Philip Soffer's guest appearances

Philip Soffer

The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network

PeopleStar Podcast

Sarah Williams

Tom Peters

Eric Topol

Elisabeth Rosenthal

Maurício Manhães

Mike Gorman

Alan Rusbridger

Tommy Breedlove

Don Golden

John Carlson

Megan Burns

David Stewart

Colin Walker

Jessica Helfand

Amy Virshup

OwlTail

Rainbow Unicorns

Finding the best teammates can be such a difficult task, right? This week’s guest is the outstanding Phil Soffer; he tells us about how he has been able to find rainbow unicorns in his work thanks to his leadership. Phil’s working culture begins with the belief that efficiency is more important than accuracy and that breaking out of one's comfort zone is necessary for growth. He reflects on some scenarios in which he has used this advice for himself and his coworkers. Listen in on this episode to find out what you can do with your team!

Finding the best teammates can be such a difficult task, right? This week’s guest is the outstanding Phil Soffer; he tells us about how he has been able to find rainbow unicorns in his work thanks to his leadership. Phil’s working culture begins with the belief that efficiency is more important than accuracy and that breaking out of one's comfort zone is necessary for growth. He reflects on some scenarios in which he has used this advice for himself and his coworkers. Listen in on this episode to find out what you can do with your team!

Philip Soffer: About rainbow unicorns and how to find them

Jonathan Lupo

This episode of *Silo Busting* will school you on the topic of testing. In attendance are (1) Phillip Soffer, EPAM’s VP of Product-Service Systems; and (2) and Jonathan Lupo, our VP of Experience Design. Together they will ensure that the themes of testing, automation, and experience design are present and accounted for. Testing is critical in this day and age. “AIs are biased in favor of the datasets they are trained on,” says Soffer. “Which may not be the same people for whom the systems are intended, or it may introduce really dangerous algorithmic bias that needs to be checked somehow.”  But the dangers are many in this world, and one of them involves time. In the old days, we had time for all kinds of individual tests: unit tests, integration tests, functional tests, user experience tests, accessibility tests. No more. “The time that there is for all these kinds of different tests is becoming increasingly compressed,” says Soffer.Says Lupo: “Clients are not giving us more time; they’re giving us less to perform due diligence when we develop products and services.” One benefit of automated testing and analytic, he adds, is that “we don’t have to create these moments in a product lifecycle for testing, validation.” These, says Lupo, “can be happening continuously, in real time.”Speaking of real time: Lupo asks Soffer if our current pandemic moment has an opportunity for automated remote testing?Soffer says we used to have “hallway testing”—in which you could walk around use use officemates as testers. Once, this was a substitute for formal testing, but the pandemic shut it down. “What happens when you take away the hallway because everybody’s in a different place?” he asks and then answers: “We’ve had a lot more interest in doing that kind of hallway testing in a virtual way, through the testing crowd that we have as part of Test IO.” So listen to what these experts have to say. What you’ll hear is not—*not*—a test. Host: Alison KotinEngineer: Kyp PilalasProducer: Ken Gordon

This episode of *Silo Busting* will school you on the topic of testing. In attendance are (1) Phillip Soffer, EPAM’s VP of Product-Service Systems; and (2) and Jonathan Lupo, our VP of Experience Design. Together they will ensure that the themes of testing, automation, and experience design are present and accounted for. Testing is critical in this day and age. “AIs are biased in favor of the datasets they are trained on,” says Soffer. “Which may not be the same people for whom the systems are intended, or it may introduce really dangerous algorithmic bias that needs to be checked somehow.” But the dangers are many in this world, and one of them involves time. In the old days, we had time for all kinds of individual tests: unit tests, integration tests, functional tests, user experience tests, accessibility tests. No more. “The time that there is for all these kinds of different tests is becoming increasingly compressed,” says Soffer. Says Lupo: “Clients are not giving us more time; they’re giving us less to perform due diligence when we develop products and services.” One benefit of automated testing and analytic, he adds, is that “we don’t have to create these moments in a product lifecycle for testing, validation.” These, says Lupo, “can be happening continuously, in real time.” Speaking of real time: Lupo asks Soffer if our current pandemic moment has an opportunity for automated remote testing? Soffer says we used to have “hallway testing”—in which you could walk around use use officemates as testers. Once, this was a substitute for formal testing, but the pandemic shut it down. “What happens when you take away the hallway because everybody’s in a different place?” he asks and then answers: “We’ve had a lot more interest in doing that kind of hallway testing in a virtual way, through the testing crowd that we have as part of Test IO.” So listen to what these experts have to say. What you’ll hear is not—*not*—a test. Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Silo Busting 31: Putting Digital Experience Design to the Test: Philip Soffer and Jonathan Lupo