I had a p/t QA job testing games for IBM and other local ISVs. I was a highschool student at the time and the only requirement was knowing how to use a computer and writing detailed descriptions of what happened and what you did to cause it.

I can't imagine how programming has anything to do with assurance (the A in QA). Though I have seen job descriptions confuse QA with analytics and analytics definitely requires programming expertise. I usually chalk this up to HR not knowing what the hell they are talking about.

At all of my past companies (the current is notably different), and the majority of companies where my programmer friends work, QA requires no meaningful knowledge of programming, just knowledge of

    the product
    how programmers (the people) think, and how to cope with them

That said, it's not at all clear to me how this is a work-from-home job.

My little world of web apps there are 2 types of testers, both valuable.

1) Programmer testers that write reusable, and automated tests, as well as encourage & assist the dev team to write their own tests. These folks work through the entire project , usually on product type projects.

2) Manual Testers (there must be a better name) These folks are good communicators that focus primarily on the client perspective. Developers, and their tests, tend to evaluate code in a rigid & consistent way that may not reflect the end user experience. These testers are also used on products but more commonly on turn-and-burn projects for Agencies or startup MVP's that are not huge yet.

If you did want to get into programming I do think that QA is an outstanding way to bootstrap a web dev career. I've laid out a plan here http://www.robertspeer.com/blog/no-degree-no-problem-some-ha...

It's not how I got got into making web apps but I think it's a solid way to get into a well paying career.

It's so ridiculous that people always want QA testers to be programmers. My fiance is a fantastic QA tester but has no interest in programming. She interviewed at Twitter, which at the time did not have a single manual QA tester keeping an eye on their products, and they just asked her a bunch of questions about coding. They should have sat her down and asked her to find bugs. No programmer I know has the patience to do what she does manually. She works with a team that makes extensive use of automated testing. But things still slip through, and it's worth it to have a human being looking for issues. Doing everything with manual QA is obviously stupid. But I think the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction as well. Having no manual QA whatsoever seems like a big waste of time for teams that are large enough to afford it.