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This is a great model, until those people so familiar with the business needs end up.. doing business things instead. It's really hard to keep people like that in a QA role once the business recognizes their value. Kind of the same problem with QA automation people - once they become really good at test automation, they are effectively software developers, and want to go there.

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I think that's a compensation problem more than anything else. I've known some QA folks who enjoyed QA and would have stayed in that role if they could have justified the massive differential in comp between QA and SWE or product development. If we valued QA and compensated it at the same level we do those other roles then there would be a lot less difficulty retaining good QA folks.

I have never once heard of a problem that QA folks end up in project or product management too often, and almost always have the problem of not being able to escape the QA org despite many years. Most companies are extremely resistant to people moving tracks, especially from a “lower status” org like QA or CS. It’s the exception not the rule.

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