My journey from truck driver to QA Engineer

My journey from truck driver to QA Engineer

My name is Daniel Gold, and I have changed my life!

I’m a happily married man, a father of 2 lovely boys, and for 7 years of my life - I have been a truck driver. I worked only night shifts driving hundreds of miles. Manually packing, distributing, loading and unloading more than 6 tones of merchandise a day, in minus 4 degrees warehouses, I could only dream of a desk job or a comfortable office chair.

One day while I was driving my distribution truck, I could not disregard the thought that this is not the place I would like to be in 10 years from now. Let’s be honest, unless we win the lottery we will all work somewhere, the question is how and where?

Like everyone at some point in their lives, I started to think about getting an education. Being a father and having a full time night job, did not allow me to pause everything and go get myself an academic degree.

So I started my quest for an alternative way to find my calling in life. The light in my deliberation came from my sister, a QA team leader which introduced me to the mysterious world of software testing.

After a short introduction to the essence of the profession, we set down in front of the computer. She opened an application that looked super complicated at that time, and started questioning me about what I would test in every button, text box and fetcher on the screen. To our surprise, my answers made sense. What amazed me the most, is the fact that I have set for 4 hours in front of the screen fascinated and mesmerized by the challenge. That moment, I found something that challenged interested and exited me. I have fallen in love with this profession without knowing what is waiting for me next.

Living in the periphery of Israel, soon enough I found out that only one collage can thoroughly teach me my desired occupation in an evening class format, and that it was located 150 kilometers from where I live. I had no choice but to embrace the opportunity, and start driving there to get my education and diploma. The year that followed was no less of a nightmare. Night shifts at work, followed by a two hour drive to class. I barely slept, my family time turned into intense study hours and days off were spent with a book on my lap.
It was beyond hard but I can honestly say that if I wasn’t  Investing all of my energy in learning beyond the necessary material at home trying to catch up and compensate for my non technological background, I wouldn’t be able to earn my place in the industry. Try to imagine, a whole high tech world full of new words, terminologies and knowledge I had to acquire. I still don’t know how I did it but I ended up graduating with honors.

Diploma in hand, I started scanning every possible website, Facebook group and wanted ad to find my first dream job. I have been in more than 30 interviews, and visited more than 15 office buildings introducing myself and trying to get a chance to prove what i have to offer. Needless to say that no one rushed to hire a 28 year old truck driver that lived 2 hours away from the office, but I was not willing to give up!

After 6 months of searching, I have been accepted to my first QA position that was located 120 kilometers from where I live, and I was the proudest, most joyful Junior QA Engineer on earth driving 4 hours back and forth to work. I am thrilled because i remember where i came from, and what it took to get to where i am today.

To those of you that dream of changing their lives – believe in yourself, Work hard, don’t give up and eventually it will happen. If I can do it, so can you!