The Power of People in Digital Quality

Transcript

DAVID CARTY: Mark Kalet has been in QA and IT for a long time, almost as long as he’s been a theater actor and director. His thespian experience goes back to his high-school days, and it’s still a key part of his identity today.

MARK KALET: I don’t act quite as much as I used to. I like to get on stage once in a while, but it’s really like– it’s all those moving parts, trying to put them together. That’s the goal there. I like the idea of directing one show a year. It’s a lot of different people. It’s a lot of different parts. It’s a lot of keeping track of a lot of things and making sure they all flow together. You meet such wonderful people and you work with them, and it’s just bringing out the best in people is kind of what you’re doing there. And in that sense, it’s very much like my professional career, because that’s one of the things that gives me the greatest joy, is seeing people who I’ve worked with who’ve come in, and they’re fairly new to their career, and just helping them succeed and move up the ladder. 

CARTY: Mark found that theater helped him break out of his shell, going from a very shy youngster to someone who feels comfortable expressing themselves on a stage. 

KALET: I mean, honestly, I was scared to death of any kind of performing up until I was about 16. I was stage-managing for a production of Grease at my high school. And one of the actors dropped out of the show, and they pulled me into the show. And ever since then, I’ve pretty much been performing for the last– oh, I’m not even going to say how long, but a long time. I was a very, very shy kid. I would talk to my friends and things like that, and my family, but honestly, I didn’t really speak up or talk out of turn. You know, in class I would kind of be quiet. Then I started doing theater, and now you can’t shut me up. So some people might actually have a problem with the fact that I did theater. But it was definitely something, I felt, that changed my entire perspective on my life, in terms of how to deal with people and how to interact with people. And you think you’re just putting on a character and you’re pretending to be someone else– which, that is part of it– but it does get you more comfortable in front of other people. It gets you comfortable in how you– when you approach a part, you’re also approaching people. You’re kind of people watching for a little bit to try and understand how to play a character. And some of that becomes really helpful later on, when you go into college and you meet people from all different backgrounds, and you have more of an empathetic understanding of how to deal with them. 

CARTY: Oddly enough, an arts background is somewhat common in QA as creative individuals often have creative ways of finding defects and solving problems. 

KALET: I definitely think, in terms of my management career, it has helped me more than anything, in terms of that empathy and sort of trying to understand people. The connection I finally made throughout my career was it’s one of problem solving, and that’s pretty much everything. Theater is solving the problem of, How do you stage this for people to understand what you’re trying to say or what you’re trying to do? Art is the same. You’re creating something. You have an– even if it’s your own mental problem that you’re trying to solve, you have a– oh, I have this idea. How do I get that idea across? How do I create something that speaks to people? That’s a problem-solving situation. IT is literally problem solving. It’s, you’re presented with a problem, find out the source of the problem, solve it. 

CARTY: This is the Ready, Test, Go. podcast, brought to you by Applause. I’m David Carty.

Today’s guest is theater enthusiast and quality assurance leader Mark Kalet. Despite a wealth of experience, especially in the media sector, Mark currently finds himself in search of his next opportunity, and it was a LinkedIn post discussing his frustrations in that search that caused him to go viral, with more than 1 million impressions on his post. People across his extended social media network related to the challenge of finding work, including the effects of ageism, a market flooded with recently laid-off workers, and the discouragement of automatic rejection emails. Mark’s post was largely about appreciating and understanding his own value in the workforce, even if some employers can’t see it, which caused him to reflect on a business’s most valuable asset in the age of automation and AI, the employee, the person, the human. And that is especially true when it comes to building and testing software, which, after all, is intended for use by people, not machines, who ultimately determine whether the launch is successful or not.  Mark took a break from his podcast Transparenting, about being a parent to a gender-transitioning son, to talk with us. Let’s jump into it. 

Mark, we mentioned your viral job search post in the intro, in which you claim that many companies and CEOs too often see employees as resources rather than the assets that they are. What’s the distinction between the two for you, and how would you recommend that any C-level executives sort of reframe their thinking on the topic? 

KALET: I think it’s more about, if you’re seeing people as resources, it’s like cells on a spreadsheet. There’s no distinction. They’re numbers. They’re nothing. I kind of look at it, when you’re looking at resources versus assets, it’s kind of like the difference between a pencil versus a computer. A pencil, you work with, the point breaks, you sharpen it. And if you use it up, you throw it away, and that’s it. A computer does quite a bit more than write or draw. And you generally– it’s expensive. But because of that, you get a lot more use out of it, and it’s more versatile than the pencil is. To me, that’s the difference. You don’t– a lot of what we’re seeing in technology, and other corporations and areas as well, we’re seeing them cut the bottom, the bottom of the– and you’re talking about people whose salaries don’t really amount to nearly that much, when it comes to a CEO’s salary or the board’s salary. And there are other ways to cut that bottom line that make a bigger difference than laying off a thousand employees, especially when, you know, let’s face it, the people at the bottom are doing most of that work. Yes, the CEO is making choices that affect those people, and they are the ones who, say, the board trusts. But that work is getting done by these people, and they have a lot to offer the company. And I think that’s the difference, is they’re just saying, oh, let’s just get rid of a thousand people, without considering, What do they bring to the company versus what does somebody who makes a million dollars a year bring to the company, and how better would that million dollars be served? I’m not saying fire people at the top– or maybe I am– but that’s my take on it, is right now, we’re in an area– we’re in an era of the tech world where it just seems easier to cut people than try and figure out how to work this out. 

CARTY: Understood there. Now, as a director of IT and senior QA manager, I’m sure you’ve been fortunate to work with a number of people who you would consider assets to your employer, right? How does all of that unique people power ultimately translate to better software quality and better business outcomes in a way that maybe automation or systems might not? 

KALET: Well, I think it’s a matter of different perspectives. When you’re– say you’re proofreading your own manuscript. Your mind is going to fill in pieces, so you can’t really proofread it yourself. You’re going to see the errors and go right over them because in your head, you’re going, well, what I meant was this. You need a different perspective to look at that. That’s why you have someone else proofread it. It’s similar with software, in that one person looks at it, they see this, but they may miss these errors. This other person looks at it, they can see it. With automation, you have– you’re programming it. You’re programming it to do a specific job, and it’s going to do the specific job the way you programmed it. So if there’s an error in the programming, that’s a problem. If it comes across something it’s not programmed to catch, that’s a problem. You don’t have that same problem with people. You have– the more people you throw at a problem– well, no, the more people you throw at a– QA in a problem, I think, the better, because you’re able to catch things. No single QA person is going to catch everything, because that’s just not possible. But if you multiply that, and you grab a number of people and you have them look at it from– they have different perspectives. Everybody’s mind works differently. And they’re going to look at it differently, and they’re going to catch more bugs than automation would. 

CARTY: Automation is maybe more prone to institutional blindness because of how it’s programmed, as opposed to people, that can offer a different perspective, even if people are also prone to some institutional blindness, right? 

KALET: Correct. Yes. Everyone– listen, automation is great. It just cannot work alone. You need the human element. People are more versatile. And you’re going to hear me say “versatile” a lot in this conversation because that’s one of my main ideas in QA, is you have to be versatile. You have to be able to move and turn on a dime, and it’s something that automation can’t do. Automation is a great tool, but it’s a tool for people, so. 

CARTY: Right, to turn on a dime here, let’s keep on the digital quality thread. You’ve built and reorganized QA teams from the ground up, right? Aside from technical requirements, what sorts of characteristics do you personally prioritize in a candidate on a QA team? Is there an undervalued trait or something like that that you find particularly important? 

KALET: It’s funny, because when we would be searching for people, we would say there were– well, I would say, I wouldn’t say “we” say– I would say there were three qualities I wanted. One of them is technical, and one of them was versatility, and the other one was personality. And I would usually say the personality is actually more important, because you can teach people the technology and you can kind of teach people the versatility, but the personality, the enthusiasm for the work, the attention-to-detail aspect of things, too, those are the things that you need in order to be a good QA person. You need to be able to track those changes and have a good memory. So I always think personality because you can have somebody who’s a real grump, who can’t work with anybody. And I’m not saying everybody has to be friends. You don’t have to be friends, but you have to work together. So you need that ability, and that’s part of some people’s personality. You have to be able to communicate with other people and communicate findings easily. So I would say that. I would say it’s that personality aspect. And again, “versatility” is going to be all through this conversation. [LAUGHS] 

CARTY: I heard it that time. You know, I think that must run in stark contrast to maybe on the dev side or the product side, right, where they might require or prioritize that technical level of expertise a little bit more, right? I mean, does that sometimes maybe clash a little bit, when you look at how individuals are hired across the company or across the organization? 

KALET: I’ve seen that. I’ve seen– like, there was a time at my last company where they put basically every single person that they were going to hire through a dev interview. And for a while, no one was getting hired because– except for devs, obviously– but because– and some of that also comes down to, if you’re a QA person– or let me say it a different way. If you’re a dev, you don’t really want to do QA. You don’t want to do program management. So why would people looking for those jobs with those skill sets want to acquire a dev skill set? And of course, if you have the dev background, why not be a dev, you know? So it was a weird time for the company. And we finally were able to be in control of our own hiring, and, yeah, it’s definitely a different mindset when you’re– and I can’t speak for devs or program managers because, obviously, I’m on the QA side. But it seems to me, the devs are incredibly tech driven. Like, if you take those three that I mentioned– personality, attention to detail, versatility– they’re tech, and they have, hopefully, the enthusiasm for tech and they are detail oriented. But all of those things are more important than personality because a lot of dev work is heads down. You know, you’re focused. That’s why you see most devs with headphones on all the time. They are focused on what they’re doing. They’re listening to music or whatever, whatever helps them get that job done, and you know, I can totally respect that. QA and program management, to a degree, also, those are more social. There’s more of a social aspect to it because they’re– I have to communicate my findings. But for QA and program management, there’s definitely a communication aspect that has to happen, or how do you communicate what the software should be and what it’s actually doing? That’s going on around the dev, and the dev communicates within that. But for them, the most important thing is getting the tech, getting it done. We have to get this done and get it out. And then we have to crap all over it, basically. I always look at it as more of a challenge. Like, I work best with the devs who kind of say, OK, I finished my work, I dare you to find a bug in this. And it’s kind of a tongue-in-cheek challenge. It’s more of a friendly challenge, because I’ve never come across a piece of software that hasn’t had a bug. But, I mean, but they should have that much confidence in their work, and then we should also be confident, like, oh, we’ll find a bug. 

CARTY: Right, and you hope that as things evolve, people are moving forward with that idea of digital quality being at the forefront, and that’s a little bit more of a shared goal moving forward. At least, that’s the utopian sort of view that– 

KALET: You want to have– you want to have– well, the goal is to create good software. I mean, that’s really what it comes down to. So you hope that we all have that same goal at heart, so. 

CARTY: Now, as opposed to automated systems, people, of course, they have their own personal and professional issues that they need to work through. Acknowledging that those issues can be quite numerous, quite diverse, right? How do you try to coach team members through their struggles and challenges while also maintaining some level of productivity? I imagine it’s a little bit of a balance, right? 

KALET: Yeah, it’s definitely– it can be a little bit of an issue. But, I mean, what I’ve tried to tell every team that I’ve ever worked with is I’m there for them regardless. I don’t need to know the details of what your personal struggles are. If you want to tell me, I will be there for you. There’s no– I don’t have all the answers. I have empathy. I will listen. I will be there for you. If there’s something going on with you, it’s best if you let me know that there’s something going on with you. You don’t even have to say what it is. But then I can get– we can cover for you. We can give you the time or the focus that you need to handle this problem or deal with the problem and not let the work suffer, you know. I mean, obviously, family’s always going to come first, and most of the time, I’m not working on any of– the products that I’ve worked on have not been life-saving products, where a split-second decision changes someone’s life. But we’ve had people have family emergencies and things like that, and I always say that we close the ranks. We make sure that we cover that work for that person, and at least that’s the– that’s what I’ve tried to push out to the teams. And it’s really great to see when someone in, like, a Slack channel says, oh, I have to take– I’ll go with a lower one– I have to take the dog to the vet because he’s throwing up or he ate a tennis ball or whatever, and people are like, I’ll take care of the PlayStation or the whatever, whatever they were working on. I got it for you, don’t worry. You know, seeing that, knows that I’ve succeeded in kind of establishing that trust and that sense of community within the team. 

CARTY: I’m curious if there’s a particular type of methodology that you prefer to adopt as a leader or that you– do you try to let your team sort of influence that decision? How do you come to that conclusion? 

KALET: I think the– it’s a little of both. I mean, I go in with– I want them to trust me, and I feel like I have to earn that trust. I don’t I don’t think it just comes with, I’m your boss and you have to trust me. I have to show them that they can and that they should. I’m very transparent about everything that I possibly can, unless I have been specifically told, you can’t tell anybody about this because this is a secret. But, you know, I’ll be transparent about what’s going on with things, but I also feel like it’s my job to cover them from things that, honestly, either they can’t do anything about or they’re– that really don’t affect what they’re doing, you know. Like, I try to shut down any rumors that don’t really have any basis in fact, just because that tends to– people get wound up on that, and so it’s easier to say, listen, just don’t worry about it, either– especially since you don’t have any power to change that if something happens. So it’s like, listen, just keep doing your work. This way– let’s say we’re talking about a layoff or something– if you’re continuing to do your work and not worrying about this, if they– say that’s true and they look to do a layoff, they’re going to look at you and go, well, this person’s been doing their work fine the entire time. It’s a point in your favor. You know, does that mean that a layoff’s not going to happen? No, of course not. Who knows what– there’s a million reasons why there might be a layoff. But at least you can look back at yourself and go, like, I did my job. Like, there’s nothing to be– I gave them no reason to get rid of me, versus getting laid off. It’s more of a bottom-up methodology, so, I mean, I guess it really comes from the team. The team members who are– as a manager or director, you’re kind of not in the trenches, and those people are. And so you’re– the information is coming from them, and it’s very important to make sure that that’s understood, that it’s not just like, well, I did this, and, blah, blah, blah. I’ve worked for a number of people who’ve done that, who take credit for everything that everybody else has done, and that doesn’t engender trust. It doesn’t engender any kind of desire for people to continue working. It doesn’t motivate anybody. So, yeah, I tend to– I let them know that I have trust in them, and then I let them work with the responsibility. I give them ownership over what they’re doing. I don’t want to– I don’t want to take that. I’m looking at it at more of a high level. So when I come to them, I’ll ask them questions, and I’ll say, what’s the– give me the important takeaways of this. I don’t need to know every single detail of everything, but that’s what I have them for.

CARTY: Right. You mentioned before how QA can be seen as a little bit of a blocker or an impediment, maybe, from the dev side in particular. How do you try to advocate for people on your teams and the work that they’re doing, evangelizing digital quality, and trying to create more value from the wins that they provide? 

KALET: It’s funny, we took a personality assessment a few years ago, one of the– there’s the– this one was called the Birkman. And actually, they ask a lot of weird questions, and they’re always like, Would you rather be a fireman or an accountant? And you’re like, What? The weird thing about this thing is that it was very spot-on in terms of the personality assessments for each person. But the reason I bring this up is there’s a specific question in there– I don’t remember the details of the question, but it was like– they separated us into squares on the floor. And it was like, OK, for this one, so you had seven people in that one and three people in this one and 10 people in that one, and then there was one square that was just me. And the guy doing the assessment said, that’s your cheerleader. So, yeah, and it was interesting, and I took that to heart. It’s my job, part of my job, to be the cheerleader for the team, to be the person who says, you know, this is what QA is doing. These are the wins. These are the people doing it. You know, I find that very important. It’s not just, QA is doing this. It’s, you know, Jose Leo or specific– you have to name-check people so that people start to recognize these names, so that they know that it’s a team of people, that we start– when I started, it was a weird flux time. No one knew there was a QA team at all. So that was my first job, was to say, yeah, I’m the manager of the QA team. We have a QA team? Yes, we have a QA team, and this is what we’re doing. So I would be reaching out to all of the other department heads and various people in those departments. I had to have that conversation. That first year, I had to have that conversation a lot. Yes, we have a QA team. And then I started moving on, and I empowered the team to speak up in meetings. In a lot of cases, they had never spoken up in a meeting. So it was always like, I’m listening, I’m taking in information, and then they would bring it back. And they would either bring it to me or they would bring it to the director of QA, and they would say, this is what they’re doing. What should we do? And I would always say, well, what do you think we should do? And they said, well, we should do this, this, and this. And I’m like, you already know what we should do, so you should speak up. And they’re like, I can do that? And I was like, yes, please, you have to do that. And so people who never said a word in meetings are now speaking out, and passionately, because they do care about quality, and I’m like, you have to bring that passion to this meeting. You have to do this. So I guess my– first, it’s advocating to make sure that people understand there is a QA department. Then it’s advocating for the actual practice of QA, and then it’s the people themselves and empowering them to speak up. The QA team is one of the teams that knows the software better than anybody. We have end-to-end testing. We would test it every single different way. We know all the features. We know the drift between a PlayStation and, you know, iOS. We know that we’re there to test the app, so we know the differences of how it behaves on this and how it behaves on this. So we’re a resource that should be used by other teams when they have a question about something. And I think– I don’t know that I would expect everyone else to have that, because if you’re a dev, you’re working on a specific part of the app, and you’re doing this and doing this. You don’t know how it interlocks into something else. That’s for us to test during a merge. So I would say just supporting my team, and just making sure that they have the resources they have and they have my support, is one way of making sure that I’m advocating for them. 

CARTY: Right. To bring it back to the original point of conversation here, we’re in an age where advancements in automation and generative AI has people worried about their jobs, rightfully so, right? Yet, these technologies will be a business imperative and a differentiator moving forward because of the value that they offer. So what’s the right balance to strike between high-powered automation and AI systems and people power, which, as we’ve established, has a lot of value as well? 

KALET: Well, automation is great. AI is bright and new and shiny, and it should be used to cut through the tedious tasks that are, just in general, across our lives, you know. But you need the versatility of people and that ownership that people bring. Like, if there’s a problem, you have to rewrite what the automation is looking for. Whereas, again, we’re talking about turning on a dime– “oh, you know what, I’m noticing a problem here. I need to do this.” And I think one of the things we can do is invest in the people. And as we pivot more towards pushing more automation, even people who are working on this, we need more training for automation. We need more training for AI. I think one of the things that is happening right now is that AI is nice and shiny and new. And people hear AI, and they think it can do everything. And it can. Again, it is a tool right now. There’s learning. It’s able to learn from mistakes in a way that automation cannot. I also think that a lot of people are confusing automation and AI. But you have to have that, the human element, in order for them to– in order for it to work right. And I believe that there are tasks that shouldn’t be undertaken by AI and/or automation. There are human tasks. We can get into the whole creation of art and, you know, Will AI replace screenwriters? Will it replace artists? God, I hope not. I mean, I don’t want to have– AI is supposed to make it so that we do less work and we have more time for our art, not we do more work so AI can create art.

CARTY: Given the flux we’re seeing from consolidation and technological advancements, what skills do you see becoming especially valuable in the next 10 years for QA professionals? How can they sort of stay ahead of the curve in this windy road? 

KALET: Some learning about AI would be good. But, of course, it’s so new, and it’s such an unfinished plane, I guess, that there’s really no specific thing you can tell people to learn about. I think that the way– everything’s going to be about going faster with less people, and I think that’s what AI– that’s what companies are expecting from AI, is like, oh, I can do all of this with– I have 10 people on this now. I should be able to do all of this with two, and AI will fill in the gaps. I do think that there’s going to be a leveling on that and that they’re going to– it’s a tool, and you need people to run a tool. If we can stay ahead of the curve on how to use AI, I think that’s incredibly important. And there are other things coming down the pike, I’m sure, that will skew the results of what’s important to learn. But as of right now, it’s all AI. Everybody is all in. 

CARTY: OK, Mark, lightning-round questions for you here– let’s start off with this one, What is your definition of digital quality? 

KALET: A customer experience that is as free from defects as humanly possible– humanly. 

CARTY: One can only hope, right? What is one software testing trend that you find promising? 

KALET: Low-code or no-code automation. There is a way of testing, this allows the people who are doing the testing to actually write tests that don’t actually– automation tests that don’t have a lot of code in them, or no code in them. It’s a fairly new trend, and I’ve just started looking into it. But it’s very– I can’t give you too much detail, but it looks very promising to me. 

CARTY: What is your favorite app to use in your downtime? 

KALET: I thought about this for a while, and I was kind of trying to– like, what is my favorite app? And I think it’s Overcast, which is a podcast app. I listen to a lot of podcasts, sometimes while I’m working, sometimes while I’m driving, and I realized, I’m like, that’s probably the app I use the most. I mean, there’s email. There’s Slack. But Overcast, it’s hours and hours of podcasts. I’m almost at the point where I’m at the end of my list of podcasts that I’ve grabbed, so it’s working pretty well. [LAUGHS] 

CARTY: Well, you know you’ve got one more here that you can subscribe to, so. 

KALET: That’s true. Yeah, now I have to add one. I mean, I have to add the backlog. 

CARTY: That’s right. That’s right. We’ve got plenty to go through. And final question here for you, Mark, what is something that you are hopeful for? 

KALET: In tech or just in general? 

CARTY: In your life, anything in your life that you’re hopeful for. 

KALET: OK, that changes things. In tech, I would say, keeping the human element alive in tech. I hope that things improve in the world and that we’re in a better place in a year or two, that the political and state of the world just improves. Like, there’s a lot of promise with AI, and if AI can help us get out of this mess, I will be the biggest advocate for AI. I am cautiously optimistic about AI, but I am a huge– I am the devil’s advocate when it comes to picking it apart.