When You're the Lone (Female) Voice of Reason
With software engineering still dominated by men, it is not uncommon for women to find themselves alone on a team of men. Those who are test-focused can find themselves in the awkward position of not only being the sole woman in the ship room, but with the tough job of telling her peers they are not ready to go to production. Melissa Benua has spent many years as the lone female voice speaking up for code quality at companies both big and small. Learn from her experiences on how to be heard and taken seriously, with tips on how to be “the woman” without making the job about being female, how to avoid common traps in team situations, and how to improve your team’s attitude toward test. Melissa walks through how to use an organized, data-driven approach to remove the 'intimidation factor' from the process of advocating for code quality in a team-based setting.
Senior backend engineer for PlayFab Melissa Benua has worked in nearly every software development role—engineer, test, DevOps, and program management—in her career. Melissa has created and run high-availability, high-quality services at Boeing and Microsoft on Bing, Cortana, and Xbox One. She discovered her love of massively-scaled systems while working on the Bing backend, honing the art of keeping highly-available complex systems up while undergoing massive code churn. Whether working with classic or cutting-edge testing models, Melissa isn’t afraid to mix traditional approaches with bold new ideas to make her products better, faster, and more reliable. She is passionate about about sharing best practices with colleagues and the tech world.