Games Labs QA
Jagex

Sally R

00.01 My name is Sally R and my job title is QA tester for the games lab here at Jagex. I test the games to ensure that they are ready for release and also post release, if any issues have come up, I find them, track them down and help the developer to sort them out. I love my job, I get to be a big kid. I get to do what I like doing for fun, as a job and get to do it well. It’s fantastic fun.

00.29 At school I was smart, but completely undedicated to academic work. I was very distracted by all the things that you should not be distracted by at school. I didn’t go to all the lessons. It was just generally an unhappy time for me, school. Because of family problems, we didn’t have a lot of money so I needed to be in the world of work, I had to be a wage earner in order to keep the family going.

00.57 I left school when I was, I’d just turned 17, I’d just started to work in a mobile phone shop and I was passed over for promotion because I didn’t have A-Levels, which then sent me back to college. I handed in my notice at the mobile phone shop within two weeks of being passed over for the promotion, I’d had enough. All the hard work I’d put in, it meant nothing and I thought right, I’m going to show you.

01.24 It was daunting to go back to college, everybody was two years younger than me. I didn’t get as good grades as I should or could have done and I didn’t actually get the entry requirements for my first choice university. By sheer luck I ended up with the head of the psychology programme on the phone and he asked me ‘why have you not got the entry requirements’ and I just honestly said I didn’t apply myself as well as I should have and he said if I give you a place at my university would you work harder, and I said yes and he said well I’d like to have you here and I burst into tears.

02.03 After university I did a number of jobs, I didn’t know where I belonged. I just, I went from job to job trying to find a nice company to work for, nice people to work with. I was working in a retail store and I was so unhappy that I handed my notice in without a job to go to and I’d never done that before. I’d been very fortunate to end up where I am and I’m glad for every mistake and every bad company that I’ve ever worked for if it got me here I’m very happy.

02.37 My mum wasn’t able to give me much advice about academia, herself she left school at fifteen with one O-Level. She’s been working for the same company since she was fifteen and she’s seen similar to I did at the mobile phone company, people being fast tracked beyond where she was and to see her frustration, that was, that was quite motivating for me as well.

03.03 Having come across people that I went to school with since on, social networking sites, they’ve been very surprised that I went to college and university because I hated school so much. I haven’t bumped into any of my old teachers. There’s certainly one who told me that I’d never go to university because I wasn’t academic enough. I would love to see her, that’s been quite a motivator for me to carry on, is people who didn’t think very much of me because of the lack of qualifications. I can absolutely prove them wrong now.

03.40 Jagex is a company where it’s so diverse, there’s so many different roles available within it. I’m quite comfortable to stay here and develop myself within the company. If it were to come to the time where I felt I needed further development, I know that that development is available for me here in Jagex.