Why you should get out of QA / Testing

I think there will always be room for skilled testers as long as there is software to sell. End users, developers, and automated checks can find a lot of problems, but in many cases, just using these approaches alone doesn't work very well.

I agree for the most part. I do QA in video games and think the impact has been damning for the game industry.
Many companies took this approach " i can just patch it" .
With entertainment software and art you will lose your customers.
I can't remember a large video game release that hasn't been a buggy mess since 2015.

Got put on a QA team for my first rotation on a software engineering grad programme. I was livid, and that's before I knew I'd be doing mostly manual testing. Put me in a pretty awkward position as I could not claim to have any software engineering experience on my resume, so I wasn't able to find a better job in my area. Tried to get switched to another team to no avail, despite the original job listing having zero resemblance to my actual role.

Thankfully I'll be on a software engineering team soon for the second rotation, but I'm still a year behind in terms of experience and not too happy about that.

I am a QA inspector, but I don't test software. I do quality assurance on aerospace and military.

I tested Windows 10 at Microsoft and found a plethora of bugs. Test engineers are never going away, and this is classic lack of respect for quality assurance. Customers should not be your test engineers.

I have around 11 years experience in qa. The reality hits me now. Development is very vast. Is there a technology that you can suggest to start of with? Is Salesforce development easier?

appreciate your video, really gives some good advice, do you think transitioning to pre-sales/solutions engineer/sales engineer is a good decision for long term career ? where you help customers onboard to your product

Coming from a non-tech background I'm looking at QA as an entry point to get my foot in the door while I work on my Software Engineering degree because I hate my current job and want to get into tech as soon as possible. Do you think this is a good plan?

Glad I came across this video as someone who’s in QA/Test development. I work at a small startup and recently informed my manager that I want to switch to a product developer role within the company, so hopefully that happens this year. I enjoy being in QA/test now but I think it’s because our company values it/needs it. This may not apply to other companies going forward like you mentioned.

How was your experience transitioning from writing test code to product code? Do they have a lot of things in common? Just want to know your thoughts.

I don't know if this is a trend in the industry or I've just had bad luck in my last couple of jobs, but I've noticed a really toxic pattern in software QA over the past few years. Management sets unreasonable expectations for how much a small QA team can test over a period of time. To meet the deadlines, the QA team can only test at a very superficial level. However, if a bug ever gets through, the tester for that feature is thrown under the bus for missing it.

Yeah there some parts that u did great, but as saying SDE only the most important role in development cycle that's totally wrong.

6+ years as "test developer" in Microsoft? :D No wonder of thy conclusions. <3
Do feel for people modeled by their environment (-a-a-a- experience) that well !
Gut luck! :)

This is interesting, but it will also be valuable to counter some points. OP just chanced to work in conditions which while common, aren't representative of every kind of software. Microsoft made a big push towards spending less on QA, while Amazon was always known for dedicating very few resources to QA. This doesn't mean they didn't do testing, they just made developers into bad testers. The general idea here is that there isn't much to know about testing and that a developer will easily be able to do what QA does. This works some times more... sometimes less. Specifically, this doesn't work when QA has to be a domain expert (think medicine, or finance as an example). It's just very hard to find a programmer who's also a certified nurse or a mortgage advisor.

Another situation when this approach to QA doesn't work: highly reliable systems. Think stuff like air traffic control or just even filesystems. Testing these things requires a lot of dedicated knowledge which developers will normally not have (i.e. knowledge of dedicated testing tools or load generators etc.)

Products like MS Windows on the other hand are designed for users with no special expertise and aren't required to be very reliable (outside of a few components).

So, there's a lot of truth to what this video claims. Often times dedicated QA teams produce very little value and owe their existence to the inertia of how development process used to be organized decades ago. This isn't always the case, but, probably, building your career on hoping to get that exceptional role / position isn't a sound strategy.

This video is so passe it is laughable. No big tech is laying off based on dev/QA roles, heck you think these big ceos have time to weed out the devs from QAs? It's just an old outdated philosophy that was perhaps true while he was in the peak of his career. Just compare this advice with the recent layoffs and you'll know his opinions are so so outdated.

You clearly don’t work in government departments that still are 15/20 years behind the trend 😂

I have been working in QA for 4 years, How do I move out of QA to SDE , what skills should I upgrade.
If I am looking to move within the company , how should I approach it.
Also what do u think of the learning gained in job as a software tester vs software developer

Isn't QA testing like a entry level to hi tech industry. If someone wants to progress go ahead but I don't see nothing wrong being QA tester

Thankyou for giving honest view from your experience.
It is really an eye opener.

i just found oiut that this guy is a phd from cambridge university. he's insane.

do you remember the papers about efficacy?

Well for people like me, it’s a foot in the door. Someone with no contacts or social capital, I think that’s the way to look at it and respectfully disagree.

Not only that, the startup world is extremely different.

What's your opinion on working in operations ?

Hey John,
It's quite shocking to me since I am trying to jump into QA test. I have no background about IT and hopefully with 2 years studying polytechnic, I can find a job in this field. So if QA is not a good field to invest in, which part of IT should a beginner as me begin with? I come from Sweden and I guess maybe Sweden in the next few years would be the same as in US now.
Looking forward to your suggestion.

Great content. 👍👍👍

I used to work in companies that consisted of larger test teams: The developers to testers ratio was about 3-5 to 1. The development teams did not have much incentives to test their own work or write automated tests. They were incentivized by shipping new features. In this case, these organizations required dedicated testers.

Retaining only a skeleton test team could increase the impact generated per employee, but training developers with an eye for quality does not take place overnight. The developers need coaching and positive reinforcements to produce high quality work.

Do you have any stories, anecdotes or solutions to have the developers to own the quality of their own work in a greater capacity than before?

How does one move out of QA/SDET?

If looking internally, within the company, didn't work and looking outside the company is not working. What do you recommend?

Do you have to start from the bottom as a junior SWE, even if you have a decade of QA experience? And will this require taking a pay-cut?

Hey, John. It's been a while. I hope everything's going well.

In addition to the things you said, I'd point out that the market for software engineers is a broader market than for SDETs. Being in test limits your career unnecessarily.

When I switched from SDET to SDE at Microsoft in 2004, they had said the same things you indicated -- that the role was just as valuable, etc., etc. But if you looked at the ladder level for compensation, SDET was one level down from SDE for corresponding competency and responsibility levels.

Hi John,

I graduated in an unrelated field to cs, but I found my passion the last two semesters (thanks to some engineering programming classes) and I applied to tech jobs. It was hard to get my foot in the door, but I eventually found a job in QA/Testing role. It has been a great year but like you said, I wanted to move on to actual development. I just landed a job offer as software engineering. So it is nice to hear that I'm making a rational move. I'm a bit worried though, the company I got the offer has bad reputation online, plenty of posts of how is a witch company and will ruin my career (a bit dramatic in my opinion) but the team I interviewed with did not give any of those red flags listed online. I would love to hear any of your recommendations on how to assess these offers.

Thank you on the videos!

Absolute gem! What do you think about Release Engineering/Devops ?

Do you have a link to that paper on the efficacy of testing?

Hey John - I feel like I've just stumbled across a gold mine here watching your content. We need more folks with your wealth of experience sharing the do's and don'ts that they've experienced, so thank you very much! I'm not personally within Software, rather I'm in Security. How common was it across your career with collaborating with Security?

So what do you think about other types of role that kind of hang off of / support development, but are not actually part of it, like build engineering, or change management? Kind of DevOpsy type roles that you see at some companies? Is there a future for those groups?

Your videos are really informative and I appreciate the effort you put into them. As someone who is currently a senior in college and going to be entering the field soon, I really appreciate everything you have to say. Keep it up! Hopefully this channel continues to turn into a fun thing for you to spread your knowledge to people like myself.

great video, as always. Do you think the same applies to roles like Site Reliability Engineering?

Started out in QA, and a couple months in I was feeling what you describe here. Moved into an SDE position in the same company, and I haven't looked back.

That brief QA period got me up to speed with the more broad aspects of what my company does since I had to validate projects in different areas, yet save for that, and some scripting/general knowledge (which you get anyway in the SDE role), I don't think anything else would've been really transferable.

The domain can be very specific, which had me fearing that I could put years into the QA role, and end up becoming an expert... in my company's niche.

The "I helped make that better" vs "I made that" hit hard. I actually told some variation of that to HR when they asked why I wanted to move.

I agree with another comment: this channel should be going to the moon!

Do you think Platform teams are bad for your career?

Great video as always

Explanation is amazing as always.✌️✌️

Oh man, your videos are underrated, this channel is going to the moon really soon!