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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

Good QA people are hard to find and it's a weird balance to strike.

I've seen QA get run over by aggressive developers.

I've seen QA people who were so good, detailed and provided clear reproduction steps that developers couldn't wait to see them work.

I've seen QA people who were completely unwilling to work on efficiency improvements, automation or even testing things in parallel so they became a bottleneck to the entire organization.

I've seen QA people who just fall into a routine, do exactly what is asked of them and never try to improve.

Like with anything, it comes down to the person in the job. If you get QA people who are really committed to the work, take pride in what they do and are always trying to improve it's the dream.

When you don't have that, it's a very mixed bag.

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>Good QA people are hard to find

In general, I'd say that's because it's a position that's shit on.

You're apt to be paid far less than actual dev positions. If you're a QA manager you're always pushed on by upper management to outsource and lower costs. There is none of the prestige of being a "QA 10xer" that you'd see heaped upon a dev in the same position. And I see little training/courses pushed out for QA like is typically seen for dev.

It seems like QA in most companies is a necessary evil that management would take out back and shoot the first moment they could.

Developers are artists and QA is critique. Worse, you must entertain their complaining, and pay for the privilege! The vultures. (This implicit bias would explain the treatment disparity. But it's a baseless hypothesis. It just seems like the simplest behavioral explanation.)

It’s semantics, but thinking of QA as refinements rather than criticisms goes a long way. Everyone is reasonable until their mental defenses are activated I believe. I think it’s worth making even great efforts to communicate improvements or requirements without using phrases which make someone feel bad. If the goal is to actually persuade and make a positive impact rather than just point fingers to feel superior, finding the way to say things without assigning shame is almost always the way to get things done.

Good QA will be sensitive to this when creating feedback, and good Devs will understand that tunnel vision from submerged in the product full time every day will typically lead to a built experience that isn’t amenable to large portions of their users.

Providing QA feedback tactfully is an impressive and appreciated skill, as is receiving feedback gracefully. Everyone should aspire to do both.

> Good QA people are hard to find

True.

A good tester is the kind of person who revels in running the same lab experiment many, many times and chortles for always getting results within the error bars.

A good QA is the kind of person who can think of every way something will fail, and then come up with a proactive risk mitigation strategy that makes everyone smile with pride.

> QA get run over by aggressive developers

True.

Back when we had QA/QC, my "One Weird Trick" was to put the QA / Test team in charge of releases. Running the bug triages, in charge of acceptance testing, running the go/no-go meetings, etc.

Worked f@#$ing great. Almost like magic. Zero drama. Our releases were almost anti-climatic.

I miss the '90s.

Well, I miss my '90s QA/Test experience.

Most everyone else was stuck in Kem Caner's world. The preeminent "SQA" guru who preached victimhood and grievances. Probably did more than any one to pile drive the QA Test profession into the Mariana Trench of irrelevance.

(Apologies, weak sauce, I know. I usually have a better "colorful metaphor" ready to deploy for these types of rants.)

From manager perspective, no matter what people do you have at start of the journey, the team culture can be changed. Most people are willing to learn something new and try new processes if they see the value. In more than 20 years I have seen maybe 2 or 3 pathological cases, where a person had to leave the team rather than play by new rules. It is not easy, it may take time for the team to adapt, but that’s a manager‘s job to unlock the potential of every team member and that job is doable.

If one knows a great QA person, any recommendations on companies that appreciate that talent?

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