grammernerd

I strongly blame the Apple watch for the demise of the smart watch. People, including this article's author, look at how unfit for purpose the Apple watch is and draw conclusions about all smart watches. And the Apple watch is the most visible, so that's all most people see.

I think organizations make that kind of choice all the time. They take fantastic devs and make them leads and managers in the hope that it will have a multiplicative benefit on the business.

And they do devote resources to test - but by hiring testers. It might be great if a company could devote some of its devs to test, but I suspect the reason that they wouldn't is that the devs wouldn't want to.

I take the point about integrating Test and Dev, and probably it would need to lead by example from the Test side...

:) I do also take your point about what actually happens in the real world. This is the kind of response I was expecting - it's super helpful to see it articulated.

Lack of agreed definition, for sure. The title 'SDET' in itself doesn't at all tell you enough about what a role is going to entail.

A lot of this hits home. I like the idea of reframing the role as more of a straight engineer - probably the the SDET title has become loaded and/or widely misused. I think I probably also need to think some more about a solid career track to get SDETs into a place where they can play the role of senior engineers.

- about the challenge in the job application - I actually did another Ask HN about whether that was a good idea. Almost universal agreement that it was not ensued, so I intended it to be very optional. I've not been penalizing anyone who doesn't do it, but I immediately take notice when anyone does. Sounds like I need to go back and work on making it more clear that it's optional.

This is a great perspective, I tend to think an affinity for puzzles is a good indicator of the SDET mentality I'm looking for; I was trying to attract people who'd be interested by that challenge.

However, the universally negative response to having the challenge this early has made me rethink a bit. I think I may make it much more optional and/or apply it later. Maybe look for places to hang it out on the web...