I was lucky to have the privilege to be one of the few students who took the Social QA Bootcamp course.

And let me tell you... it most definitely fulfilled its promises. Sure, I learned a lot about Playwright, I learned a lot about GitHub, and I learned a ton about presenting myself online and crafting engaging content and posts. But let's look at their mission statement for the course.

https://stevenboutcher.thrivecart.com/social-qa-bootcamp/

This couldn't be more true. Prior to taking this course, I had just finished a tech bootcamp for QA. It was a great course, but I was a bit lost on where to go next. I knew I needed to improve my skills, specifically with automation.

I started looking at low-cost online courses on Udemy, LinkedIn Learning... I started many but didn't finish any. Some of them were outdated... some of them had course creators who were unresponsive to questions. The lack of support and liveliness in them didn't motivate me. Not to mention most of them were just videos... not much hands-on learning. I mean, I learned some things, but I still didn't feel confident in sharing what I learned or finding the best way to ask questions. Despite landing a couple interviews after my bootcamp, my imposter syndrome was still killing me.

As I was scrolling LinkedIn one day, I noticed another QA professional, Steven Boutcher, posting a lot of cool content. What I noticed about him was that he posted very originally…. the way he wrote, the punchy headlines, the one-liners…. I felt like I knew him before actually meeting him. It didn't sound like the cliché, typical ChatGPT shit.

Although he seemed to be a pretty successful senior-level QA professional locked into his career, I noticed he posted a lot of content to help guide others just starting out in the field. From what I sampled from his website with the AWS Cert Smasher and QA Job Magnet, and his email newsletter... I really reinforced my liking for this style. Everything was very personally original; I felt like he spoke to me like a friend teaching something new.

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https://www.stevenqa.com/resources/

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Once he announced his course with Playwright, I knew I had to try it out. And boy am I glad I did! Steven dropped a Black Friday special and said he was only accepting 20 seats to make sure he gave the most attention to those enrolled. Now, due to some professional endeavors, Steven has paused the course... so I feel super lucky I got to take it.

Right off the bat after joining the course, it already felt different. Sure, the setup and demonstration for Playwright was pretty standard, but I did appreciate several hints and pointing in the right direction to go investigate for myself in the official documentation. Right away, I got added to a community, a private network of other students. This was cool... people to discuss the projects and teachings with, share links, videos, and code snippets.