Revelations about working

It's like I'm suddenly finding new resources in myself, like for the first time ever I'm really starting to work to my full capacity. I loved my previous job - but I was half of the testing team of two, working very closely with my boss so there was very little independence. I had my own features to test, but we were testing the same product, and were overlapping somewhat and always talking a lot about what we were doing. It never bothered me, and I didn't particularly want the responsibility considering that it was my first "proper" QA job.

Now, I'm one person in a team of 12, testing as many products - so there can't be any overlapping, or even much hand-holding. And after several months of settling in, I'm now fully working, fully getting into my own speciality. And this week I've had several "holy shit, I really know my stuff" moments where without guidance I've been able to do the task I've been given - and not just satisfactorily, but honestly job well done, and with the thanks to go with it. Today Gino, my manager, described us (mainly him and me) as "firefighters", as a team that is put to work when something urgently needs to be done. Which sounds quite grand, but what it really means is that when something that hasn't been planned (and therefore there are no resources for it) comes down to QA and shit hits the fan we're the ones that have to drop what we're doing, roll up our sleeves and start testing.

This seems to mainly happen on the days when I've taken my yoga stuff with me and have planned to go to yoga - then the word is given and we shrug our shoulders and get down to it. The weird thing is: it would never occur to me to do anything else - but I've been now told from several sources that apparently that's something that's unusual and something they really value about me. But it seems that there are lot of people who don't do this, no matter how obvious it seems to me - people who moan and bitch about work that they don't like, and just don't do it, or do it badly. It certainly was never something I came across in working culture in England, let alone Finland. Weird.

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