A reader discovered my article from 2018, “It’s a Wonderful Career,” where I said this about software testing jobs: “Get out!” and “Don’t transition to doing test automation.” He asked if I still feel that way now, and the answer is “yes.” Here’s an update on my thoughts.

I’ve been a programmer for most of my life, but a majority of my career has been clustered around software testing. That shifted in 2017 when I took a job as a developer. Since then I’ve flirted with software quality in a 6-month role coaching some test automation folks who were building their programming skills, but otherwise I’ve stayed on the developer track. In my developer roles, I have worked with production code as well as a wide variety of automated tests, plus documentation and release pipeline automation. There have been no testing specialists involved at all.

In my post “Reflections on Boris Beizer” I briefly mentioned how testing as a specialty role has waxed and waned. It was perhaps the 1980s when software the testing specialist became a common role that was distinct from software developers. Fast forward to 2011 when Alberto Savoia gave his famous “Test is Dead” keynote.

I first wrote about the possible decline of the testing role in 2016 in “The black box tester role may be fading away.” I suggested that testing might be turning into low-pay manual piecework (think, Amazon Mechanical Turk), but I don’t see any evidence now that that’s coming true. I mentioned the outsourcing company Rainforest QA. A company by the same name now offers no-code AI-driven test automation instead.

I followed up in “What, us a good example?” where I wrote about companies that aren’t evolving their roles, and yet they’re surviving, but they’re going to have to survive without me. My expectations have evolved.

I know that many people are still gainfully employed as testing and test automation specialists. I can’t fault them for doing what works for them. And I’ll admit that it’s still tempting to go to my comfort zone again and go back to focusing on testing. Maybe I can shed some light on why I’m resisting that temptation. It’s pretty simple, really.

As a developer, my salary has grown tremendously. There are multiple factors involved here, including moving to a different company a few years ago. But the organization I’m working in has no testing specialists, so this opportunity wouldn’t have been available to me if I were applying for a job as a tester. I have a sense there are many more jobs open for developers than for testers out there, especially with a salary that I would accept now, and I’m curious if anyone has any numbers to back that up.

I don’t have any issues with people not respecting my contribution to the product. I don’t have to justify myself as overhead – I have a direct impact on a product that’s making money. And I still do all aspects of testing in addition to developing, maintaining, and releasing products.

In “The Resurrection of Software Testing,” James Whittaker recently described the decline of the testing role as being even more precipitous than I thought. And he also says that it needs to make a comeback now because AI needs testing specialists. He’s organizing meet-ups near Seattle to plot a way forward. I don’t have an opinion on whether AI is going to lead to a resurgence in testing jobs. Instead I’m focusing on an upcoming conference where I’m going to hone my development skills.

And that’s really where I stand on a lot of discussions about testing jobs – no opinion, really. I don’t benefit by convincing testing specialists to change their career path, but I’m happy to share my story if it helps anyone navigate their own career.

One thing I do ponder–there are still so many organizations out there that employ testing specialists, and I might end up working as a developer for one of them some day. How strange that would be if it comes to pass.

[credit for feature image: screen shot from the video of Alberto Savoia’s “Test is Dead” presentation at the 2011 Google Test Automation Conference]