“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life”, said Mark Twain. As for me, there are many jobs that people enjoy doing in the 21st century, and the professions from the IT sector are among them.
It was a few days ago when I was at a cafe and have involuntarily listened to the conversation from the nearby table:
-I’m done with my job, I want to start something new, and if I could be a part of an IT company, it would be great! But it’s too hard to learn the programming, and it takes time…
The response was:
-I would suggest you start your IT career as a QA specialist. It’s very easy to start from this profession, and you will not need the technical skills.
Hold on! What?!
Does anyone here think that the job of the Testing Engineer is to click and compare?
If yes, please keep on reading the article and if you won’t change your mind after reading it, just don’t speak about this profession anymore.
So why do many people think that Software Testing is a non-technical profession?
With the current IT trends and challenges reflecting the increasing emphasis on Agile and DevOps, testers become more technical and sometimes even code experts in their teams.
I think that if you work on software development you should understand at least a little about software engineering. As a Tester, you must read and understand your product and how the changes and fixes are made.
Remember (!) that you are the headlight of the project – you light the way. And if you know the “skeleton” of the product/project, you will help your team to reach the place you want.
Remember (!) that you serve many clients (PMs, Engineers, Top Management etc.), and it means that you have to know all the aspects of the product/project.
I don’t mean that a Tester should create software or an application, but he/she should at least understand what is going on in the system that he/she tests. You can still get away from writing any code if you don’t want to, but as long as you refrain from reading the code you will be missing a very important input to your overall testing process.
And if you still want some more reasons why, you will surly get them.
Here we go:
- If the developer is responsible for the code he/she writes, the Tester is responsible for the entire product: the Tester should understand the customer, as we say “think like a user, be a user!” For that reason, the Tester should understand the developers and the users, and should speak on their languages;
- “If the product fails, the only person who is guilty is the Tester”. Don’t you think that the reason for this phrase is that once the Tester didn’t answer the question of the PM and couldn’t explain what was the reason for the unresolved issue? Think about it.
- Imagine that you have a huge product to test, and you know that in one week the stakeholders will be waiting for the full regression testing results. Your actions? Wouldn’t it be better if you could automate your testing activities? I think I know the answer.
- Finally, it’s just cool to answer the questions of the Software development team. 🙂
Many people say that “The easiest way to IT is through Testing”.
Try me, I will tell you the truth.