Michele Martone

About Resume Contact Me

I get asked this a lot so I wanted to write about my transition from an accounting degree to a technical testing career.

Way back a long (long) time ago, I went to Notre Dame. Like many of my classmates, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I thought accounting was interesting because I liked the rules in my Accounting 101 class. I also was pretty interested in my programming class.

As a kid I used to program my computer to play music, games, and all sorts of other antics that kids will do when they have time and a computer just sitting there. But in high school I took a programming class that presumed a higher level of math than I had at the time. It soured me on programming for a time.

So back to college, and I was not only a bit down on programming, but was being discouraged by advisors to go into computer science. They told me my best chance at a job was with an accounting degree. And that’s what I went with.

So I did get that first job pretty easily, and set my sites on my next goal, a CPA! I took night prep classes, and had to get a bunch of different experience in order to qualify. This was cool, because I essentially switched jobs every two years, within the same company. Eventually, I earned my CPA. Yay? Well not really.

Now that I didn’t really have a goal anymore, I was uncertain what to do next. My favorite part of accounting was creating these complex VB macros in Excel to automate my job. I was the macro expert at work. But I didn’t like much else; the rest of the actual work just didn’t interest me. And I also didn’t like the fact that as a skier, I was busy and worked many weekends during ski season.

I found this bootcamp program at Columbia University called Computer Technology and Applications. This was before bootcamps were popular and that program no longer exists. I choose the Java and C++ specialization track. It was amazing, and I loved every moment of it. About halfway through the program I quit my accounting job. I learned C from the ground up, then C++, and then eventually moved to Java.

I am sure I’m very rusty in those languages now, but I knew enough back then to get my first job. A hedge fund services company gave me a shot in their testing department. I went into it thinking I’d switch to development eventually but that hasn’t happened yet. I love testing!

Some things I learned along the way:

• I really should have talked to more people about my degree choice. But then again, I’ve gotten pretty far working in financial companies and do use my degree to some extent.

• A career change is hard work. You have to be able to dedicate time after work to it. It’s SO much better when you are interested in the new field.

• And speaking of that… Work itself is so much better when you like it. I’ve been in jobs I did not like and won’t do that again. It’s not fair to me or the company.

• A lot of testers come from different fields. Some of the best testers I know are psychology, English or math majors. When hiring, I look for analytical ability and questioning skills.

• I love learning, but not necessarily in school. I did not like trying to meet CPA continuing education requirements though. But now, I enjoy picking up new technologies and reading and learning more about technology.