How We Started Teaching What Actually Works
Back in 2019, I was working at a mid-sized tech company in Bangkok when I noticed something frustrating. New hires would come in with testing certifications, but they'd struggle with the basic stuff we did every day. They knew theory but couldn't debug a failed test or write effective test cases for our actual products.
That's when my colleague Nalina and I decided to try something different. We started with weekend workshops for people who wanted to learn testing skills that would actually help them in real jobs. Instead of just teaching frameworks and terminology, we brought in actual bugs from our projects and had people work through them.
"The moment when someone finally catches their first critical bug – that mix of excitement and confidence – that's what makes all the preparation worth it."
By 2020, we had enough demand to launch Next Level Nodes properly. We focus on the gap between what people learn in basic courses and what they need to know to be genuinely helpful on a development team. The Thailand tech market was growing fast, and we saw companies struggling to find people who could hit the ground running.