celebrating 10 years at eve Wholesale 

We’d like to shine a light on Joe Woolley, a valued member of the technical team who is celebrating a decade of service with us – his 10-year eve-versary! 

Spending 10 years at a company is a rare achievement nowadays, with the job market bigger and more dynamic than ever before, so we thought we’d sit down with Joe to find out more about him and his career to date at eve Wholesale. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself  

I’m Joe, I live in Cheltenham and I’m 38 years-old (he could pass for a lot younger!). I’m a big Manchester United football supporter, in fact I’m a big footy fan full-stop, coaching an adult’s team in Bishops Cleeve in my spare time. Sadly, I gave up playing myself in my late 20s due to a problematic knee, but still really enjoy the sport. I also like gaming on my PlayStation and will play online with friends most Thursday evenings. I see friends every weekend, spending time with their families and kids, and going for a pint down the pub, pretty normal stuff! 

What does a typical day look like for a Lead Software QA Analyst? 

Well I actually wrote a blog on the various testing I conduct as part of my role, with the likes of happy path testing, which you can read about here, but in general my job is to find problems with our software, like the apps and the portal, and when I find an error I pass it on to the development team to solve. 

How has your role changed in the last 10 years? 

When I first joined the company, I was in a team of 2 and we had to manually test everything, which is obviously labour-intensive and time-consuming. Now we use automation, and I write the code for some of that which allows us to identify problems much more efficiently. In general, I’d say the job has become a lot more technical, and as such I’ve had to develop more technical skills, which eve Wholesale has been great at helping me get by providing the relevant courses and training.  

What do you enjoy most about your job? 

This probably sounds odd and won’t make me popular with developers, but I love finding problems. We say there’s two types of people in a technical team, the problem ‘finders’ and the problem fixers. Developers are the fixers and QA analysts are the ‘finders’, and I definitely thrive in the latter position. One of my old mentors did try to persuade me to go down the developer route but I quickly realised my talents and interests lay with analysing and testing the software – a ‘professional problem finder’!  

Can you share any notable events from your 10 years here?  

This has probably been said time and time again, but COVID really changed the professional landscape for me. Prior to 2020 I was in the office 5 days a week, but when lockdown happened, we were forced to adopt a more remote way of working, like everyone, and since then I’ve continued working in a hybrid way, with 2 days in the office. Along with a better work/life balance, I actually find I’m more productive at home from an output point of view, but I collaborate better when in the office, so this setup works really well for me and I’m grateful I’ve been able to continue working with such flexibility.