Meet a Tester: Archana

In Meet a Tester, we feature QA experts from our network who share their love for quality and Testlio. Archana is an experienced tester passionate about building quality products.

Tell us a bit about yourself

I was born and brought up in a town called Mysore, in India – it is famous for its medical colleges, splendid eateries, and warm weather. Later, I moved to the silicon valley of India, Bangalore, where I worked as an HR and afterward as a QA engineer. In 2012, I moved to Boston, USA, with my husband and since then I have embraced the cold weather! I can speak English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and my native language called Kannada.

What is your educational background?

I have an engineering degree in telecommunication. As I am a people person, I first choose to pursue employment in the human resources field. But after a while, I realized that I wanted a more challenging technical job, so I switched careers – I got an opportunity to work for a manager that I had hired for one of the teams!! There was a lot for me to learn but it was fun.

How did you end up testing for Testlio? 

I took a break from my career when my daughter was born. When she turned 3, I wanted to get back to work, but I still wanted to be able to spend significant time with her – I was not ready to send her to a full-time daycare either. So I looked for freelancing opportunities and started testing for a crowd testing platform. However, I wasn’t happy with its bug bounty model and was missing the sense of belonging within a team. For that reason, I started to look around for other options and stumbled upon Testlio. I signed up, passed the vetting tests, and have been a tester on the platform for the past couple of years. I really like how Testlio operates and feel proud to be part of the team.  

What are your specialties?

When I started my career, I was mostly testing client-server applications and web applications on the Windows platform. In the last few years, I have gained strong expertise in functional testing for mobile apps, web, and desktop platforms.

How does Testlio’s pay compare to other crowdtesting platforms?

I would say that Testlio’s pay is much better than that of many other crowd testing platforms. But more than that, the key differentiator here is we strive to deliver quality as a team with a deep understanding of the product – rather than compete to log a bug and get a paycheck.

What’s an interesting fact about yourself?

I was a national level yoga champion and a state-level badminton player in my youth. if I hadn’t pursued an undergraduate degree, I would most likely have become a sports coach. I am also a trained Indian classical singer and now I teach my daughter the craft as well.

How do you manage the balance between testing and personal life?

Work-life balance is the foremost reason I chose to make Testlio my work home. I want to make sure I can spend time with my daughter and son – whether it’s helping my daughter learn a second language or encouraging my little one to start talking, I want to be there for them. Work does become a priority as there is a commitment and some days can get very busy, but thankfully I also get a lot of support from my spouse.

What motivates you professionally?

Making a difference is what motivates me – I get a real sense of achievement when the work I do helps develop a quality product. In the quality assurance field, there is constant learning, improvements to make, and an opportunity to step up.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I use iHeartRadio a lot to listen to local radio, CamScanner to scan documents/writings, and FilmoraGo to make short movies with my daughter 🙂 

How would you convince a friend to join Testlio?

Collaboration and teamwork make a big psychological difference to how we feel at work – with Testlio’s way of working, I don’t think I would need to convince anyone to join the network.