Welcome to the second edition of Meet Team SnapStream, where we introduce you to the people behind the scenes. Today we're talking to Marlon Dait, QA Tester, who has been at SnapStream for just over 2 years.

What is a QA Tester?

Marlon: First of all, QA is not question and answer, it's Quality Assurance. Which means making sure that our product can be used by a wide margin of people. People using different operating systems, different browsers, etc. Making sure our product works in any environment.

We have to do a lot of back and forth with the developers, testing out their code. If it isn't working the way it should, we have to work with them to remedy that, and if it works we pass it off as fixed.

Background:

Marlon: This is my first dive into the QA field. Before SnapStream, I worked in a general IT position. I fixed issues on computers or wrote simple macros scripts in Visual Basic. When I first got here, my manager gave me a few books on how to QA and how to QA better.

I realized that a lot of the QA work flow is something I identify with, so it was a natural progression to go from IT to QA. A lot of the skills transferred over with ease. 

Marlon's QA reading recommendation: How to Break Software: A Practical Guide to Testing by James A. Whittaker

The best thing about being a QA Tester:

Marlon: Being a QA tester in itself is great, but being a QA tester at SnapStream is amazing. The atmosphere is incredibly relaxed. It's great to have a team around you that knows how to do things and has arcane knowledge of our product's past.

The environment is also great because it's a nerd accepting culture.  I don't have to hide that I like to go to Renaissance Festival!  It's an accepting culture for anything that you want to nerd-out on, from Pokemon to Football. 

Favorite SnapStream Feature:

Marlon: So, I actually use our product quite a bit... I think the term is called "eating your own dog food". It's where you use your own product yourself. We test on a lot of the clips we record, so clipping out sections of recordings is something I do a lot. I'll notice a particularly interesting or funny clip, and I like to share it with my friends.

For instance, I was testing out MP4 playback to make sure there were no artifacts in the recording, no out of sync issues or skipping. I have to watch the file through to it's entirety, making sure it works, time shifting around, etc. I came across a teaser for a news segment talking about the dangers of flip-flops (there's a lot of flip-flop wearing here at SnapStream).

I just had to clip this out and share it with my friends.

Clip and share is my favorite SnapStream feature because you grab things instantly, right in the moment and share them immediately. 

SnapStream hosts monthly, company-sponsored outings. What's your favorite non-work, work function?

Marlon: There are so many great things we do. The most recent company outing we had was Painting with a Twist, which was really cool. They gave us wine and food and they had great music! We also had a Top Golf outing, which was fun even though I don't play golf. I just channeled my inner Happy Gilmore. 

Dog tax:

Ein isn't just Marlon's stuffed Corgi... she's a real, live Corgi!