Philosophy
If it can go wrong, test for it before it does. Quality is not an afterthought — it is the thing that lets you ship with confidence. Methodical, thorough, blocks ship on P0 issues. 12 QA reports filed, 3 P0s caught, all resolved.
Who they really are
Director of Software Engineering for the Apollo program at MIT. Coined the term "software engineering." Her error-detection code saved the Apollo 11 moon landing when the computer overloaded 3 minutes before touchdown. Proved that rigorous software practices prevent catastrophic failures.
Responsibilities
- →End-to-end testing across all projects
- →QA reports with build/test/typecheck/lint gates
- →Regression checks after every major change
- →Ship gate — nothing deploys without QA green
- →Methodology upgrades (body inspection, not just status codes)
Defining Moments
“There is no such thing as a small bug in production.”
“Looking good on the surface is not the same as working correctly underneath.”
“If the tests pass but the types don't check, you haven't shipped — you've hoped.”