Growth is a big part of our culture, especially through our learning & development department - School of Centric. Our colleagues are continuously challenging themselves to grow both professionally and personally - and share some of their insights about the learning and growth process below.
Centric Interviews - "If you want to improve your skills and stay up to date, learning is the answer."
QA Lead
Andrei Zarjitchi
What motivates you to learn?
There are probably multiple things that motivate me to learn, but what comes to my mind in the first is my curiosity and desire to experiment with new ideas or tools.
Also, a good motivator is the constantly changing and evolving industry that we work in. If you want to improve your skills and stay up to date with technologies and tools, learning is the answer.
How do you make time for learning?
Most of us probably have a full schedule and when asked if we can find some time for learning, would probably say no.
But most of the time, "I don't have time" equals "It's not a priority". So once you make learning a priority, you will definitely find some time for it.
There are multiple things that take our time during the day and are not priorities.
In my case, each evening I used to watch Netflix for 1 or 2 hours.
So what I did, was to take this time and use it for learning. Of course, I don't do this every day, I still watch Netflix :)
What is the most useful/interesting thing you have learned recently?
One of the most useful tools I learned in the last period is Docker. And what I like most about it is that it gave me the opportunity to learn more about new tools like Nginx, InfluxDb, or Grafana.
What was your biggest failure and what did you learn from it?
At some point in my career, I was more 'relaxed' when testing a functionality implemented by a senior colleague. I was surprised to find out later that I was failing to discover some easy-to-find bugs. What I learned was to make abstracts that implemented the functionality and treat every feature I test objectively.
Who has been the most inspirational person for your career and why?
I would say Michael Bolton (not the singer!). I had the chance, in 2013, to participate in one of his training sessions where I found out new ideas about software testing (compared to what I knew at that point) and also about critical thinking, which later opened up other learning areas for me.
