Should I move out of QA if I'm enjoying it? | Hacker News Reader

Should I move out of QA if I'm enjoying it?

2 pointsbickeringyokel2 comments

My job title isn't QA but I've essentially been doing testing and QA for 3 years now.

My superior has a good amount of respect for me, I get a raise every year and am often given responsibilities beyond the scope of what I consider to be QA including release management, sprint planning, issue triage etc.

My supervisor considers me to be a defacto product owner of the project I typically work on because our product management team is stretched thin so I often am the most knowledgeable of our team regarding the general infrastructure and customer needs.

On paper I think my position would get boring quickly but I am afforded a lot of opportunities to write code for our automated test suites that sort of satisfies my coding itch.

I don't have a lot of experience with other companies but I have a feeling my specific role is may be affording me a unique opportunity to write code while also dipping my toes in some light management without a lot of the headaches of being in actual management or development.

I think I may be leaving some money on the table staying in my current position but I'm more or less happy.

Have any of you made the transition to dev or management from QA and regret it? Should I stay where I am and or is the move worth it?

I actually transitioned from dev to QA many moons ago, and am legit dipping toes in management now. It's hard to overstate how much enjoyment I've gotten out of QA as opposed to dev.

There is far more Programming as Art to found in testing as opposed to Production code, because often, you're having to figure out just enough of a contortions to pull off the test you want and setting up your frameworks to be readily accessible and relevant to the System Under Test rather than fitting into the opinionated development framework of the week. Nowhere else have in IT/CS have I seen where you can truly discover what it is that makes a business/system tick. You learn to do more with less, effectively communicate with people, debug like nobody's business, and after you've hit about 4 or 5 different businesses, you start to pick up the kind of knowledge about how things work that basically turns you into a walking test framework.

The hardest parts to bear though, are that yes, there is a certain stigma attached to QA (what, you some sort of failed developer or something?) that only really gets dispelled by being damn good. You will also probably not get paid anywhere near as well as a favour the gate until you can basically cough out frameworks in your sleep. Culture issues will become your greatest enemy, and striking a balance between wanting everything at your fingertips, and letting go so others can do that part, and you can insure the working parts of the human machine remain well oiled and operating smoothly.

However, when you hit the point of being good, and you'll know when everyone thinks that, because you'll end up becoming a nexus everyone leans on; you'll not find a more rewarding position in my opinion. Furthermore, when you find the place where everything just goes right, you'll never want to leave.

That's an interesting insight coming from a different angle than me. I started in operations building and repairing electronics then replied to an internal hiring memo. How did you end up on the QA world from dev?

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