5 reasons to be a tester

After reading many articles on the topic “To be or not to be a manager” ( here , here and here ), I thought, why not write about the main reasons for choosing a tester's profession.

1. Creativity

Being a symbiosis of techie and humanities, this item was very important, if not the highest priority for me when choosing a particular specialty. I went into this area as a "nedoprogrammer" and, probably, many will disagree with me, saying that "a programmer is a very creative profession with its own backgammon and guri features." Apparently, it was just not for me that the Midnight Commander'a blue screen and the C ++ syntax were. So in testing, I found that very middle ground between creativity and technology. I like to constantly invent and work out various scenarios of work, look for vulnerabilities and emulate user behavior of this software.

2. Training

In connection with the growing popularity and importance of this profession, it is simply necessary to constantly improve the level of your knowledge and qualifications in general, which is facilitated by many different books, digests, specialized courses and conferences. And of course, empirically. The main thing is desire, and there are a great many sources and possibilities for obtaining the necessary information. Be professional!

3. Responsibility

Responsibility for the result is a good additional incentive and motivator. Of course, it all depends on various factors (team, customer, timing, product specifics, etc.), but one thing is for sure: testing engineers are the last resort on the way to the final release of the product, the main filter from all software bugs and vulnerabilities .

4. Weight and "unusual" opinions in the team

I put this reason in a separate paragraph because of the special - interest - side experience that the opinion of testers in developing a product is of particular value. What is the fundamental difference between the thinking of a developer and a tester? That's right, in the ability of the second to think as a user. Therefore, what a developer could not see point blank, due to the "thinking of the developer", a good testing specialist is able to notice from afar. Many times it was possible to “drop” the program in front of the team by a couple of clicks on a scenario that was not obvious to them. From this it follows that testers very often listen to the opinion both in planning and in direct development.

5. Novelty and development / potential of the profession

Novelty

Despite the fact that this profession has become in demand in Russia relatively recently, there is already great interest in it. Many modern companies have already begun to consider the QA department not as an equalization with Western companies, but as a mandatory and necessary element of the IT system. It is now difficult to imagine a development team without a tester assigned to them.

Development

In my opinion, without taking into account the horizontal development of this profession, people with good testing skills and experience may well try their hand at the role of developer, analyst, leader, or continue to develop in this specialty and hone their skills. I just want to dispel a certain myth that testing is a dead end branch, from which it is no longer easy to get into another IT area. It all depends on you!

Of course, there are many more reasons that it would be worth paying attention to, but so far I have decided to highlight the most significant, in my opinion, advantages of this profession.