They call me Frankenstein...

An interesting thing has happened to me as of late.

My wife of 5 years now has joined our small company in a capacity that is sorely needed, Testing and Quality Assurance. As you can all imagine working with ones wife poses a number of challenges that many would rather not face. Our organization is small but not so small that our working relationship is direct with one subordinate to the other, so one of the major pitfalls are avoidable in my case. The other challenges are less obvious and not as easily avoided. As is the case with most things people related, it becomes a matter of perception and trust.

My wife is very good at what she does. She has an eye for detail and can replicate a long list of steps 1000 times exactly the same way every time. I recognized this and felt that those qualities were perfect for a tester role. She was not all that challenged professionally where she was and so I sought to get her involved in our endeavors here at Tidgewell Associates. While I might have got the ball rolling on the switch, the final decision was up to her. From a technical standpoint she is definitely on the novice side of things but is savvy enough to work her way around a computer and typical software, so she has an understanding of the way things should look, feel and work. These all aid her in her new role here. Certainly there is a number of things that she has to learn about the applications we have written. Most of these being business process related. As I had expected she has taken to this with zeal and is showing great progress.

One thing though that I found in all this is the transformation in my wife that I was not expecting. As her new professional role is providing a challenge and also providing some rewards I see her confidence growing. I see her competitive drive growing as well. Just a few days ago she discovered a problem with an application component I had recently done some work on. The issue is particularly bad because of the way it occurs. My surprise was not because I have never generated code with this type of problem, rather my surprise came in the way my wife handled the problems acknowledgment. "Yes !" she exclaimed as she pumped her fist in the air. Like she had just won a marathon and in doing her victory dance on the floor that was was my wounded pride I realized one thing....

I had created a monster......