Tag: brazilian qas

Brazilian QA’s around the world series – Ana Paula Vale

Ana Paula Vale has been working with Technology for almost 9 years. Right now she is a Frontend Engineer and this became her career development goal after she shifted from QA Engineer.

Working with development has always been part of her life even as a person in the Software Testing area, as she was already applying test automation in every company she has been through, as she has always been passionate about it and saw the value in having automated applications.

Be sure to follow Ana on LinkedIn.


TL;DR;

Ana Paula immigrated to Portugal for new personal and professional experiences. She researched companies, job requirements, and living costs in various countries. Language was a challenge in adapting to QA practices, but she improved communication by clarifying perspectives and proposing ideas. She introduced BDD and automation concepts to Portugal. Quality importance seems consistent between Brazil and Portugal. Ana learned about visual testing and brought an automation mindset from Brazil. Work-life balance improved in Portugal with flexible hours and better quality of life. She transitioned from QA to a Frontend Developer role and noticed better recognition for developers.

What were your reasons for choosing to immigrate to Portugal ? How did you
prepare for finding a job and planning your move?

I didn’t have a great reason. At first, I wanted to leave Brazil to have new personal and
professional experiences. I started by trying Australia, New Zealand, Canada. I also tried
the company you, Rafa, were working for, remember? Haha 😂
But it turned out that I had a friend living in Portugal who referred me to the company
where he was working for.
I researched which companies were in those countries, what they asked for vacancies,
the cost of living in the cities, and what the culture was like. I also improved my resume,
sent cover letters to the companies that required it, and made connections via Linkedin
to get more ideas and tips.

Are there any specific challenges you faced when adapting to the QA practices and standards in Portugal ? How did you overcome them?

Yes, first the language. Even though we speak Portuguese, it wasn’t easy for us to
communicate in meetings and several misunderstandings happened. In these moments,
I tried to clarify my perspective, listen more, and ask questions. Also, give quick
feedback.
I was used to working with BDD, with an agile testing mindset, and always participating
in the product solution process, for example. But when I arrived, I realized that most of
the tests were manual, and I needed to be patient to understand their side, involve
myself more in the processes, propose my ideas and show them that we could try to
start automating things and why it could be better for us. I really believed in the power of
working with Behavior Driven Development and also did some workshops for them, for
example.

Have you noticed any variations in the perception or importance placed on quality assurance compared to Brazil? If so, in what ways?

No, as far as I remember, the importance given to quality was the same.

Are there any new unique methodologies or tools that you’ve come across that have improved your QA processes?

Yes, I learned more about visual tests and how to automate them. In Brazil, I thought I
only needed a tool like Applitools to do this, for example. And then I learned that visual
testing was more about image comparison and that we could also introduce visual tests
into our pipeline in a cheaper way, I would say.

Photo by Gratisography on Pexels.com

Are there any specific lessons or skills you learned in Brazil that you find particularly valuable in Portugal ?

Yes, I feel that in Brazil we focus a lot more on test automation and on the idea that
testing is not a phase, but an activity. I learned in Brazil that we are all responsible for
the quality of software and I brought that back here, when I started teaching the
developers from my team to automate, to think about test scenarios and how we could
start to avoid bugs, for example.

Have you noticed any differences in the work-life balance or professional
expectations ?

So, it depends. But I would say yes because I feel that I am very passionate about what I
do and that this can cause an increase in the load I give to work haha because I really
like to work. But now, after having migrated (yes, I now work as a Frontend Developer), I
feel my life is simpler. Unfortunately, I noticed that I’m more listened to now as a
developer than before as a QA. It was much harder to explain why testing is important,
for example.
Talking about work-life, I would say it’s better, of course. All the companies I worked for
offered flexible working hours, alternating vacation days, that is, you didn’t have to take a
whole month of vacation, for example. In addition, the cost of living is low and the quality
of life is better. So going out at night is safer and cheaper. 😂

Thanks for sharing your experience Aninha 🙏 😊 I know closely how you built your path to become what you wanted !

Brazilian QA’s around the world series – Frederico Moreira

Frederico Moreira has over 15 years of experience working with quality in its many levels and expert in Test Automation. He is proficient in Agile environments with experience in testing in a microservices architecture. Proficient in Linux environment with good scripting knowledge and proficient in testing in different platforms (e.g. mobile, web and APIs).

Be sure to follow Frederico on LinkedIn.

TL; DR;

In this interview, Frederico Moreira shares his journey of immigrating to Portugal and the cultural differences he encountered in the workplace. He discusses the challenges faced while adapting to QA practices in Portugal, noting that the role of QA is more evolved in Brazil. Despite the resistance to change in Portugal, Frederico emphasizes the importance of resilience in driving improvements in engineering culture. He also observes variations in the perception and importance placed on quality assurance, with Brazil showing more focus on non-functional quality attributes. While he didn’t find unique methodologies or tools that significantly impacted his QA processes in Portugal, he embraced learning and implementing new test automation frameworks like Cypress and Playwright. Frederico values the resilience he learned in Brazil, which proved essential in navigating cultural differences and proposing changes in Portugal. Recently, he transitioned from a QA career to a Tech Lead role, finding new challenges and opportunities for growth.

What were your reasons for choosing to immigrate to Portugal? How did you prepare for finding a job and planning your move?


I’ll try to summarize the story because it’s long 😅. At the beginning of 2016, I decided to leave my hometown and live in São Paulo, Brazil’s main “technological city.” I accepted a job offer for a new challenge in my career in a big company there.

However, after three months on this new journey, I received an invitation from a company in Portugal to do the interview process. It is worth mentioning that I always wanted to have an international experience. I was approved and received a job offer, but I couldn’t embrace this opportunity for a few reasons.

So in 2018, the same company contacted me, and this time, everything went well 🙂 So I would say that I was chosen to immigrate to Portugal and not vice versa.

Details of the entire journey here: https://www.farfetchtechblog.com/en/blog/post/joining-farfetch-a-guide-for-candidates-moving-between-countries/

Even in this blog post, I tell you how my planning went and all the excellent support I received to plan my move.

What are some of the cultural differences you’ve encountered in the new workplace? 

Generalizing the first cultural difference that I found most striking for me was seeing people prioritize family and quality of life more than the ambition to evolve their own careers . In my opinion, people are less “workaholics” than people in the IT market in Brazil.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if this is directly related, but I found a much greater resistance to change here. In several situations, I heard things like: “It’s working. You don’t need to change it. Keep it that way.” and “In a winning team, you don’t change.”

Are there any specific challenges you faced when adapting to the QA practices and standards in Portugal? How did you overcome them? 

First of all, the role of QA, in general, is much more evolved in Brazil, at least in the companies I had the opportunity to work for. Some topics that the QA community started to discuss back in 2010, for example, manual QA vs. automator QA but also the role of a QA in an agile team, is still a paradigm shift in almost every company I worked for here in Portugal, even companies that were not from Portugal I found this scenario.

To overcome this, in my first few months, I participated in a few local software development communities in my city, Porto. But I also created internal training for QAs, Tech Leads, Developers and etc., to try to change people’s mindsets and deliver some value in the engineering culture of companies. But I confess that it wasn’t easy, and it isn’t. It’s a slow process that requires a lot of resilience.

Have you noticed any variations in the perception or importance placed on quality assurance compared to Brazil? If so, in what ways? 

Yes, when I left Brazil in 2018, it was not so common for companies to find continuous delivery pipelines with performance and security tests. At least, that was my perception at the time. But I had the opportunity to explore more non-functional quality attributes in the companies I worked for.

But getting here, I realized that the focus was and it is still more focused on functional tests, whether manual or automated, than on tests and non-functional quality attributes such as security, performance, resilience, and so on.

This could even be a common gap in the world, not just in specific continents, but even today, in Brazil, these topics are still more talked about and promoted.

Are there any new unique methodologies or tools that you’ve come across that have improved your QA processes?

Honestly, no, I don’t know if it was the engineering culture, maturity of the people on the teams, or something else, but I confess that there was nothing I found here that made me think, “WOW,” this is going to change my life or even how did I not know this before.

On the other hand, I was able to learn and use, on a large scale, new test automation frameworks for the Web, such as Cypress and Playwright, which have emerged in recent years or gained more notoriety in the market. Still on framework, in the mobile contexts, I worked with, I had the opportunity to evolve testing strategies for hybrid mobile apps built with React Native, not that I like it that much 🙂 but it was and still is an interesting experience.

Are there any specific lessons or skills you learned in Brazil that you find particularly valuable in Portugal?

If I were to choose one, it would definitely be RESILIENCE 💪.

As I said earlier, there is greater resistance to change than in Brazil, and to overcome this, you need to be resilient and patient, set your expectations, and convince people clearly and transparently of the value your proposed changes can bring.

But this is part of your professional growth when you emerge in a new culture, it will undoubtedly contribute to your maturity as well. After all, if everything were the same, if people didn’t have divergent/conflicting opinions, our career wouldn’t be as challenging as it is in the software development world.

Why did you recently switch careers and leave the QA career?

For many years in my QA career, I worked in positions ranging from intern to Manager. I had the opportunity to work in the QA role, from companies with startup profiles to enterprise companies with thousands of people in software development.

Tiredness has arrived. I had a sequence of three companies I worked for where I had to help create the QA area almost from scratch and educate people and teams about software quality, and this mission was not always easy.

Because I’ve always been a more technical QA, I always liked being close to the code but also to robust pipelines 👨‍💻. This opened me to opportunities in different contexts to act as an interim Tech Lead for some teams. These experiences were the main trigger for the career change, I discovered new ways to continue in constant evolution, but with another perspective and with a vast new world of challenges.

So far, it has been challenging, and I have not regretted changing careers.

Thanks for taking the time to contribute Frederico 🙌 Your expertise and the unique experience to also change career in another country was extremely valuable to this Brazilian QA’s around the world series 🤘

Brazilian QA’s around the world series – Walmyr Lima

Walmyr Lima is software engineer who loves testing. He is also a clean coder, blogger, YouTuber,

online instructor, mentor, speaker, an active member of the testing automation and JavaScript communities, and a fan of good music, tattoos, vegan food, and skateboarding.

Be sure to follow Walmyr on LinkedIn.

TL;DR;

Walmyr Lima’s decision to immigrate to Spain was sparked by their ability to understand and read Spanish content. They found a job opportunity at Typeform in Barcelona and relocated with the company’s assistance. Cultural differences were noticed, with Spanish people being warmer and the language being a significant change. Adapting to QA practices in Spain was not challenging for Walmyr as they had previous experience in a similar role. The perception and importance of quality assurance varied between companies rather than being country-specific. Walmyr discovered new methodologies and tools in their role as a Quality Assistant. Professionalism was deemed valuable regardless of the country. Work-life balance was generally seen as better in Europe compared to Brazil.

What were your reasons for choosing to immigrate to Spain? How did you prepare for finding a job and planning your move?

It was almost accidentally. My wife and I were actually planning moving to London, when one day, while preparing for a Live Stream on YouTube, I read a content in Spanish, which was related to the content I was going to present. I was able to read and understand everything, which made me think we (my wife and I) could live in Spain.

Then I searched for the coolest startups to work in Barcelona, since we would like to live close to the sea, and then I found Typeform. I applied for the job, went through the whole interview process, and got an offer (with relocation help and everything else). The rest is history.

What are some of the cultural differences you’ve encountered in the new workplace ? 

As a person who had been living in Europe for 6 years before moving to Spain, the main difference was cultural, since before that, I had lived in Norway and The Netherlands 😯. The Spanish people are more similar to Brazilians. They’re “warmer” ❤️. The language was a big difference too, and one of the main reasons for the move. In terms of workplace, nothing changed much, since I came to work remotely, which is something I was already used to before the move.

Are there any specific challenges you faced when adapting to the QA practices and standards in Spain? How did you overcome them? 

No really. I was hired to work as a Software Engineer Quality Assistant, which is something I was already used to do, but never had the exact title.

Have you noticed any variations in the perception or importance placed on quality assurance compared to Brazil? If so, in what ways? 

I think every country has companies that practice software engineering with excellence while others don’t care about it. That said, I don’t think the differences are related to the country you are in, but the company you choose to work for.

Are there any new unique methodologies or tools that you’ve come across that have improved your QA processes? 

Well, maybe yes. I mean, it was the first time I was hired as Quality Assistant, but the company was still discovering what such a role really meant.

We (the Quality Assistance team) were there to help teams become autonomous in terms of everything quality-related. We were helping them with their quality bottlenecsk, but for a short periods of time. After that, they should be able to “walk with the own legs”. We were also helping them with tooling (testing frameworks, visual regression testing, testing management systems, etc). Finally, we were helping the company to reduce cost, replacing paid SaaS for open-source alternatives.

Are there any specific lessons or skills you learned in Brazil that you find particularly valuable in Spain?

Again, I don’t think it’s a country thing. In my opinion, it’s all about professionalism. If you are a professional, we’re it independent of where you live.

Have you noticed any differences in the work-life balance or professional expectations ?

Yes, not only in Spain, but in Europe in general. My impression is that europeans care more about a good work-life balance than Brazilians, but it’s probably because they had more time to develop, their currencies are (usually) more valued than Brazilian Reais, and their economies have (in general) less inflation.

Thanks Walmyr for sharing your adventures around Europe, great insights and experiences 🚀

Brazilian QA’s around the world series – Renata Andrade

Renata Andrade is a software quality champion. She helps teams build the best strategy to practice quality in the easiest, fastest and most reliable way possible, adding more value to the business.

Driven by excellence, innovation and creativity, Renata loves making a difference, learning, sharing knowledge, and inspiring people. She likes working in a high tech environment with difficult challenges to solve. Renata also love attending conferences, reading books, writing blog posts, and giving talks about diverse topics in this area.

Be sure to follow Renata on LinkedIn.

TL;DR;

Renata Andrade chose to immigrate to the USA after falling in love with San Francisco during a visit. She saved money, studied English in New Zealand, and eventually got a job at a consulting company in San Francisco. In 2018, she applied for and obtained an H1B visa sponsored by the company. She highlights the respectful atmosphere and the vibrant tech scene in Silicon Valley as reasons for choosing to live there. She also discuss cultural differences in work relations and the fast-paced nature of companies in Silicon Valley. Renata Andrade shares advice for those looking to relocate and emphasises the importance of understanding the cultural differences beforehand. She notes that the perception and importance placed on quality assurance in the USA can vary, but generally, Brazilian QAs are more prepared. She mentions tools and practices like git, code reviews, and Devops that have improved their QA processes. She also highlights the value of a solid software engineering foundation and the lessons learned in Brazil. The work-life balance in the USA is seen as better, with flexible working hours, summer Fridays, and unlimited paid time off being common. Professional expectations vary but are generally similar.

What were your reasons for choosing to immigrate to the USA? How did you prepare for finding a job and planning your move?

I visited San Francisco in 2014 and got in love with the city. People here are really respectful to each other and I could sense that as soon as I got here. Personally, I like exploring new places and getting to experience new cultures. I didn’t speak any English at that time and I had no idea how the immigration process was. It was the first time I wanted to live somewhere different from my hometown (I’m from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais and I do love Brazil). So I started to save money and in 2015 I went to New Zealand for 6 months to study English. When I got back to Brazil, I got a job at a consulting company from San Francisco – California.

We’d speak English between ourselves and work for American clients. The company didn’t have any American visa programs back then, but in 2018 it started one, I applied for it and I got selected in the H1B visa lottery sponsored by the company (this is one way to immigrate to the US). They had a whole relocation program and it was pretty smooth to move with their support. I already got here working for one of their clients, they provided accommodation for 3 months and since there were other Brazilians at the company, the general experience was shared between us.

Also I had come to the US, San Francisco itself in 2016 and 2017 through this company and I got really familiar with everything. It was my choice to live in San Francisco specifically since I visited it the first time in 2014; I wouldn’t choose anywhere else. I really admire not only the respect factor that I mentioned at the beginning and it’s also cool to be in Silicon Valley. Everything here is super tech, we see people riding their one wheels or electric scooters, having conversations on their AirPods everywhere (even inside the public transportation) wearing their companies’ t-shirts (like Mozilla, Instagram, Google, Netflix) and backpacks. Not to mention that I live within 10 min distance from so many tech companies such as Meta, Google, IBM, Visa, Playstation, Fanatics, Rakuten, Oracle. I love it! A few weeks ago, I saw a driverless car!!! Yes. A car, driving without a driver!!! That blew my mind and I couldn’t be at a better place for myself.

If I could offer some advice, I’d recommend that people looking to relocate, if possible, visit the place before and get a sense of what the place looks like. Of course each experience is unique, and there are many factors that can impact your relocation such as climate, transportation, food, leisure, culture, etc and it’s good to understand a bit of how these things work so you don’t surprise yourself when you move. Moving to another country sometimes feels like you don’t belong to the new place and neither to the old place. It’s not an easy process – but it’s equally amazing.

What are some of the cultural differences you’ve encountered in the new workplace ? 

We usually have the impression that Americans are workaholics. I don’t see that. They don’t have work regulations as Brazilians do – such as max 40hs per week, 30 days of vacation, increased rate for overtime hours after 10pm or weekends/holidays etc. That doesn’t make them ruleless people. In fact, I notice they are way more straight forward.

Their work relations are real work relations. You are hired, you have your benefits (or not), you can request vacation at any time (depending on the company’s policy), you can quit at any moment, no notice required, no bureaucracy, no questions asked. Here, in Silicon Valley, it is really easy to start a company, they offer a lot of financial incentives and because of that I feel that they think too fast. Their pace and creativity is way different from Brazilians because it’s easier and it’s how they behave, so people are impacted by this “culture” of entrepreneurship. At the same time, they just want to do their jobs. When they are done, they are done. And they move on.

So, to recap, the work relations are simple and straightforward, the main difference for me is the pace that things get done or change – everything is super fast. And I’d say, because there are a lot of immigrants, you do experience a lot of differences depending on the team/company you work with. These differences could be: the way you communicate, the team’s interactions, even the quality of the work.

Outside of the worklife, I can say that the buying power here is very different from Brazil. You can get appliances, clothes, phones, and cars much easier than in Brazil. At some point you realize you have way too many things, and not a lot of space to store them… hahaha 😂

Are there any specific challenges you faced when adapting to the QA practices and standards in the USA ? How did you overcome them? 

I don’t believe there were challenges related to the QA practices themselves, but I did face some challenges in explaining to leaders the importance of the QA related practices. For instance, when I say that we need to improve the testing framework because it’s taking too long to run or to develop a new test, leaders don’t understand it.

I need to be extra product oriented or wait for issues to happen to make them understand the importance of it. Most of the time, I use numbers to exemplify my theories, for example: when I needed to hire more QAs for my team, I gathered the time I was spending with each activity, the time to automate them, and the impacts of not doing them. I usually offer a few options, like: a best case scenario, an “ok” scenario and lastly a “not ideal but acceptable” scenario (more often, just 2 options so they don’t spend too much time making a decision).

Another technique is to use benchmarking; bringing to the table how company A, B or C does something is also helpful, sometimes this is not easy to get this data. I have to be honest here that I haven’t been super successful with these approaches. I had some episodes where issues happened in production, and then, finally they understood what I was trying to say. My guess was that because things here happen too fast and companies tend to follow each other’s examples, companies hire QAs and they don’t really understand why they need them (sometimes they think it’s just to manual test things). But overall the QA practices are pretty similar.

Have you noticed any variations in the perception or importance placed on quality assurance compared to Brazil? If so, in what ways? 

I have mixed opinions about this topic, because the US is really big and it has a lot of companies. My first impression when I started to work for American companies from Brazil, was that most of the tools and technologies were the trending top ones. And we could also guess that since most of the QAs that are writing and speaking about software quality are Americans.

But when you really start working with it, you realize that it’s very diverse. I’ve been working with really high performance teams, really smart people, and with below average teams too. Talking about the quality practices specifically, I see that it’s way behind the development practices in terms of people’s knowledge. I feel that Brazilian QAs are more prepared in general.

Photo by fauxels on Pexels.com

Are there any new unique methodologies or tools that you’ve come across that have improved your QA processes? 

Yes, I got really good at git practices, code reviews, Devops. I think the opportunity to work close to dev teams and fulfil responsibilities that are usually not QAs’ made me grow a lot. Living in the Silicon Valley and having the proximity to tech companies also helped because I see ads everywhere and kind of make me curious about them and at least understand what they do. Going to meetups also is another point, that makes me get to know a lot of tools and practices.And we can definitely find that in Brazil too, but I’d say, because of the pace here, it speeded up the process a lot.

A great example here is Playwright. It was suggested by a developer when we were deciding which tool to use and it ended up becoming the tool we adopted and my very favorite tool. I have worked with many tools such as Selenium, WebdriverIO, TestCafe (which is also really good – it has the best locator strategy in my opinion), but the speed and simplicity of Playwright are really impressive and make things sooo much easier for QAs and Devs!

I liked it so much that I now have some Playwright courses in English and Portuguese!

Are there any specific lessons or skills you learned in Brazil that you find particularly valuable in the USA ?

Brazilians are really hard workers. It’s pretty honorable ❤️. Also, the universities and training are really good in Brazil. So I think building a solid software engineering foundation was pretty valuable. Because that can guarantee that you are employable. The job market can get competitive so that’s great before getting in the US. Not to mention that the solving problems ability scales a lot by having a good foundation.

And also important to share the lessons and skills I “didn’t” learn, which is that non-Americans from certain industries, including IT, can apply for their own green-card (which allows you to stay in the US permanently) independently. This green-card category is called EB2-NIW. Without a green-card, you need to have a visa that it’s linked to a company or school and this expires around 6 years after you arrive in the US (so, you need to return to your country after it expires). The temporary visa has a lot of limitations, so the green-card is a great option in this case. Had I known that before, my life would have been so much easier.

Have you noticed any differences in the work-life balance or professional expectations ?

It’s funny to say, but Americans work less ahahah, compared to Brazil. There is no mandatory “lunch time” so, you can work 8 hours straight and still have lunch and breaks. You are naturally pushed to learn more and deliver during your productive time, but not necessarily work more. Another funny thing is that happy-hours in the US are usually from 2 to 6pm.

So, if you are going to a happy hour, you leave work earlier for that. Since the weather is also pretty different from Brazil, some companies have summer Fridays, and they allow employees to leave earlier during the summer. Another great thing about it is the Unlimited Paid Time. A lot of companies offer that and this means that you can go on vacation for as many days as you want per year and still get paid.

Of course your manager has to approve and if you don’t “deliver your work” you get fired, but if you are doing a good job, it’s pretty useful. There is no ⅓ of your salary for vacations, but you get paid as you were normally working.I had almost 2 months of vacation on my last job 🙌.

Professional expectations vary a lot, depending on the company, team, etc. In general I’d say it’s pretty similar.

And that’s a wrap ! Thanks Renata, if you have any questions, feel free to contact her 🙂