Bao Phan is one of the longest-standing developers here at Gossamer Threads, having lent his Perl experience to large portions of our software suite, as well as countless development projects over the years. Although Bao’s been part of the Gossamer family for over a decade, his story’s about more than Perl development or his contributions to this company…

Bao At Work

Gossamer Threads was undergoing some serious expansion in the early ’00s. There was a large market for the Perl scripts we were developing, and we had plenty of ideas for new programs, but not enough qualified Perl developers to meet that need. The niche nature of Perl development made it difficult to find the right developers within Canada, so we began to look further afield.

Bao was working for a Vietnamese tech company we’d worked with in the past. He was looking for a change of scenery and his skills seemed like a great fit for GT, and so in 2001 he made the trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Vancouver.

As one of our core Perl developers, Bao started work on two key programs in the software suite we were developing at the time: DBMan SQL and FileMan. More recently, he’s been a key part in Gossamer projects for clients like CNN Radio, Summerwood, and StartLocal.

Bao at work. Note the maple leaf sweater & flag signed by co-workers.

Finding A New Home

Bao wasn’t just settling into a new job at Gossamer, he was also settling into a new life in Canada. Bao began taking English language classes after work, initially to help with communication at the office, but later to help connect with the new friends he was making here in Vancouver. For Bao, life in Canada was coming to be about much more than where he worked, and in 2005 he began the process of becoming a Canadian citizen, and in 2007 took the Oath of Citizenship.

On His Own Time

You can’t keep a developer away from the computer even when they’re not in the office, and Bao’s no exception. He’s been developing some mobile apps in his spare time lately, but he’s also been putting time aside for some cooking classes. He’s done Asian fusion and French classes in the past, and most recently tried his hand at Thai cooking with some classes at Dirty Apron (and has been pretty happy with the chicken curry he’s been whipping up ever since).

A morass of humanity at Coachella. Bao’s in there somewhere…we think.

Bao’s also a pretty rabid music fan, having made the trek to sunny Indio, California for Coachella for the past two years. Other shows he’s caught and dug lately include Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, James Blake, The National, and Cat Power (he also has Neil Young tickets).

Working At GT

We’re always looking for passionate, motivated folk to join Bao and the rest of us here at Gossamer Threads. Interested in working for a forward-thinking IT company in the heart of Vancouver? Check out our careers page!

It’s been a while since we got up close and personal with one of our fellow Gossamer Threadians on the blog to find out a bit more about them and what they do around the office, so allow us to introduce Sydney, one of our web designers who’s been here at the office for about a year and a half.

Name: Sydney Hake
Reason for being: Web Designer
Quote to live by: “Life is too short to be self-conscious.”

Everyone in Sydney’s corner of the office insisted that she be photographed wearing her Snuggie. She’s been pining for one (quite vocally) for months and it just arrived this week.

Sydney At Work

Sydney heard about GT through the company she was doing her BCIT practicum with, Base-10. Base-10 are fellow Perl-loving folks, and even have a few former GTers in their ranks. Sydney says “they emphasized the all around awesomeness of the place, and encouraged me to apply for a design job here. It was basically a dream come true when I got the call to come in for an interview, couldn’t contain my excitement. There was lots of flailing and jumping.” Jack and Alex confirm the jumping. Thankfully, she’d already gotten the job.

Sydney and our lead designer Ian take on web design jobs as a team, and work closely to keep projects flowing and progressing. In addition to pure web design, Sydney also works on a large amount of front end development, primarily HTML and CSS, before passing templates over to our developers who add functionality (“but sometimes I get to sprinkle in a little bit of JavaScript or PHP”).

New Platforms, New Designs

A new technique Sydney’s been using a lot lately is responsive design. A responsive web site is designed to respond to the various screen sizes that exist today due to the growing number of mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, etc). The idea is to use a single site template, and code it so that the layout would be optimally displayed on each device.

Responsive Design adjusts to browser type and size.

For example, mobile devices require larger fonts and buttons for finger interactivity, but don’t always require every single element that would be displayed normally on a full monitor. If you resize your browser window on a responsive site, you should be able to see the triggers and changes within the page for different screen resolutions. You can take a look at some responsive websites in action here.

Sydney At Play

While not at work Sydney’s usually out and about with friends or watching movies and eating popcorn. Sydney loves popcorn. While a bit of a couch potato (c’mon, you saw the Snuggie), Sydney tries to hit the gym or do yoga a couple times a week (“although I would rather be on the couch in all honesty”). She’s a big reader, and recently powered through all of the Song Of Fire And Ice books in a couple months. Said voraciousness has paid big dividends at the semi-regular Game of Thrones board games sessions which happen after work at the office, where Sydney’s been kicking Lannister keister and taking names. Winter may be coming, but with her Snuggie, Sydney’s ready.

Sydney keeps her cards close to her chest during a lunchtime game of Dominion.

Working At GT

We’re always looking for passionate, motivated folk to join Sydney and the rest of us here at Gossamer Threads. Interested in working for a forward-thinking IT company in the heart of Vancouver? Check out our careers page!

We asked one of our co-op students, Mike Wu, to give us both a glimpse into life at Gossamer Threads as a relative newcomer, as well as what his work as a Quality Assurance Analyst entails. What follows is a story of bugs, barbecue and Big Two…

Being a third-year computer science student, it was a bit intimidating to start the co-op program and work full time at a web tech company, especially since my previous work experience wasn’t in the technology industry. However, through the camaraderie and family-like atmosphere at Gossamer Threads, I quickly got over my somewhat unfounded fears. My co-workers at Gossamer quickly welcomed me to their team and I haven’t looked back since.

Below, I’ve documented an example of what I do on a daily basis as a Quality Assurance Analyst. I hope that anyone reading this blog will gain some insight into what I do, and the culture at Gossamer Threads

Start of the Day

10:00am: I usually come into the office at around 10am. Gossamer doesn’t have strict hours and managers are flexible with hours, as long as you work 8 hours each day. To start the day off, I always read through my email, checking for new tickets which have been assigned to me. Tickets is Gossamer lingo for a logging system that we use to record changes, comments, and updates related to any bugs, issues or features.

A sample ticket used to track work and goals.

10:30am: After reading through my email, I’ll start testing the highest priority ticket. For example, I can have a ticket that requires me to test if a new search functionality is working as expected. This would be a high priority ticket if the ticket is expected to be pushed (or go live) to the production site (what the users sees) in the late afternoon. Each ticket has a description, comments and/or screen-shots attached. Tickets are passed back and forth between me and other team members, so it’s vital that I understand the comments and notes each developer leaves on the ticket so I can test the ticket appropriately.

Take, for example, the search functionality ticket. Before I start testing the functionality, I need to understand the types of users that will use the search, the types of information they are searching for, how the results are displayed, etc.

Believe it or not, a lot of thought is put into the functionality of a search!

Often, features will have different test cases documented. I can follow and test each test case and add new test cases where I see fit. A new feature added might be: if a term has a ‘-’ character in front of the search term, then all results containing the following term will not be displayed.

Some test cases I would test for in such a case might include:

• Test that all previous recorded test cases in the test suite are working. This is also known as ‘regression testing‘. This tests for new bugs introduced by new changes.
• Test searching for normal terms without the ‘-’ character. This tests that the normal test terms (before the added functionality) still work.
• Test searching for a term containing the ‘-’ character in front of it. This is the obvious and most important test case. This is also know as the ‘Sunny Day‘ test, cases where a result is expected or not expected to work.
• Test for more obscure cases related to searching, e.g. Search for terms with two ‘-‘ characters.

If all the test cases pass, I update the test suite and add in all the new test cases in the appropriate section. Then, I validate the ticket, leaving a comment about what I have tested and what is working. Following that, I pass the ticket back to the project manager.

If at least one of the test cases does not pass, I will make a note of all the bugs that are appearing and directions on how to reproduce each bug. If I know exactly how each bug is produced, or if I have any extra information, such as how it is produced or how it can be fixed, I also leave a few extra notes on the subject.

Whenever bugs are hard to describe, I like to take screen-shots and annotate the image with arrows and short descriptions to make it easier for the developers to understand. I also like to record a video of my browser whenever a bug is difficult in to describe the reproducing steps.

A sample bug.

After updating the ticket with all the bug information, I assign it back to the project manager. The ticket will then be assigned to the appropriate developer and it will eventually circulate back to me to test again.

Lunch time!

12:30pm: After testing tickets for about 2 hours, I get ready to have my lunch. Lunchtime is a great time to catch up with my co-workers. We often have competitive games of cards like Hearts, Big 2 and poker. Also, during the summertime, we regularly have company BBQ’s where we go upstairs to the roof for hamburgers, while we bask in the warm sun.

The luxurious Gossamer roof!

1:30: After lunch, it’s back to work again. First, I go through any new emails, and then I return to testing new tickets. Occasionally, I’ll have a few questions regarding some specific functionality for a ticket. If that happens, I send a quick instant message to the developer or pop over to their table if they aren’t too busy. This saves me a lot of time digging and investigating for answers. I think communication between a developer and a Quality Assurance Analyst is important for both parties. It helps both understand the product better and, in return, produces a higher quality product.

6:20: If I finish a ticket within the last 20 minutes of the day, I like to plan out my next day. I read through a collection of comments, try to understand what I need to test for the ticket, and then make a mental list of what I need to test the next day. I find this is better than trying to start and rush through a brand new ticket. This also helps increase my productivity and efficiency.

6:45: This is when I will normally end my day. If I have any to-do items, I write them in a text file and leave it open on the desktop for the next day. It’s a quick reminder to me when I log on the next day as to what I’ve been doing. That way, I can pick up exactly where I stopped working.

An average to-do list.

Happy Hour

Often, at the end of the day, my co-workers will get together for a friendly game of two-on-two Ping-Pong. Sometimes, if folks are interested, we also get together for a fun game of poker. Of course, when the bosses (Alex and Jack) join in a game, I always remember to lose on purpose!

Adrian and Asaf locked in a deadly battle of Ping-Pong.

After a productive day at the office, it’s time to go home and rest and get ready for the next day.

Hopefully this has shown what it’s like working as a QA Analyst at Gossamer Threads. Of course, there are the intangibles about the company that I haven’t touched on, like how friendly and easy to approach everyone is. I also enjoy the fact that Gossamer isn’t just about doing work all the time. We have a lot of fun with our paint-balling events, dodge ball competition, Poker tournament, and even a Stair Climbing Challenge – which I’m proud to say that my team won!

All in all, Gossamer isn’t just about the work we do, it’s about the way we work, and having a good time along the way.