A man of auction

by | Syndicated

Wow, what a New Year already…

Opportunities are sometimes fleeting, but this one wouldn’t let me go…

In two weeks, I’ll be in California to serve as a QA Director at eBay San Jose.

Effective January 18, I’ll be leading testers and managers on the “Buyer Experience” team — they’re responsible for all of the tools (mainly search) that help users make  a decision on whether to take part in an auction or to “Buy It Now”.  The quality of the experience of the actual auctions is another department, but if I succeed, I may be able to help those guys, too.

Regardless, in two weeks, consider me an eBay ombudsman.  If you have a problem with an eBay experience, I want to know about it.  It may not be my department, but I’ll funnel it to where it needs to go.

They don’t know yet that I  consider the “A” in my title to be “Assistance”, not  “Assurance”, but they’ll just have to forgive me.

You know me for my ideas, and you know I’ll delight in hiring people smarter than me down there.  Julian Harty is already there and I’ll get to work with him.  So is John Belbute, formerly of Intuit and WebMD. He’s my boss. Above him is VP Todd Paul, ex-senior-Microsoftie and former boss of Harry Robinson on the Bing team.

That’s my new crew. Hard to turn down that kind of team and that kind of brand.  I also have a chance to try some new material and enhance a testing culture.

I thank Quardev for 6 years of opportunities to try my half-baked ideas.  They’re the best testing force in Seattle and they’ve survived ten years with no venture capital, only revenue-funded, privately owned. They’ll do fine without me because the way they approach projects is authentic and honest, and they understand that I need this challenge next in my career.

So, yes, you got that right — one of two uncertified, context-driven Bach brothers will be leading senior test managers at a major brand name company very soon. I’m rarin’ to go, hopeful and optimistic, but also busy repeating the astronaut’s prayer.

I’ll still be shepherding CAST in Seattle, still be going to STAR East and West, STP, QUEST, and PNSQC.  If you’re there, say hi and tell me what you did to find a bug on the eBay site. Hopefully my response will be “I’m on it” or “It’s already in the queue.”