I have been working as a tester for 8 years now.

And in that time, I've gotten to do a lot of cool things:

• Being the first tester on the team and setting up the processes

• Growing as a tester by learning through conferences and communities

• Speaking and attending conferences to learn and network

There isn't much I would change about my journey.

If I could go back, here are a few of the mistakes I made early on—and what I would have done differently:

1. Thinking I should know everything about testing

Early in my career I used to feel so much pressure, it was not by others but by me. I would always think that I should an anwser for every question that's related to testing.

I could do differently by "being ok if I don't know anytihng". I could have just removed this thought from my mind that I should know everything about testing. And I would think of giving more thought on learning as opposed to knowing everything.

2. Testing is only my responsibility

I would always think that testing is just my responsibility and I would get so offended when the developer would talk about testing a story. This was when I joined my first job as tester in a startup.

I could do differently by involving the whole team to test and think about quality. Not just me but entire team to be taking ownership.

3. Developers role is more superior than a tester

I would always think of developers role as more superior than a tester. I would always give myself an excuse that I'm not a developer so that is the reason why they excluded me from certain meetings.

I could do differently by removing this thought of comparing two different roles as they both are valuable in their own ways. I would think of everyone as engineers who are trying to solve user's problem by building this software solution. There's no comparision between the roles as each role brings different value.