A few years ago I switched company from a software company to a hardware focused company. I understood from start that this would be a difficult task in getting to learn the new technologies and platforms, but I did not see what this would do for testing.

When you test software that you are totally new, but where you have experience with the environment such as operating system as well as technologies used, you are still able to dig deep into testing and will probably find lots of bugs.

If you instead test something where you are both new to the software/hardware/system and to its environment you will have it a lot harder to find bugs. You will stumble upon things like… oh this went wrong, then learning ah I did not configure it correctly or oh it is supposed to work like that. You are unsure what to expect and what is actually wrong.

Think of yourself as an explorer where you have no knowledge about the gear you are using, where you have landed, what this green thing you stand is and so on. Do you dare explore? That hot red thing over there… let me just dip a toe. Oh it was lava.

So, when you find yourself in such a situation you should do some research, read lots of books and get to know what territory you are in. Having knowledge about the environment and platform you stand on will enable you to do a better job as a tester.