LTS QA

 

Automation testing has emerged as a new destination for quality assurance, resulting in consistently high demand for automation testing labor. But amid the tech talent war, companies do need an effective test automation engineer hiring process to attract quality automation candidates.

So, in this article, we will guide you through 5 steps to hire a test automation engineer. This guide comes from real recruitment experience at our company as well as consulting some experts in the industry. Let’s take a look first:

• Clarification of requirements
• Write a job description
• Source and shortlist candidates
• Interview
• Final step

How To Hire A Test Automation Engineer?

1. Clarification of requirements

Clarifying the role should be the first step to hiring a true Test Automation Engineer. To do that, you need to define whom you want to hire, their contribution and the skills needed. At LQA, we divide automation test workers into three main groups which are junior, middle, and senior. Also, this article will focus more on a senior automation tester interview as it requires more aspects to consider.

Generally, a senior tester engineer will take part in the planning phase, make decisions, handle complicated tasks, and lead a small team. He/she can also be the bridge between the team and other stakeholders if needed. Therefore, we often require as follows:

• Manual test experience
• Automation test experience
• Test scripts creation ability
• Understanding of test automation technique
• Language ability
• Management skills

As automation tests differ from manual tests in the way that they use code-based test scripts to automate processes, a senior automation test worker should be able to define, develop, execute, and maintain test scripts. He/she also possesses manual test experience and understands test cases, hence can decide when to use manual tests and when to apply automation tests to optimize the QA process. Besides, he/she ideally understands various kinds of test automation frameworks to select the best suit.

2. Write a proper automation test engineer job description 

A smart JD is a key to an effective test automation engineer hiring process. This is when the hiring department understands the above requirements and builds an ideal candidate profile on paper. As we are seeking a senior role, the job description (JD) should be custom and specific. We recommend you include the following aspects.

Company summary

Talk about the employer branding, working environment, and whatever makes your company stand out. Especially, employer branding is an important part of a good job description. According to Glassdoor statistics, 75% of active job seekers are more likely to apply if an organization manages its employer brand. So, don’t forget to briefly convey your company’s reputation in your JD.

Job responsibilities

Here, let talk about the role’s duties and contribution to the company. Senior automation engineers also care about their effect on the company as well as their career path. Thus, they wish to see more impactful activities in the responsibility section, such as planning, managing, optimizing, and innovating, instead of raw tasks only.

Requirements

This is the section for must-have and nice-to-have skills and expectations for this role. Here, clearly mention what you expect from the applicant. For example, bachelor’s degree in computer science, Python language knowledge, mobile or web application automation test experience, Selenium WebDriver framework ability, etc. Plus, they ideally have equivalent certificates in software testing like the ISTQB and in languages such as IELTS certificates.

Benefits

And last but not least, don’t forget to include details of the salary and other compensation that he/she will get. According to Glassdoor, money is the biggest motivator for 67% of candidates. Meanwhile, Zety statistics showed that 74% of job seekers expect to find salary information right in the JD.

3. Source test automation candidates and pre-screen

In this step, the HR department seeks candidates through various sources, including active and passive candidates. Remember to post the job as soon as possible to increase the chance of receiving more applications as well as for the selected candidate to get ready. Particularly, when you source passive candidates who are employed, it may take a month or more for them to be ready.

Here, we recommend two effective ways to source automation engineers as follows.

Find them in forums and groups for automation engineers, such as:

• The largest communities of testers in the world like uTest.
• Top-performed automation test groups on Facebook like Automation testing – Seleniums.
• The top recruitment sites for IT talents, e.g. Dice and Linkedin.
• Place where tech engineers are the most active such as Github and StackOverflow.

Partner with companies that provide hiring support, including:

• Headhunting like McDermott + Bull.
• Employee referral programs like Boon and Jobvite.
• Staff Augmentation or B-O-T services such as LQA.

Recruiters then come up with a list of potential candidates, do pre-screening and brief telephone interviews, and return to the automation department with a list of ideal profiles. The person in charge of the test department will screen again to find out the top potential candidates for the interview phase.

At LQA, the automation leader is responsible for screening and evaluating the candidates. For such high-level positions, apart from reviewing the information provided by this person, he also refers to the references of previous colleagues and checks the candidate’s social networking profile.

4. Conduct automation test engineer interviews

After several steps to find out the most potential applicants for a test automation expert, we now come to an in-person automation test interview. But first, do you know what our CTO and automation leaders advise the most when it comes to an interview in tech? They are:

• Make it a comfortable and practical talk instead of police interrogation (obviously, right?).
• Focus on effect, as experience is not always the number of working years.

• Don’t bring a big technical test into the interview that takes 5-6 hours of your candidates, unless you are hiring employees for Google and Microsoft.

Why should you focus on effect?

At LQA, we concentrate on the impact when hiring a senior automation test engineer. E.g., if a candidate has generated 100 test scripts for UI automation tests but none of them work efficiently, or he has executed a small number of similar tasks during his previous 3 years of working, then we won’t prioritize him.

Conversely, once an applicant with less working time proves his ability via the effect, such as in a previous automation project, he was able to lower the time for executing a regression cycle from this time to that time and reduce time-to-market for new releases, then we highly value this.

Why shouldn’t you ask for a big test? 

Because we already have an overview of the candidate’s ability from step 3, plus there are various questions that the interviewer can ask to deeper check if this person is proficient in automation testing techniques. At LQA, we prefer to bring an actual project to the interview and ask related questions to know if they have the practical knowledge and skills that we need.

Here are some test automation interview questions to more accurately assess an automation engineer’s ability.

Define the scope of automation:

1. How would you define the test cases for automation?
2. Please select the test scenarios to be automated from this QA process and say why or why not for a scenario to be automated.

Select automation testing tool:

1. How would you decide on the tools and frameworks?
2. Please choose automation testing tools and framework for this QA process and explain why.

Management skills:

1. What is your principle to avoid and handle conflicts between testers and developers?
2. Please tell us about your previous challenges in test automation and how you dealt with them.

Others:

1. Any other examples that you want to show to demonstrate your abilities?
2. Do you have any questions for us?

Lastly, remember to check if the candidate fits your organization’s culture and working environment, as he/she as a senior member will have a relative effect on other employees. Don’t hesitate to ask why he/she wants to be part of your company, their working methodology, management style, etc., and observe the way he/she behaves.

5. The final step to optimize future recruitment

The final step is when you make decisions and inform both selected and non-selected candidates about the test automation interview results. We have only one piece of advice here – do get back to all the candidates.

What we’ve noticed is that some companies just don’t get back to all interviewed applicants. Still, carefully informing them of the results will give the candidates a better feel for the company, help you extend the candidate pool for the future, and avoid bad reviews that lower the company’s reputation.

Final words

This article has come to an end! Above is what we want to share with you about how to hire a test automation engineer. Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for companies to attract tech talent, but we’ve seen this Test Automation Engineer hiring process works for our company as well as our partners so we give it to you as an additional reference source.

About LQA

LQA has been a trusted Quality Assurance partner in the global IT market with clients in 9 different countries including Japan, Korea, the U.S., Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. We have implemented the best QA engineer hiring practices to build a qualified tech talent pool with over 50 testing staff. Hence, don’t hesitate to contact us if you need a trusted QA vendor for your business!

 

The benefits of IT Outsourcing are undoubtedly one of the most juicy reasons in any outsourcing decision. But what are the deciding factors that can drive one business owner into implementing IT Outsourcing? Let’s find out more about the Top 5 IT Outsourcing benefits that you need to know here.

5 Juicy Benefits of IT Outsourcing

1. Lower cost for your project

Unquestionably, the first advantage of IT outsourcing is cost reduction. As despite the amount of money and time that you need to spend on one project/application varies, it will definitely cost you quite a lot to put a fully functioning and bug-free application online.

Under the circumstance of the global economic market, many executives now prioritize their budgets, meaning that they would want to look for the most cost-effective solutions. Henceforth, if you put an in-house team, which can cost millions of dollars to build and maintain, and an outsourced team, which is 30-50% less costly on the table, the executives are leaning towards IT Outsourcing.

Look at this example, and you’ll understand what we’re trying to illustrate here. According to an UK talent report, it costs you $55,000/year to hire an average Java developer in the United Kingdom, and the number even reaches $90,000/year for an experienced one.

 

Benefits of IT outsourcing – Cost reduction

 

In contrast, the equivalent job in the Vietnam IT market would only cost you approximately $10,000. Looking at these numbers, you can see the huge gap between the talents from two different places. However, if you look closer into how the Java developers in Vietnam code and communicate, you will see no difference, at least in terms of professional knowledge.

So, what we’re trying to say here is that you will be able to hire a fully capable Java developer in Vietnam at a much lower price. The saved amount of money can be used in other investments within your projects.

Besides the lower salary, your business can save a fortune on the recruitment agency fee and management costs. No employer branding is needed, no costly marketing campaigns and no uncalled-for managing expenses.

Read more: How to estimate IT Outsourcing Cost

2. Higher chance to hire in-demand tech talents

What are the deciding factors for a high-profile software developer when they choose between companies?

According to a survey from TopCV Vietnam, 57,9% of the participants stated that they are concerned with how interesting it is to work in a company, while 48,7% emphasize the importance of the company’s tech stack. Both of these features can be found in big enterprises or IT-majored companies. But how about the small-to-mid-size companies that have no experience in digitalization and technologies? How are they gonna find the most suitable IT talents for their tech projects if they have no reputation?

These questions can be answered with IT Outsourcing advantages. With IT Outsourcing, you don’t have to worry about IT recruitment, as it is all taken care of by the vendors. These vendors have their tactics to attract, recruit, manage and retain tech talents. With them doing this for your business, you can save a lot of time while still having great access to their IT talent pool.

3. Quick time-to-market

Customers’ unquenchable desire for the most up-to-date features, corporate growth targets, shorter life cycles, and senior management pressure all contribute to speed-to-market. Many consumers demand a continuous set of upgraded features on an annual cadence due to the amazing velocity of innovation in mobile handset devices.

 

Benefits of IT Outsourcing – Quick time to market

 

When companies fail to reach their time to market targets, they lose money as well. A product that is six months late to market makes 33 percent less profit over five years, according to classic research by McKinsey & Co; if it is released on time but is 50 percent over budget, profits are only decreased by roughly 4%.

In the B2C software business, technology companies frequently employ and prosper with the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Although this method entails some risk in terms of client satisfaction, it also allows the team to move rapidly and shorten the time to market by releasing a version with only the most essential functionality.

But how to you obtain quick time-to-market if you are still tangled with hiring and training talents? The answer is IT Outsourcing, as this approach helps you hire very quickly, and these hires barely need any training in the industry and technologies.

4. Flexibility & agility

Businesses grow and shrink at different times. It is widely recognized that these companies must be able to respond to these developments by adopting a flexible and scalable approach to their extended operations as well as their main business. As a result, it’s critical that your IT outsourcing partner can match and react to these changes in order to meet demand.

 

Benefits of IT Outsourcing – Flexibility

 

Businesses can adjust to shifting priorities and requirements because to this flexibility. Here are some reasons why IT outsourcing is critical to your business:

• • The outsourcing team can adapt to your company’s goals.
  • The outsourcing team can change in internal operations and advancements.
  • You can make adjustments and recommendations to shift focus, especially in agile methodology.
  • You can flexibly scale up and down your outsourcing personnel but it’s not that easy to an internal IT team.

5. More focus on your core business

Many activities in the workplace can serve as a distraction from the primary goal of the company. When a result, as the burden grows, the essential activities of the business deteriorate, which is bad for the company and hinders its growth.

Businesses can benefit from IT outsourcing by delegating some tasks to third parties, eliminating opportunity costs of implementing non-core businesses, and allowing them to focus on their core competencies. Third parties play an important role here by obtaining the tasks and manage everything. When a company’s burden is excessive, outsourcing can be tremendously beneficial.

 

Benefits of IT Outsourcing – Focus on core business

 

It’s been proven time and time again that focusing your time and attention on what you’re good at makes a lot more sense. If you run an education establishment, you should put your clients and teaching as your priority. But in order to elevate your service, you decide to develop an app that helps to learn. Instead of hiring a full-time and long-term team to work on the app, you should always outsource and update on the regular basis.

You will have more time to focus on the key things like inspiring employees and making profit by collaborating with an organization to take the lead and deliver your projects and products.

Reap the IT Outsourcing benefits with Lotus QA now

Lotus QA has the expertise and experience with IT services in many domains such as retail, food and beverage, healthcare, etc., making us one trustworthy and professional service provider for businesses wanting to implement IT outsourcing. When working with us, you will get access to many benefits of IT outsourcing, including:

• High Security: LQA not only follows stringent procedures of ISO 27000:01 for optimal security and international standardized process but also flexibly adapts to clients’ requirements
• Quality Human Resource: we ensure staff competency through strict rounds of interviews, on-job orientations, continuous learning & development for the most suitable QA staff.
• Flexibility: We provide different working models to allow clients to choose or change the plan at any time.

Contact us for more support:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

The matter of how to ensure quality in software development outsourcing is one of the most important features that project managers need to address. As you work with an external party in software development outsourcing, you lose complete control over your project. In this case, several measures need to be taken into consideration to ensure the quality of the said project.

From a service provider’s perspective, Lotus Group has its own way of ensuring quality, which you might find useful in your project.

1. Have control over our human resources

Software development outsourcing, or IT outsourcing in general, is an emerging service as the world is shifting towards digital transformation. In this new field, the most famous service providers are those from the less-developed countries which have lower labor costs. 

However, soon their sources of IT workers become limited, as it is getting harder and harder to hire competent tech staff. To deal with this universal problem, Lotus Group plans to change our stance in the hiring markets. Instead of recruitment only, we want to be more proactive in providing IT talents to our clients. To do this, we have founded Lotus Academy – a training institution specializing in backend and frontend technologies for freshers/newbies in the IT industry. 

With the foundation of Lotus Academy, Lotus now can take advantage of the resourceful talent pool, hence providing the most competent and reasonably-priced tech staff. 

Technology training is in high demand, and the number of students in Lotus Academy will only rise in the future. And with the high number of students rolling in, Lotus can train them and let them take part in our projects. With careful observation and guidance from our experienced trainers, your project will be well-tended with care.

Besides the source from Lotus Academy, Lotus Group also has our connection with many other universities and colleges in Vietnam. These training institutions have a thorough training course with actual projects for the students to practice, which can be of great benefit for you.

2. Implement manual and automation test early

Technically speaking, the quality of one product/project relies on how you implement the testing process. If you follow the method of waterfall or even V-model, you leave the testing till the last minute, making the time-to-market longer than ever.

Instead of developing and testing at different times, you should combine regular testing and structured QA strategy in your software development life cycle to make sure that everything will be tested and fixed quickly.

In your testing process, manual testing and automation testing should be combined to catch the bugs that thinner testing strategies may have missed.

According to a study by Capers Jones, 85% of the bugs are made during the design and build stages of an SDLC, and some are even there before the first line of code is written.

By implementing manual and automation test early, you can work on how to fix these bugs before they can make their way to your releases, which will in turn ensure software quality and save you a lot of time.

3. Have clear communication methods and channels 

The first and most important question that every manager has about remote work communication best practices is about management. Management used to entail task allocation, monitoring, and administration, among other things. Managers can easily track cues to indicate communication issues and get involved in fixing them with a co-located team. A remote team, on the other hand, works off the screen, posing difficulties for managers.

Managers used to have physical and emotional contact with their employees, but now have little to no direct interaction with them. Managers are required to implement some of the tools and approaches to achieve remote work communication best practices from a place of easy-to-manage work platforms such as Skype or Excel spreadsheets.

For seamless communication, you have to set out clear communication methods and channels. How should reports be handled, how often should you call in for a meeting? These are the kinds of questions that you need to answer when you want to tackle the communication aspects of a software outsourcing project.

4. Use agile methodology (incremental and iterative)

Agile methodology has always been praised as one of the most effective software development methods there are in the field. Indeed, in agile project management, everything moves at a high speed, and testing is an integrated part of the project execution phase. 

This means that instead of processing the quality of different features separately, agile works with the overall quality of the final product. 

In Agile methodology, you will always be involved in the development process and can easily make changes if you wish to. To put in other words, Agile allows a greater level of flexibility which many businesses now want for their projects.

In addition, agile is an iterative process, and the team will inevitably have to learn to grow and improve their work overtime. And this can be of great advantage for you to ensure the highest quality on your project.

All of the above is what Lotus Group is applying to ensure a high-quality project for our clients. Besides all these, we also have other methods for different kinds of service. If you want to hear more about this, contact us:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

Lotus Academy – As the talent pool for the IT industry is getting smaller and smaller, many businesses find it hard to find and attract talents to their companies, hence they have to seek help from the third party from other countries. However, this solution soon encounters issues as the human resources from those countries also reached a limit. The nagging question that service providers need to answer now is how to ensure a sustainable and stable source of talents for their clients.

At Lotus Group, we have this call figured out, all thanks to an initiative of Lotus Academy – a training facility for information technology specifically. At Lotus Academy, the students get the chance to learn and practice with many experts in the field, who will guide them, counsel them and lead them the right way.

 

The foundation of Lotus Academy

Lotus Quality Assurance and Lotus Technology Services have been the emerging destinations for any business that needs assistance in the IT industry. Besides providing top-notch IT services for a reasonable price, Lotus Group also stands out among other competitors in Vietnam as a place for top-tier IT talents. 

Our talents are built with great variety in terms of seniority and tech stack, giving our clients many choices of who to hire for their projects. The quality of our staff is also controlled through a system of skill development and continuous learning.

To take a further step in assuring the high-quality staff and the number of IT talents available for our clients, our BOD has decided to open Lotus Academy in 2021. This will be a destination to come for many freshers and tech graduates to experience on-job training and domain specifications. This project not only aids them, freshers, with basic knowledge and the necessary foundation for their future job but also gives them the opportunities to learn from the experience.

 

What makes Lotus Academy stand out

Lotus Academy’s model is not new in Vietnam, as many services providers now have their own training facilities. However, Lotus Academy still shows great potential as it has:

• Well-designed syllabus and thorough courses that can provide students with comprehensive knowledge of the industry and technologies.
• Experienced trainers and guides
• On-job training with actual projects from many clients all around the world
• Fundamental knowledge in Backend .NET/Java, and Frontend ReactJS/VueJS

Thanks to a resourceful source of IT talents from Lotus TS, we will be able to provide the best IT workers for our clients. If you want to discuss more about this, contact us via:

• Website: https://www.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

The new year is an excellent time to reorganize and work toward your life goals. It’s that time of year when we’re reminded that, even if we didn’t achieve enough in the previous year, there’s still a lot more to do in life, and new opportunities will undoubtedly present themselves in the next 365 days.

What Lotus aims at in 2022

2022 will be a very important milestone in deciding whether we could thrive to become one of the best IT outsourcing companies in Vietnam. In this year, strategic steps will be taken to achieve this goal:

• The birth of Lotus Academy to strengthen our talent pool and human resources
• The opening of many other services in the IT industry
• The desire to scale our company to 1000 staff by the end of the year.

While the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet won, with a vaccine in sight, there is at least a faint light at the end of the tunnel—along with the hope that another train isn’t heading our way.

2021 will be the year of transition. Barring any unexpected catastrophes, individuals, businesses, and society can start to look forward to shaping their futures rather than just grinding through the present. The next normal is going to be different. It will not mean going back to the conditions that prevailed in 2019. Indeed, just as the terms “prewar” and “postwar” are commonly used to describe the 20th century, generations to come will likely discuss the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 eras.

During this hard time, Lotus stumbled upon many difficulties as we were struck with the second outburst of Covid-19 in Hanoi, resulting in most of our employees having to work from home. Despite all that, our staff has worked nonstop to ensure the highest quality possible in each and every of our delivery.

In this year of the Tiger, Lotus holds up great plans and great opportunities to thrive, making us the trusted partners of business in all over the world.

Lotus QAは、2021年のあらゆる課題や困難を見事に撃退した数少ない企業の1つです。実際、2021年はLotusの多くの変化と成果を目の当たりにし、パンデミックの中での適応力と柔軟性を証明することができました。それでは、2021年にLotusがどのように発展したかを見ていきましょう。

1. 私たちが乗り越えたもの

COVID-19のパンデミックとの戦いはまだ勝利したとは言えませんが、ワクチンの目処が立ったことで、少なくともトンネルの終わりにかすかな光が見えています。

この間、LotusはハノイでCOVID-19の2度目の暴発に見舞われ、ほとんどの社員が自宅待機を余儀なくされるなど、さまざまな困難にぶつかった。そんな中でも、私たちスタッフは、ひとつひとつの納品物を最高の品質でお届けするために、絶え間なく努力を続けてきました。

 

2. 私たちが達成したこと

2021年、新たなビジョンと戦略的プラン、そしてスタッフの献身的な努力により、Lotusは不死鳥のように立ち上がり、成功を収めたと主張します。

売上は160万ドルに達し、2020年の2倍になりました。また、日本、アメリカ、中国、韓国など世界各国の42社のクライアントと172のプロジェクトを行いました。これは、2020年の実績と比較すると大きな数字です。

私たちの抱える問題やアチーブメント達成の詳細はこちら。

 

 

Lotus QAについて

Lotus QAは、小売、食品および飲料、ヘルスケアなどの多くのドメインでITサービスに関する専門知識と経験を持っており、オフショア開発を実施したい企業にとって信頼できるプロフェッショナルなサービスプロバイダーです。

• 厳格なセキュリティ：Lotus QAは、ISO 27000:01の厳格な手順に従って、最適なセキュリティと国際標準化されたプロセスを実現するだけでなく、お客様の要件に柔軟に適応します。
• 質の高い人材：Lotus QAのスタッフは入社の時からの厳格な面接、そして仕事上のオリエンテーション、継続的な学習と自己開発を通じた能力の高い人材です。
• 柔軟性：お客様がいつでも計画を選択または変更できるように、さまざまな作業モデルを提供しています。

弊社のサービスに関する詳細についてはお気軽にご連絡ください！

• Website: https://jp.lotus-qa.com/
• Tel: (+84) 24-6660-7474
• Fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/LotusQualityAssurance

 

The Vietnamese digital economy will grow by 31% this year compared to the same period last year, reaching $21 billion.

This is stated in the e-Conomy SEA 2021 Report, which was released this week by Temasek, Google, and management consulting firm Bain & Company.

As a result, the Vietnamese internet economy could reach US$220 billion in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) by 2030, placing it second only to Indonesia.

This is encouraging in light of the shrinking online travel market. If current trends continue, Vietnam’s GMV is expected to reach $57 billion by 2025.

The Vietnamese digital economy

The report also stated that since COVID-19 was reintroduced in the first half of this year, the country has added 8 million digital consumers, with non-metro areas accounting for more than half of the total.

Notably, 99 percent of these new consumers expressed a desire to continue using online services after the pandemic, indicating a very high level of user adoption of digital services and products in our country.

Thirty percent of digital merchants believe that without digital platforms, they would not have survived the pandemic.

Digital financial services are also becoming critical enablers, with 98% of digital merchants now accepting digital payments and 72% using digital lending solutions. Many are also embracing digital tools to engage with their customers, with 72% planning to increase their use of digital marketing tools over the next five years.

Vietnam as an innovation hub

According to the report, Vietnam remains an appealing innovation hub as global capital continues to pour in.

Investments and deals reached a record high of $1.37 billion in the first half of 2021, surpassing full-year investments in recent years, fueled by investment interest in digital start-ups in the fields of e-commerce, fintech, healthtech, and edtech.

In terms of Southeast Asia, the report states that the region is on track to become a digital economy with a GMV of US$1 trillion by 2030.

More than 440 million internet users, including 350 million digital consumers in the region, are the primary drivers of this.

Southeast Asia has added 60 million new digital consumers since the outbreak began, with 20 million joining in the first half of this year.

Southeast Asian digital consumers have increased their spending on online services as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, Southeast Asia’s GMV is expected to reach $174 billion by the end of the year, rising to $360 billion by 2025, exceeding the previous estimate of $300 billion.

The year 2021 marked the tipping point for many technological advances that would shape our understanding and interaction with the world to come.

Let’s take a look back at some of the year’s most significant technological developments.

The Beginning of the Metaverse

The announcement of Metaverse on November 24th was a significant event in the ever-changing world of technology. This was followed by Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement in October that Facebook would change its name to ‘Meta’ as part of the company’s transition from a social media platform to a virtual reality platform.

Metaverse is a concept of a centralized virtual world in which people and businesses interact with one another via VR headsets, and this platform lacks the usual physical boundaries that today’s social media platforms have.

The Metaverse has the potential to shape how people interact with one another in the ever-expanding virtual world.

The Crypto-Boom and the Global Chip Scarcity

The year 2021 was the year of cryptocurrency, with the industry growing from USD 24 billion to USD 63 billion in a single year, and the trend is expected to continue.

However, this boom, combined with the massive surge in demand caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, resulted in the worst supply-chain issue in the computer industry’s history, affecting global computer buyers as well as every tech industry from chip manufacturers to car companies.

NFT stands for Non-fungible Token.

NFT is an Ethereum Blockchain function that allows a person to trade ownership of anything digital, such as images, drawings, music, and so on, with another person, but each NFT is unique, unlike currencies, which are fungible or identical.

NFTs have become a massive trend in digital art trading in a very short period of time, though the NFT market is still primarily a place where rich people, mostly for bragging rights, throw away their money to own something rather than NFTs being anything substantial.

Silicone made to order

The world’s largest technology companies have finally taken the step of designing their own custom SOCs for their own products.

Apple was the most successful in this venture; the second iteration of their custom silicon, known as the ‘M1 Pro’ and ‘M1 Max,’ set the standard for consumer-level computer efficiency and computational prowess, leaving other manufacturers in the dust.

Google, on the other hand, created their own mobile chip called ‘Tensor,’ which was used in their flagship mobile line-up and delivered impressive performance.

All of the other major phone manufacturers may enter the custom silicon game by 2022; Tesla has hinted at something similar in their upcoming phone release.

LG’s exit from the smartphone market

LG, a well-known electronics company, announced their retirement from the phone business in 2021, stating that they would focus more on home appliances and other electronic products.

To say the least, the company’s recent performance in the smartphone industry has been poor, with bad branding, questionable hardware and software choices, and a lack of reliability causing the company to fall significantly behind their competitors.

However, LG will always have a special place in the industry because of their constant pursuit of innovation, and they were the first to set trends for many of the smartphone features that are now ‘mainstream’ across the smartphone industry.

Let’s take a look at some of the first features introduced by LG to the market: capacitive touchscreen, dual-core processor, 1080p video recording, dual-rear camera, quad-core processor, double-tap to wake, mass-produced quad HD screen, dual-screen display, ultrawide camera, 18*9 display, triple rear camera, and so on. LG will be sorely missed.

Lotus QA is among the few companies that have successfully fought back all of the challenges and difficulties in 2021. In fact, the year of the Ox has witnessed many changes and achievements of Lotus, proving our adaptability and flexibility amidst the pandemic. Let’s take a look at how Lotus developed in 2021.

Changes in our regime

As some of you may know, Lotus started with Lotus QA (Lotus Quality Assurance) in 2016 and continued our journey of providing top-notch talents and services to the world. To do this, our BOD has expanded the service coverage with Lotus Technology Services in 2017 to bring more value and high-quality work to our customers. 

With Lotus TS, we specialize in providing data labeling, data annotation and software development outsourcing services. Another milestone in our development journey is the foundation of Lotus Japan office in October 2020, marking our official presence in the global IT Outsourcing market. Despite facing many difficulties amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Lotus Japan is a big success, as we got many new customers from this promising, yet very demanding market. 

Towards the end of 2021, with the help of partners and many devoting employees, Lotus stepped up our game with the establishment of Lotus Academy – a training hub for young and talented tech newbies.

With Lotus Academy as the newest member of Lotus Group, our BOD believe that we can enhance our talent pools, hence providing top talents to our clients from around the globe.

What we have overcome

While the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet won, with a vaccine in sight, there is at least a faint light at the end of the tunnel—along with the hope that another train isn’t heading our way.

2021 will be the year of transition. Barring any unexpected catastrophes, individuals, businesses, and society can start to look forward to shaping their futures rather than just grinding through the present. The next normal is going to be different. It will not mean going back to the conditions that prevailed in 2019. Indeed, just as the terms “prewar” and “postwar” are commonly used to describe the 20th century, generations to come will likely discuss the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 eras.

During this hard time, Lotus stumbled upon many difficulties as we were struck with the second outburst of Covid-19 in Hanoi, resulting in most of our employees having to work from home. Despite all that, our staff has worked nonstop to ensure the highest quality possible in each and every of our delivery.

What we have achieved

Vietnam has witnessed the most serious outbreak of Covid-19 since the beginning of it, and Lotus was somewhat affected by the outbreak. But that was just the story of 2020. In 2021, with new visions and a strategic plan, together with the dedication and devotion from our staff, Lotus group has risen like a phoenix and claimed our success.

To be more specific, our revenue reached $1.6M, doubling the number in 2020. Lotus has worked with 42 clients from all over the world, ranging from Japan, the US, China, Korea, etc. with 172 projects. This is a big number when compared with what we did in 2020. 

Also, Lotus was celebrated as the Top AI Data process service in the prestigious Sao Khue award. On the global scale, we got listed from Clutch, Manifest as top software testing and IT Outsourcing companies. These titles are concrete evidence of what we achieved in 2021.

In terms of internal PR, Lotus has organized many games, team-building activities to bond our employees together.

In terms of staff training, Lotus has founded Learning & Development department and later on, Lotus Academy, which in turn will help Lotus ensure a stable and high-quality source of candidates.

To conclude, the year of 2021 is another year of many difficulties and challenges. But Lotus, with hard work and righteous strategies, has thrived. As we’re getting closer to 2022, our BOD would want to thank you all for your support in 2021. We hope you a Happy New Year!