How to hire excellent performance testing engineers?

How to hire excellent performance testing engineers?

Translator: Chen nengtech

Original article: What makes
A good performance engineer? (Scott
Moore)

 

Recently, a friend needs to hire some performance testing engineers and ask me: "What kind of quality do a good performance engineer need ?" After thinking about something, I think it is necessary to share my views with you. You can also join your comments, these help Bosses make a smart choice when hiring Performance Testing engineers.

What needs to be declared is: the items listed here are not intended to be a formal job description of the human resources department, but more about principles and concepts.

 

Skills

You need someone who understands the latest computer technologies and concepts. He needs to skillfully install the operating system (including Windows and Linux) and set the network by himself. Why is this important? Because he often needs to build a test environment at work.

 

Key network knowledge-you need a person who has a full understanding of the OSI model, who should know TCP/IP and DNS, DHCP, wins, routing/switches/network hubs, and know how they work. Why are these required? Because he may need network sniffing tools to locate network bottlenecks, it is obvious that he needs to know what he is "sniffing. As a performance testing engineer, I should be able to solve some simple network problems by myself, instead of pulling the network engineers to help, he should be able to solve the connection problem between the Controller and load generator in LoadRunner by himself, as long as he knows the network access, IP Address Settings and other common problems can be solved.

 

Protocol-the minimum requirement is that he can easily create test scripts for the protocols used in the project product. Of course, it is best to master more protocols and have various experience in protocol test script development, such as WinSock, COM, HTTP, Citrix, etc, because I don't know when to use these things.

 

Although I don't want him to be a code enthusiast or developer, he should be able to understand HTML, ASP, JSP, Java, C and other code and understand the ins and outs of the Code. These things are not only required for testing Script Development, but also important for locating code bottlenecks. Obviously, the more he knows about the code, the more problems he can discover.

 

SQL knowledge (including query statements, stored procedures, indexes, database management, backup and restoration ). Databases are one of the main causes of bottlenecks in complex application systems. It is generally DBA to find out the cause of the bottleneck in this regard. However, if your performance testing engineers do not know this and do not know how to deal with databases, then he may ignore some key things.

 

He needs to "view the whole ". He should know his role in SDL (software development lifecycle. He should know what developers, project managers, QA and system administrators do and how to deal with them. Sometimes, you may find that some people with strong technical skills are very good in their "little world", but they only see their own "little world ", but do not know the impact on others at the organizational level.

 

He should be very skilled in using the testing tools selected by your company. If he has mastered one of them, the others will be easier to grasp, but it is best to select those who have at least one year of practical experience.

 

Non-skill

The skills mentioned above are equally important: Performance Testing engineers should understand common performance testing, performance tuning, capacity planning methods and processes in the industry. Instead of simply clicking a button to perform a test.

 

He should master a set of best practices and methodologies for planning, testing and tuning, and be able to adjust and customize according to the company's actual situation. Of course, if you hire entry-level people, you don't need them, but they need to follow the company's status quo to establish such content.

 

A good engineer should always be a consultant, even if his customer is an internal engineer. If he doesn't treat everyone as a customer, you may have entered him into an uninterrupted war with the development team. He should be gentle, flexible, able to withstand the pressure and be calm, respectful and polite to people.

 

The ultimate goal of the performance testing team should be to keep everyone in the best status before the product is released, and strive to release a product with superior performance. In return, everyone liked the performance testing team because they helped everyone to run their programs faster and faster. In fact, this means that the performance testing engineers you hire must have good communication skills. They should be considered as collaborators to help others, rather than being seen as the "Road Stone" of the entire project ".

 

I would like to introduce passionate people. I usually look for people who constantly expand their knowledge. When they come to a project, they will be excited about the protocols they have never touched, because it means they have the opportunity to learn something new. They will keep in touch with Performance Testing engineers from other companies and on the network to build a good technical support system of their own. They often participate in various activities, user groups, and meetings.

 

Finally, there are some other simple points: He should be able to remind and urge others to do things, and be willing and willing to accept others. He should do his best to help others, even if he needs to sacrifice his time and spend a lot of energy. He should be very happy to share his knowledge. He knows when to be a leader and when to be a follower. These are all things that need to be investigated during employment.

 

Summary

I am very lucky to have met many really good performance testing engineers. Full-time consultants tend to stay busy because they have similar qualities in their work. I think more about their non-skill abilities than their skill abilities, so that they can stay ahead and stand in a higher position. Do you have any suggestions on the quality requirements of a good performance testing engineer? If you have any, you are welcome to publish and discuss them together.

 

Note by the Translator:

Here is 2004An article of the year, but today it seems very practical. The recent big environment is not very good. Many people, especially college graduates, are struggling to find a job. This article is about how to recruit an excellent performance testing engineer, however, I think it is more suitable for those who want to find performance testing jobs. It depends on your skills and non-skills.

A qualified Performance Testing Engineer requires a wide range of knowledge. To become a good performance testing engineer, there is no way to talk about it without a year or two. We learned a lot in college, but we didn't know it. When we came out to find a job, we regretted that we didn't learn it well. Of course, there are still many practical technical things that are hard to learn in today's university education system. They need to be learned through personal efforts or follow-up training. In addition, as mentioned in this Article, many non-skill things need to be learned and mastered at work.