Get to Know your Betabound Test Managers! Part 6: Tim Moehring

Welcome back to another edition of the Centercode Program Manager Interview series!

After interviewing many of the program managers at Centercode, I took the opportunity to sit down with our Services Manager (and my boss), Tim Moehring! I already knew going into this interview that Tim would provide a lot of thoughtful and detailed insight into his role at the company and share valuable tips on becoming the best tester possible, and he did not disappoint.

I also encourage you to read the other interviews with members of my team, including Patrick Canez, Cameron Bell, Ty Wells, and Mike Fine. If this interview has sparked your interest in joining our panel of over 250,000 testers, you can begin your beta testing journey by registering for Betabound.

An Interview with
Tim Moehring

Can you talk a little bit about your background and how you came to work at Centercode?

I did 11 years in active duty as a Navy diver and after that, I got out to pursue a degree in electrical engineering and computer science before getting an internship at a defense robotics and artificial intelligence company. When I was there, I had a coworker who left to go work somewhere called Centercode. Once he joined, he told me about the company, how they tested products for a lot of household companies, and that I’d be a great fit. This got me interested, so I reached out to the team!

I interviewed for the role and described my ideal day as having a bit of customer interaction, some independent work solving hard problems, and teaching people how to do other things. These three activities really lie at the intersection of where Centercode sits since you are always exploring new things, interacting with clients and customers, and teaching people how to use the platform to solve issues. This helped me get my initial role as a Centercode Program Manager.

“We are a fully remote company, so being intrinsically motivated to keep yourself on task is not something that everybody has, but it is something that makes a successful program manager.”

What is your daily routine like as a CPM?

I’m going to take a step back to take a step forward. Every day starts with making breakfast for my son, getting him ready, and dropping him off at school. When I get to work I check all of my inbound communication to make sure there hasn’t been anything that has come up from a client that needs my urgent attention. Back when I was a CPM, I would typically dive right into independent contributor work like doing feedback triage, writing reports, or things like that.

Now my job is to help other people solve their problems and unblock them. The first thing that I need to do these days to start my day is to make sure that there’s nobody blocked who needs my input or assistance or help with anything. After that, my mornings are spent in one-on-one meetings with my team. I have two or three of these a day. My afternoons are often spent doing my own work or helping people solve their problems once again. This is when I’ll do things like build out reports, make sure people are good on their OKRs (objectives and key results), my team’s time is accurate, and a lot of workload management. It is my job to make sure that no single CPM has too much or too little work on their plate.

What are some things that make a successful program manager?

The first and foremost thing is the ability to be autonomous and function as a very independent agent in the world. You’re able to capture all of the tasks you need to do and knock them out in a timely manner. We are a fully remote company, so being intrinsically motivated to keep yourself on task is not something that everybody has, but it is something that makes a successful program manager.

After that, it’s definitely attention to detail and being curious enough to look for those details. Test managers will sift through hundreds of pieces of feedback, and they need to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and find those nuggets of insights that our clients are really going like and call attention to them. They need the ability to analyze the information in a new and unique way that maybe the client is not thinking of, and I think that curiosity plays a big role in that. If you are not curious about the product in the test you are running and don’t ask questions about it and continuously explore it, you’re not going to be as good as somebody who does.

The last thing I would say is just professionalism. Not only do we represent Centercode to our clients, but we also represent our clients to their testers. We have to have a very high standard of professionalism even when we’re being autonomous. It’s likely the CPM is going to be the only representation of Centercode in any given client meeting, and they need to be able to be professional, but not robotic or cold.

What do you enjoy about your role?

I love solving problems. It is something that I have loved since I was a kid and as a CPM, I got to troubleshoot beta products for my clients and help figure out solutions for what the testers were facing. So a tester will be experiencing an issue with their, let’s say, air pods, and I can try to replicate it and see what’s going on. I can see if there’s a fix and then report that to the client.

This is, in some ways, similar to my current role. When a CPM has an issue they cannot solve or if they’re trying to do something new and unique using our platform, they come to me. Then we get to explore collaboratively to see if there is a way that we can do what it is that they’re trying to do in the platform. Every test is the same in that there are going to be issues at various stages. It just depends on what we are testing. I have yet to see one test go from start to finish, 100% as planned. There is so much going on, and a lot of the time client teams will want to try a different recruiting strategy, explore other product areas, or send out a reactive survey. Whatever it is, I genuinely enjoy being able to sit with people and help solve those problems and come up with solutions that are good for Centercode, good for our clients, and good for our testers. That is my absolute favorite thing to do.

The other thing I enjoy doing is mentoring and coaching people to grow in their careers. I push people to be better and do more and give them opportunities to grow and learn both with Centercode and outside of it.

Oh, my third favorite thing is helping to draft the weekly Beta Blast Newsletter (subscribe by signing up for Betabound here) 😉.

What piece of advice would you like to give to testers?

I think the easiest piece of advice that I would give is to simply sign into the platform every day. It is so easy to lose track of an entire week. Taking five minutes to check if there are any new activities or to think of some feedback to submit can help you stay an active and engaged tester. Even if all you do is check out the latest feedback and see if anything resonates with you, any participation helps. Establishing that as a habit when you are testing really solves everything else. When you’re signing in, you’re capturing your feedback, you’re doing your activities, and doing your surveys. Anything that might have come up or shifted in the test plan you are aware of as soon as it happens.

If you could choose any one thing to test, what would it be?

The absolute first thing that came to mind is an electronic drum set. If I could test one of those, I would have so much fun. I was a drummer for nearly eight years and was in a band for four. I know that electronic drum sets have come a long way from where they were 20 years ago, so being able to see what the cutting-edge technology is for this product and test it would be an absolute blast.

What’s your favorite hobby outside of work?

My number one favorite hobby outside of work is disc golf! Other things that come to mind are reading, going to the gym, or occasionally playing video games. But really, if I was to give my absolute favorite hobby (that isn’t work), it would be playing disc golf. I make a point to play at least once a week, usually on the weekends when days are shorter and, when days are longer in the summer, I will do evening games. I recently joined a League that plays on Fridays too! I have played with Frisbees in one way or another since I was probably 8 years old, and then discovered disc golfing in a real way in my early twenties, and just absolutely love it.

Fin.

A huge thank you to Tim for letting me interview him and ask him all sorts of questions. If you want to chat with Tim, feel free to leave a comment below or reach out to us at hello@betabound.com and I’ll make sure Tim gets back to you!

If you haven’t joined Betabound yet, be sure to register to stay informed about future testing opportunities and receive our weekly Beta Blast newsletter!