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Software QA Testers!!

MicroSco

Is there anyone in TE forums worked as a software QA tester? Just want to know how demanding and promising is that as a career? Been working for almost 3 years as Desktop Support/ Sys Admin and now kinda bored with that as I can't make it move further. Recently a friend of mine suggests me to learn Software Testing and as I heard from him there are lotsa job out there and also money is pretty good. Any Idea??

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Comments

DatabaseHead

I've done software testing on large enterprise projects.

It's not a bad gig to start off in or transition into. The money is usually middle of the road. You can learn quite a bit from the developers, which could help you transition into higher level role. There are usually steps, such as QA Analyst, Senior QA Analyst and sometimes a lead or manager so you do have some room to grow.

I live in the midwest, off the top of my head the salaries are:

QA - Testing Analyst 50 - 60
Senior - Testing Analyst 60 - 70
Lead or Manager 80 - 100

Just my opinion, but it sure the heck beats desktop support.....

LeBroke

Once you're in QA, there's usually two paths you can advance. Keep going as a QA tester, or, become an SDET (Software Developer in Test)/QA Engineer.

As a tester, your will start creating testing plans, managing workflows, etc, as you progress.

As a QA engineer, you're basically a software developer in all but name, except instead of writing software, you're writing tests for that software. It can be something like unit tests (if your devs are lazy), integration testing frameworks (i.e. a mock server with your application that can run through a set of predefined tests to make sure functionality isn't failing), regression testing frameworks (i.e. Selenium headless UI automation), etc.

I work a fair amount with the latter, and it's not a bad gig. It's also a little less stressful than software dev, since you aren't on hook/on the call if things break.

Most QA jobs tend to be a combination of the two. Very few people these days do manual testing (except for games, but that's a horrible industry), and most QA are on some level exposed to automated/regression testing. Either type of QA is also often expected to troubleshoot and find the RCA of why a specific feature is failing - i.e. get down and dirty and debug stack traces or mess around in the database config.

MicroSco

Good to know that some people in TE forum already worked as Software QA tester.

@DatabaseHead & LeBroke ---- Is the career as a QA analyst/engineer more demanding/rewarding than a system/Network engineering career in terms of money and time invested in learning?

DatabaseHead

I think it comes down to the environment.

I can only speak from my experiences..... I would say less demanding for most situations. Usually the Project Managers and Developers get most of the heat.

Timely, accurate testing is appreciated but not lauded.

LeBroke

MicroSco wrote: »

Good to know that some people in TE forum already worked as Software QA tester.

@DatabaseHead & LeBroke ---- Is the career as a QA analyst/engineer more demanding/rewarding than a system/Network engineering career in terms of money and time invested in learning?

I'd say it requires significantly more initial investment (you need to learn about software dev, and not just some basic coding, but also SDLC, Scrum/Agile, testing frameworks, etc), but less stress. You can get started in IT with an A+ resetting passwords.

IT does tend to pay better, IMO, if you do things of comparable difficulty (i.e. DevOps, systems engineering, security), but is also a lot more stressful. Almost none of the QA guys are ever on call (occasional after-hours help validating an environment is the most I ever see them do). If anything breaks, people rarely yell at QA guys, while I'm the first one they come after.