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Old 29th February 2008, 15:24   #16
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Originally Posted by DCEite View Post
^^ In some organizations QA is considered separate from Testing while in some they both mean the same thing (product testing, not process).

I agree. Some organizations include Testing in QA lines.

Ideally QA = Process and QC = Testing.

The opportunities are equal for Dev as well as QC engineers, but generally speaking, QC engineers are those who are good in aptitude and finding faults...wheras Dev guys are the nerd/ hard core techies who swear by programming.

Most organizations pay more for developers than testers. The margin is gradually reducing, though.

And onsite opportunities are almost equal. In fact, Dev can get into maintenance projects and bag really long term offers.
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Old 29th February 2008, 15:47   #17
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In most product companies QA Engineer = Test Engineer. In service companies Quality Assurance is associated with compliance, ISO, CMM and all other process oriented stuff.

As someone who's been in Testing for 10 yrs+ I've seen all sorts of things. Testing can be interesting, challenging, learning, monotonous, boring etc. Testing is only 5% theory. The rest is all practical knowledge.

If the testing team is not confident about a product they can block it. I've seen this scenario time and again. The final call is from QA.

As someone who manages a team of testers, the main challenge in testing is to keep things interesting. As someone said repetition can lead to demotivation and ultimately poor quality in a product.

In most MNC's testers are treated at par with everyone else. Dev will always command a premium while entering a company because of the sheer dearth of quality developers especially on the systems side. Whereas you can almost always get a normal guy and turn him into an efficient tester.

However once you have good experience in testing and that too on the systems side, you will be highly valued.
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Old 29th February 2008, 16:20   #18
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My experience

I have done both. The skill set needed to be a top notch programmer is far greater than those required to be a tester. If you can program you can teach yourself to be a consummate tester. But if you can only test then you can not necessarily program. I would set my career toward learning how to program very well as a basic I.T. skill giving you a flexible fall back position. Today there is too much out-sourcing of both testing and development within corporations. Working for an I.T. company that provides this service to other companies is often sheer hell, long hours, lots of travel, impossible deadlines. Get skills, get good, get indispensable to someone who is smart enough to know you are indispensable.
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Old 29th February 2008, 16:24   #19
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Few years back testing was considered inferior.But now it is in par with development.
But if you want to learn lot of technolgies and RD type of mind set Dev is better.Growth wise both are same.Compensation in some companies are less for testing/QA
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Old 29th February 2008, 16:28   #20
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Those are very interesting words. I might give valuable inputs today, but how can I ensure I get better pay when the pay-review happens later?
Quote:
Originally Posted by wanderlustindia View Post
When I was a Sr. Test Engineer in one of my earlier organizations, I was making more money than a Sr. Developer. It all depends on how competent you are. If your word makes a difference, you get paid better. Complement your words with action and success will follow.
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Old 29th February 2008, 17:24   #21
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IMHO, it is easier to be an ordinary tester than an ordinary developer.

But its far harder to become a really good tester than a really good developer.

PS : The elite of the testers are doing pretty much the same as black hat/ white hat hackers. Their jobs are to find vulnerablities in any system design
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Old 29th February 2008, 17:46   #22
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Well I am working in Testing for an Product based company since last 4 months.
This is my first job. Both testers or developers are treated at par here.

I want to know, is it possible for a guy with one or two years of testing experience to get into development?

Last edited by safari_lover : 29th February 2008 at 17:48.
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Old 29th February 2008, 17:53   #23
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Ultimately it depends on what one wants to do. I feel it is easier for people in test to go into various other divisions like system engineering, deployment, operations or even Quality control. However, scope for such kind of growth exists mainly in telecom and semiconductor industry.

It also depends on the company and project/product that one works for. In a startup, I got to do more coding as a tester than what I did as a developer in a services company

But the good old bias remains ,'If a product does well, developers have done a good job, if it doesnt, testers have done a bad job'
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Old 29th February 2008, 17:54   #24
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management perspective

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Originally Posted by Su-47 View Post
Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions and I work in the area of IC design not software. But, of late, the IC design and verfication has moved up in abstraction and has some semblence to software test and design.

I guess its a matter of personal taste, but, I would NOT want to do test if I am given a choice. Here are the reasons:

1. Drive: I personally felt, the drive to optimize things (optimize runtime for example by choosing a better but more complex algorithm) is higher, as your code will show better performance everytime it is run. (If it is ICs, as it was in my case, it would be lesser area, lesser power or more speed). With test, its runtime of your machine or compute servers after all.

2.Ownership: Its harder to associate very high levels of ownership with a product that you have tested. Associating it with something you've created comes naturally.

3. Work Life Balance: As a test guy, you are dependent on the designer to fix bugs to make progress. If the designer screws up on schedule, who suffers? Designer yes, because he deserves it, but the test engineer as well. Who is pushed to the wall to play the catch up game?

If you are a designer, you can test your code to a pretty decent extent beforehand. Nobody can stop you from doing that. If you are a test guy, its very unlikely that you will get the freedom to fix the source-code.

Thanks,
Su-47

EDIT: I just realized that my rants above apply to product companies. For service companies, the project could be sw-testing itself. In that case, things might be different.
It is the test guys that decide if the product is up to the mark to be delivered. No body responsible for delivery would go by the word of development team. Its a very key business dept. This responsibility itself shows a degree of ownership for test/ QA teams.
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Old 29th February 2008, 18:12   #25
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i expected it to be open-and-shut thread. but i am surprised by the posts. i don't think we are discussing which role is important to make the world a better place but rather which role is more coveted for an aspiring graduate.

buddy, if you are deciding between development and testing - go with development. even if the testing company is a notch better than the company that offered you dev role (which is usually the case)

i would be damn interested in finding a company that:
pays more to a tester than a developer
has tougher interview/selection for testers than for developers
outsources development but does testing inhouse (business critical eh?)

even if you consider systems where testing=saving lives (aviation, healthcare, space travel and so on), developer jobs are more coveted. for such critical systems testing is must more effort intensive than development - but you just employ more resources.

i am surprised you even asked this question.
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Old 29th February 2008, 18:38   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by androdev View Post
i expected it to be open-and-shut thread. but i am surprised by the posts. i don't think we are discussing which role is important to make the world a better place but rather which role is more coveted for an aspiring graduate.

buddy, if you are deciding between development and testing - go with development. even if the testing company is a notch better than the company that offered you dev role (which is usually the case)

i would be damn interested in finding a company that:
pays more to a tester than a developer
has tougher interview/selection for testers than for developers
outsources development but does testing inhouse (business critical eh?)

even if you consider systems where testing=saving lives (aviation, healthcare, space travel and so on), developer jobs are more coveted. for such critical systems testing is must more effort intensive than development - but you just employ more resources.

i am surprised you even asked this question.

The very fact that this thread has run into two pages and most posters have mentioned that Testers are payed nearly the same as developers suggests that you may not be entirely correct.
Why I asked that question? Because i have moved to Testing domain after development. So just wanted to clarify on my fears about Testers being not treated at par with Developers when it comes to pay, growth and learning.
And i don't agree about the interview part. My testing interview was much more intensive (both in terms of quantity and quality) than the development ones i have given. I am in the Telecom Software domain (IP multimedia subsystem/Next generation networking NGN).
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Old 29th February 2008, 18:51   #27
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Twenty two years

Quote:
Originally Posted by androdev View Post
i expected it to be open-and-shut thread. but i am surprised by the posts. i don't think we are discussing which role is important to make the world a better place but rather which role is more coveted for an aspiring graduate.

buddy, if you are deciding between development and testing - go with development. even if the testing company is a notch better than the company that offered you dev role (which is usually the case)

i would be damn interested in finding a company that:
pays more to a tester than a developer
has tougher interview/selection for testers than for developers
outsources development but does testing inhouse (business critical eh?)

even if you consider systems where testing=saving lives (aviation, healthcare, space travel and so on), developer jobs are more coveted. for such critical systems testing is must more effort intensive than development - but you just employ more resources.

i am surprised you even asked this question.
I am in total agreement with this guy.
I have twenty two years in the business. Developers, serious people who can program, far out strip testers in every facet after some time on the job. There are system programmers in North America getting $170,000 a year salaries. No tester has ever approached that. Often real testing is done by developers and the so called testing staff is a paper tiger, rubber stamp. If you want to be a data entry clerk become a tester. That is what they spend much of their time doing. A GOOD programmer (excuse me, developer, I am old, I still think there is a city called Bombay.) is more like an architect. He creates, he solves problems, he takes ambiguous specs and makes them unambiguous.

However, the guys who REALLY make the money are, of course, the project leaders, first, second etc level management. Also, functional analysts, good ones, who know the business rules and can communicate in good English especially, are in great demand. In helps a functional analyst immensely if he has developer experience. Functional analysts who know the business are intrinsically more indispensable and less likely to be sh*t canned.
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Old 29th February 2008, 19:00   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DirtyDan View Post
However, the guys who REALLY make the money are, of course, the project leaders, first, second etc level management. Also, functional analysts, good ones, who know the business rules and can communicate in good English especially, are in great demand. In helps a functional analyst immensely if he has developer experience. Functional analysts who know the business are intrinsically more indispensable and less likely to be sh*t canned.
First part about about Project leaders, managers is not entirely correct. If you are a GOOD architect, you are possibly paid much more than a project manager or lead. I think, I know about cost involved in hiring an architect vs. cost involved in hiring a manager.

I agree with functional analyst part.

Many times, testing teams are formed out of very seasoned architects/ programmers. They are highly paid and respected. However, such teams are really rare.
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Old 29th February 2008, 19:08   #29
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Late '98,
A guy was pursuing his PG and held 'C' programming above all else. He used to be in complete love with C and Assembly programming and was involved in simulating small scale Viruses and Anti-Viruses for the same. Everyone thought hes gonna evolve into a Programming Architect.

Late '00
He gets employed as a S/W Test Engineer which none of his 29 other classmates appreciated and even jested.

'07
Hes a Tech Lead involved in designing a product along with other experts (Language expert/Tech Architects/SPMs)


This only means that Testing is almost equal level with Development (maybe even a notch higher)

Last edited by Rocky_Balboa : 29th February 2008 at 19:11.
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Old 29th February 2008, 19:11   #30
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James Bach’s Blog
a testing god
EDIT : agree with balboa 100% . Even i was a bit down when i got assigned to testing. But right now , The stuff i'm testing is 6 months behind ( the schedule was 3 months :P )
Either ways , since they've screwed up. management has delegated full authority to us. Unless we are sure its 100% ready, we wont certify it. Now the devs grovel for mercy at our feet(and I'm talking about senior devs)

PS , we also have senior devs jumping over to testing to grab the significantly higher onsite chances as well

Last edited by greenhorn : 29th February 2008 at 19:19.
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