Podcast Episode 13 – Our Personal Development

In this episode, the Peers talk about their journey of personal development. We all come from varied backgrounds into testing so as you can imagine, the learnings paths we took to get where we are today are just as different.

When talking about how we developed, it became clear the importance of having people around to aid us, support us and guide us to where we want to be. Russell discusses how his learning was impacted by reporting to a DBA and Simon talks about needing that mentor to help him channel his learning. The testing community is mentioned several times and without amazing resources such as the Ministry of Testing, meet-ups and conferences, our development may have been very different. Simon shares how he used his blog to develop himself and that it hit him hard when an early blog was criticised on twitter.

Chris asks the Peers about their motivation to learn and grow and the answers discussed vary from getting the roles you desire, simply being the best you can and challenging yourself to prove the value of the role.

We also discussed things we learned in earlier life that we couldn’t get enough of and tried to share with people who may not be as interested. Everything from football, Marvel, AC Cobra’s and DNA are mentioned and David gives us some insights into his teaching life too.

Let us know of your learning journeys, what motivated you? Are there things you wish you’d learned earlier?

We welcome feedback, please reach out to us Twitter, LinkedIn or email ContactUs@TestingPeers.com

Also feel free to support us on Patreon at https://patreon.com/testingpeers


As we announced on our previous podcast we are now sponsored by Saffron QA.

Saffron QA is a provider of recruitment and consultancy services, exclusively for the software testing industry.

You can find out more at https://saffronqa.co.uk/  or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/saffron-qa/

Our initial goal with this sponsorship is to improve the quality of the audio equipment which were hoping to source next week, fingers crossed.

We have found Ben from Saffron QA to be a partner who signed up to the vision and values that we have set out in our Testing Peers charter and we hope that you will take the time to visit and connect with him.

Testing Peers banner with Saffron QA sponsors