In this post, we are sharing an exercise we use to interview QA engineers. We have a slideshow that shows code in about 13 different languages. The candidate has to guess what each code snippet does. This exercise has proven to be useful in differentiating between QA who are fundamentally scared of code from the ones who are comfortable with […]
A QA interview exercise – read code in different languages
Do we have a helpful culture at work?
This post is to help folks measure if they have a helpful culture in their teams. We are sharing something we do to try and keep Qxf2 a fair place. In this post, we outline a metric called ‘help symmetry score’ that Qxf2 (a fully remote company) uses to figure out if we are nurturing a supportive environment. You might […]
Rerouting outbound traffic to a simulated device on localhost
In this post, we will outline how we reroute traffic meant for a specific IP back to a synthetic device running on localhost. This is useful for testers who work with products that monitor IT infrastructure, infrastructure management application testers and network testers. We will be using a couple of Python modules (fake-switches, snmpsim) and editing the iptables of the […]
Posting messages on a Skype group channel using Python
I recently wrote a script to post messages on Skype using Python. I used the excellent SkPy module. The module’s documentation is very good but examples on how to post messages to group chats was sparse. I had to muddle around, try things out with the Python interpreter and figure things out. In fact, I am not sure if I […]
Old SSL certificate being served by nginx
I had let the SSL certificate on one of my properties expire. I purchased a new certificate and installed it on the server. But the server seemed to still return the old, expired certificate. I had restarted the nginx service several times and yet nothing happened. I ended up spending an annoying amount of time on this issue as StackOverflow […]
Qxf2 is hiring (April 2019)
This is a short post to let regular readers of this blog know that Qxf2 is hiring. We have multiple openings for: a) QA managers b) Senior QA engineers The job is limited to people staying in India. You can apply to these jobs by writing to Arun ([email protected]) OR Smitha ([email protected]). You can learn more about the kind of […]
Practice Python by fixing errors
You can now practice Python by fixing errors. We have created a GitHub repository with common errors that Python beginners are likely to make in their code. This is not meant for intermediate level of Python developers. The errors are super basic and laughably simple for intermediate users. We created only simple challenges so that beginners can develop the momentum […]
The pros and cons of running a remote-first company
Remote work comes with its own set of trade-offs that need to be managed. This post is about the positives and negatives of running a remote-first company along with some of the tools we use and the adjustments that have worked for me. About me I am Arun and I run Qxf2 Services. Qxf2 provides testing services for startups. […]
QA interview tool: A real app with bugs seeded in it
In this post, we share a QA interview tool – a simple web application that has bugs seeded in it. Qxf2 created this tool about 6-months ago and shared it on a couple of different social media platforms. Since then, we have received enough unsolicited feedback and thank you messages that we felt it is worth publishing on our blog. […]
Exploring Wallaroo: Understanding state partitions with an example
This post is aimed at Wallaroo users who are looking to develop an intuitive understanding of state partitioning. Wallaroo is a framework that makes it easy to handle streaming data and write event processing applications quickly. Wallaroo already has a really nice example of state partitioning called alphabet_partitioned but it is missing a final step illustrating how partitioning helps when […]