I got into programming in high school — C++ and building websites felt like magic. College drained the spark, boring classes, and zero motivation. I stepped away from code entirely. When the pandemic hit, I landed a Linux support job where I discovered Bash scripting — and with it, I rediscovered my love for programming through Python. That opened the door to an unexpected opportunity in Quality Engineering. Before I knew it, I was deep into automated testing, solving real-world problems, and getting paid to break things.

That earlier experience paid off — I soon landed a new role in the team. At first, I focused on manual testing, taking the time to understand the product and its inner workings. But the team had a strong desire to move toward automation. Once I felt confident with the software, I dove in, setting up automated tests and helping the team take its first real steps toward a faster, more reliable, and more efficient testing process. It was both challenging and rewarding to apply what I had learned and see tangible improvements in how we worked.

Looking back at the start of my journey with automated testing, it wasn’t just about learning to write tests — it was about navigating all the complexities that come with it. A mix of helpful pushes and annoying roadblocks shaped the path. Some things sped me up, some slowed me down. All of it mattered.

The Helpers

Teammates

We spend almost a third of our day with our teammates. Having someone you can ask questions to is a huge deal. Still, I knew I couldn’t rely solely on others to guide my learning. In my mind, they were here to help and guide, not to teach me. When I joined, I first asked what technologies we were using and if they had any recommendations for learning them and getting up to speed. I got plenty of helpful pointers, but it was on me to go and do the learning. Once I got that rolling, I picked up an automation task, and it felt great to get that first PR in and approved.

Small Side Projects

To tie in with the point about teammates, once you know the stack, try building something small on your own. Side projects are the best crash course there is. They don’t need to be ambitious or even finished — the point is to get your hands dirty. Reinvent the wheel, break things, learn as you go. One side project I built early on was a Python CLI tool that parsed log files. I’d been digging through logs manually at work, so I scratched my itch. And while you’re at it, learn Git. Seriously. It's not that hard, and it makes working with others so much smoother. While small projects and good habits like this helped me, there were also a few things that slowed me down, and I think many people can probably relate to these.

The Blockers

Motivation

Let’s be honest, sometimes it’s really hard to find the motivation to do this kind of work. I started out relying on sporadic bursts of motivation to move forward, but somewhere along the way, the shift happened, and taking an hour to write some code or play with it became a part of my routine. Motivation turned into discipline.

What helped me was keeping the bar low: “Just open the editor and write something.” No pressure, no deadlines, no perfect plan. Once you get into the flow, those first 10 minutes often turn into an hour. I often had to peel myself from the screen once I got the ball rolling. One tip for speeding this process up - set a timer for an hour or two, you would be surprised what a timer does for your productivity.

Procrastination

Different beast to beat than lack of motivation, procrastination is sneaky — you might want to do the work, but still avoid it. It shows up as endless prep: reading docs, cleaning your workspace, tweaking configs for the tenth time. In other words, acting busy. What helped me snap out of it was recognizing the pattern and making it simple to break: I'd ask myself, "What’s the next smallest action I can take that moves this forward?" More often than not, that was enough to stop spinning in place and just start.

Breakthrough Moments

You never really know when things are going to click — and when they do, it’s not always dramatic. One moment that stood out for me: While writing a test, I spotted a mix-up where marketing links pointed to the wrong products. That wasn’t a one-off — some of the bigger bugs I found surfaced during test writing. After reporting those bugs, I wrote tests to check for the correct behavior, so when everything was put together, the results actually matched what we expected. In short, writing the tests helped catch the bugs, and running the tests keeps them from coming back.

Conclusion

So that’s been the journey so far — not a straight line, not always fast, but always moving forward. I didn’t follow some master plan, and I sure as hell didn’t have it all figured out. But bit by bit, through trial and error, and many bug hunts, I carved a path that works for me. Automated testing wasn’t the goal when I started — it just turned out to be the right place at the right time, and I leaned into it.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that progress happens when you keep showing up. Even when you’re tired. Even when you’re stuck. Whether you’re starting new or starting over, keep chipping away. It all adds up.

And hey — if you’re deep in your testing journey, just know: you’re not alone in figuring it out, one bug at a time.

Digging Deeper into Automated Testing

What is written above is just the start of my journey - where I found motivation, overcame obstacles, figured things out one step at a time, built confidence through small wins, and learned how to turn motivation into discipline.

But setting up automated tests is one thing; making them useful, reliable, and sustainable is another.

Stay tuned for the second episode, where I will write about:

• How to think about what to automate (and what not to)
• Tips for writing tests that actually help, not just add noise
• Lessons I learned the hard way about flaky tests, test maintenance, and keeping your test suite healthy

If you’re just getting started with automation — or trying to get better at it — I hope this series of articles will give you some useful tools and a few hard-earned lessons to save you some time (and frustration).