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 the profession of a tester.

1. Creativity

Representing the symbiosis of techie and humanities this item was very important, if not the most priority for me when choosing a particular specialty. I went into this sphere as a “non-programmer” and, perhaps, many will disagree with me, saying that “a programmer is a very creative profession with his backgammon and gurias features”. Apparently, it was just not for me that the Midnight Commander blue screen and C ++ syntax were. So in testing, I found that golden mean between creativity and technology. I like to constantly invent and work through various scenarios of work, look for vulnerabilities and emulate the 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 their knowledge and skills 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 opportunities for obtaining the necessary information. Be professional!

3. Responsibility

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

I took this reason to a separate point because of the particular value of testers' opinions during product development. 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 like a user. Therefore, the fact that the developer could not see at close range, due to the "thinking of the developer", a good specialist in testing can be seen from afar. Many times it has been possible to “drop” a program in front of a team by a couple of clicks on a scenario that is not obvious to them. From this it follows that the testers' opinion is very often heard both during planning and during 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 a great interest in it. Many modern companies have already begun to consider the QA-department not as an alignment with Western companies, but as a mandatory and necessary element of the IT system. It is already 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 as a developer, analyst, manager, 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 not easy to get into another IT area. It all depends on you!

Of course, there are many more reasons that would be worth paying attention to, but for now I have decided to single out the most significant, in my opinion, advantages of this profession.