’ll simply point you to this entry; just scroll down to the section titled A Little Bit About Tucows. The short answer is: “It’s pretty cool.”

Want to Apply for the Job?

Email your resume and cover letter to hrdept@tucows.com, making sure that you include QA Analyst in the subject.

Not the Ann Coulter one (which is a couple of days old, anyway), but this one:

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

From CNN:

Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial. Libby faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity to reporters.

Or, as a wag on Wikipedia put it in a soon-to-be-edited-out part of the entry on Libby: “This treasonous dogfucker is going to jail.”

Today’s stories on Global Nerdy, the tech blog for which I write:

• Free Barenaked Ladies on the internet? Won’t somebody please think of the children? “The good news: a major band has released their latest album, in its entirety, as DRM-free MP3 files. The bad news? It’s the Barenaked Ladies.”
• I see dead presidents! George writes about the social network/geneaology site Geni: “I’ve used it (only to build a family tree so far, I haven’t spammed my family and in-laws with invitations yet), and it’s very straightforward as family tree builders go. My hat’s off to the Geni team.”
• Dear Mobile Phone: Please Quit Showing Off and Just Do Your Damn Job. Why are mobile phones packed with useless and annoying “features”, instead of truly useful ones?
• A Former Verizon Sales Rep’s 8 Tips for Buying a Verizon Phone. 8 useful tips for getting the best deal from Verizon. Anyone from Bell Mobility want to share some tips on how to get the best deal from them?

Brett Lamb writes:

I really want to, but wasn’t able to do the poster for Manufacturing Dissent, a new documentary about Michael Moore, so I passed the project on to Robot Johnny who did the smashing artwork above. The film will be at Hot Docs in April.

Robot Johnny writes a little bit about the poster in his blog.

I have a problem with Moore: there are good messages and ideas in his documentary films and TV shows (on the other hand, his attempt at non-doc work, Canadian Bacon was downright terrible) and a certain earnestness in his work, but in his eagerness to get his message across, he’s more than happy to mistreat people — remember the scene in Bowling for Columbine where he ambushes a semi-coherent Charlton Heston in his own home? — and ignore annoying little concepts like “truth” and “journalistic integrity”. He and his fans are merely the other side of the Bill O’Reilly/Sean Hannity/FOX News coin.

Apparently I’m not the only non-right-winger who feels that way about Moore. Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine, two documentary filmmakers based here in Accordion City and the creators of Manufacturing Dissent (they also made the documentary Citizen Black, about former-media-magnate-soon-to-be-jailbird Conrad Black), share my opinion. They didn’t start out that way, however. Here’s a snippet from an article about the film in the International Herald Tribune:

…during the course of making an unauthorized film about Moore, they wound up somewhere in between. In the process, their experience has added a twist to the long-running story of an abrasive social critic who has frequently been criticized from the right, but far less often, as is the case with Melnyk and Caine, from his own end of the political spectrum.

“What he’s done for documentaries is amazing,” said Melnyk, 48, a native of Toronto and a freelance TV producer, who even now expounds on the good she says Moore has done. “People go to see documentaries now and, as documentary makers, we’re grateful.”

But according to Caine, 46, an Ohio-born journalist and cameraman, the freewheeling persona cultivated by Moore, and the free-thinking rhetoric expounded by his friends and associates were not quite what they encountered when they decided to examine his work. “As investigative documentarists we always thought we could look at anything we wanted,” Caine said. “But when we turned the cameras on one of the leading figures in our own industry, the people we wanted to talk to were like: ‘What are you doing? Why are you throwing stones at the parade leader?'”

Melnyk added, “We were very lonely.”

Their film “Manufacturing Dissent” will have its premiere on March 10 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. To say it sheds an unflattering light on Moore — whose work includes the hit “Fahrenheit 9/11” and the Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine” — would be an understatement.

For the curious, here’s Manufacturing Dissent’s trailer:

I’m looking forward to catching this film at Hot Docs. And well done with the poster, Robot Johnny!

I can’t think of a nicer shrieking head that this could have happened to:

[Via Michelle Malkin is An Idiot, by way of Wonkette]

(This posting also appears on the Tucows Blog.)

Quality assurance and performance testers are the unsung heroes of the tech world. Without their nitpicking, we programmer types would be unleashing far more havoc upon the world, whether in the form of errors and crashing apps or software that runs like molasses. As much as they can sometimes annoy me as a programmer — after all, part of their job is to poke my creations until they break — I have to salute them for their work with a filet mignon on a flaming sword.

The Job Description

Here at Tucows, we’ve got a job opening for a QA/Performance Testing person. Here’s the “Main purpose” from the official job description:

Develops and applies customized performance testing strategy that include load, stress and scalability testing. Involve in testing software to ensure that developed products meet design specifications and are within total quality management limits and standards. Communicates with product developers on product issues. Operates under general supervision.

Simply put: our services don’t go out the door until you say they’re ready to go out the door.

Here are the key responsibilities for the job:

• You are expected to apply your solid QA performance testing: load, stress and scalability
• You will be required to do code development to support test automation and other testing tools
• Plan and perform required testing activities, and develop testing documents to verify Tucows services and applications
• Provide technical guidance to other team members

Here’s the ideal candidate profile:

• Solid understanding of test methodology and testing lifecycle
• 2+ years Test Planning experience
• 2+ years Test Development experience
• 2+ years Web Application Test Execution experience
• 2+ years in Java, JavaScript, Perl and/or PHP code development experience
• Familiar with Unix and/or Linux environment and commands
• Experienced in automated testing
• Experienced in API testing
• 2+ years Performance testing, familiar with Web performance testing tools
• Fluent in one of the web testing tools
• College or University degree in information technology or equivalent
• QA or Test Certification
• Courses in Oracle (asset)
• Courses in Java, JavaScript, Perl and/or PHP development languages
• Courses in Unix Admin (asset)
• Time management skills
• Quick learner, analytical and attention to details
• Comfortable working to tight deadlines
• Easy to work with, a true team player
• Sense of job commitment
• Good communication skills

QA analyst/performance testing people take part in a once-a-month Friday night or Saturday morning code testing session for code promotion.

A Little Bit About Tucows

What We Do

You know what ISPs and hosting services do — the fact that you’re reading this online suggests that one way or another, you’re making use of the services of an internet service provider or hosting company. We’re next up on the supply chain: just as they provide services to get you online, we provide services that get them to get you online.

Take domain names, for instance. Not just anyone can become a registrar (that’s a person or organization with the ability to register domain names). You need to fork out a hefty amount of cash, have a relationship with ICANN, participate in the governance of the domain name system and a perform a whole bunch of other administrivial tasks. As a wholesaler of domain name registrations, we do all that unpleasant work and give you, the service provider, access to our capability to register domain names, either through our APIs or our web-based management interface. The end result: service providers can register domain names for their customers without the hassles that registrars go through.

Same thing with email. You could provide your customers with email service by setting up a computer to be an email server, maintaining it and guarding it against attacks of all kinds. Our hosted email and email defense customers prefer to let us handle the task of providing email and anti-spam service so that they can concentrate on provisioning these services and providing support to their customers.

Other services we provide include managed DNS, digital certificates and web page building and blogging tools, all of which our partners then resell to their customers. By using our services, our partners can worry less about maintaining machinery and software and can concentrate on their true differentiator, which is customer service.

What Working Here is Like

We’re located in Liberty Village, the warehouse district of Toronto that is south of King Street, bounded by Dufferin on the west, Strachan on the east, and the Canadian National Exhibition to the south. It’s a great neighbourhood in which to work, as it’s home to a lot of people doing high-tech and creative work, as well as a number of independent restaurants and cafes and a 24-hour grocery. We’re also a short walk away from the new “it” part of Queen Street West, with its night spots such as the Gladstone Hotel, Drake Hotel, “The Social”, Cadillac Lounge and others. It’s a far cry from a dreary office park in the suburbs!

You’ll work with a lot of smart people in a converted warehouse with high ceilings, a decent-sized kitchen area, a rooftop deck with two gas barbecues (I’m known in the company as the guy who barbecues year-round, even in the dead of winter) and a stone’s throw from public transit. The work atmosphere and dress code is casual, and the tendency here is to let people make their own decisions, do their own thinking and shine at their jobs.

I’ve been working here for the past three and a half years and would gladly recommend it. We’re going through some changes to address the new world of “Web 2.0” and have got some interesting projects that we’re working on. If you’re looking for challenging tech work at a company with a good reputation in a great location, you should check us out.

Interested?

If you’re interested in this job, please email your resume and cover letter to hrdept@tucows.com, and make sure you include QA Analyst/Performance Testing in the subject line.