A Microsoft tester spills his guts about testing tools for devs, chugging the kool-aid, and dancing zombies

The geek in question Justin Wilcox

The job title Test Lead, MSMQ

MSMQ, huh? Nice Microsoft acronym. Break it down for me.
MSMQ stands for Microsoft Message Queuing, which ships as part of Windows. We're a messaging platform that developers use if you've got an application on Computer A that wants to send information to Computer B, you use us to guarantee that information gets there, even if there's a failure (e.g. machines burst into flames, someone trips over the Ethernet cable, asteroids, etc.) after you sent the information.

So wait, what the hell do you actually do?
We write code to test all day, as if we were developers/consumers. We just use our product in interesting and difficult situations. Our audience is us, in a sense, so we're testing a product that we would use — and in fact it's a product that many Microsoft teams do use.

And you got into this gig how?
I've been with the company now for four years, after doing two internships. I applied for my first internship during all the anti-trust stuff, and I thought to myself, "Wow, these guys are incredible — so much so that they're in trouble for being so good. Lemme go, see what they're up to, let me go get some information, and then see where else I can go with that information."

My internship was cool — I got so much responsibility — so I came back again. Then I started liking the people and decided to come on full time. I've taken a full gulp of the kool-aid. I started as an SDET on the MSMQ team, and then after almost three years I moved into the Test Lead position I'm in now.

Dang! College to Lead in four years? You must have learned fast, young cricket.
Besides learning a whole world of testing mentalities and strategies — there's just so much you don't learn in school — there's also tons of managerial stuff I've learned since I became a Lead. The last year and a half has been incredible. I mean, where else can a can a recent college grad lead a team of experienced engineers, learning how to do it in a year or so with a ton of great support? I've got five full time employees and two contractors working with me, and the learning experience has been incredible. I mean, still have a lot to learn — I've started taking on some responsibilities that typically a PM would do and I'm even going to Barcelona this fall to represent our team at TechEd. That's one the things I love about this company — there's so much to learn, and so many people who want to help you learn it.

So wait, did I hear rumors about you and dancing zombies?
My latest project is leading up a local chapter of an international group attempting to break the world record for the most people doing the same dance simultaneously. We're all learning Michael Jackson's Thriller and hundreds of thousands of us from across the world are going to dance together at 3pm on October 27th, Seattle-time.

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