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Where are all the good QA/testers ? |
2011-03-22
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Our team is working on this great new system. It's really cool even though I can't say much about it. They've been surprising me with some inventive stuff. I saw a cool testing tool last month that allowed simulating the whole system on one machine, and it worked, and it detected bugs in the code that they were then able to fix and test again.
But we can't find a good QA engineer to come help us make this thing really rock. Most QA curriculums I get are written in .doc or .docx, show the person having only very vague Unix knowledge, and think Python is a snake best stayed away from.
We contracted a QA consulting company, and after a four day audit they concluded that we were not doing a simple web framework and they did not have the skills to test our system.
I'm sure there's a great QA engineer out there eager to test our multi-datacenter multi-server cluster system doing cool stuff, with some QA experience, some SCRUM experience maybe, some Linux experience please, and some Python experience if possible. But most of all, with a desire to learn, and some capability to start out on his/her own in one project and slowly grow a QA team from the inside out.
Come on, I know you're out there. Send us a mail!
If you're interested, here's the job description.
Finding a QA Engineer is hard. I’m told that the new term to look for is SDAT (Software Development And Testing?) because that’s what Microsoft calls its QA Engineers. At least here in the northwest US it’s a lot easier to find people when you advertise positions using that term.
Really, though, you need to hire someone the same way you hire a programmer. It _is_ a programming job. Just one that uses a different mindset than the core development team.
Comment by Sean — 2011-03-22 @ 21:13
I’m going to send you folks an email soon, I just need some time to write it properly (do you folks wish a C.V./resume to be bundled with it?)
Comment by semi-anonymous — 2011-03-23 @ 00:14
@Jeff: a short resume is always good to give us an idea yes.
Comment by Thomas — 2011-03-23 @ 11:39
I totally agree with previous comment.
Comment by Michal — 2011-03-23 @ 08:22
Ok, now I have a little more time. As I wrote earlier, I agree with all that Sean wrote. Now I’m working on a large project (auctions etc..) – I’m the lead developer and lead tester, because for me the development process consists of three main stages:
– thinking, planning etc.
– coding
– code review, testing
N00bs can not test large apps. If you have a large and complex app you should give it to another developer to test. For most QA peoples XSS does not mean nothing. Only another developer can understand how app internals works and can point out errors and design flaws. I know that this is not an exciting job and many people do not like to point out bugs of another developers, but you can try to improve testing process by asking developers to review and test each others code.
Comment by Michal — 2011-03-23 @ 17:21
Michal, I disagree a little. As a developer, I know firsthand that the natural impulse of any developer is to show that the system works in the cases where he expects it to work. The developer is optimistic when it comes to testing and does the minimum amount of testing needed to show that the ideal scenario works.
A QA/tester works exactly the opposite. He looks for bugs in the system, and if he is able to understand the code all the better, because he will take a systematic approach to the code, look for potential problems, and show them by doing an out-of-the-box test that triggers it. This is a very different mindset.
Developers could do this too in theory, but it requires conscious effort on their part to let go of their natural instinct.
Comment by Thomas — 2011-03-23 @ 17:30
I do not agree with “impulse of any developer” statement here :)
Ok, not every developer can do it, but I believe that most can. If you only care about code quality you can test in such a way to find bugs. If you do not care for code quality, but only about payment for project than you test only to prove that code works.
I think that it depends only on the motivation.
Best regards,
Michal
Comment by Michal — 2011-03-23 @ 18:02
I was a QA engineer for over 20 years and I can tell you it is very difficult to get a QA engineer with that level of knowledge. Why? Because QA folks who know that much usually move over to development where (some think) the grass is greener and payscale higher. I totally agree that most developers do not make good testers – they think about show how it works whereas testers are trained to break it.
Cheryl
Comment by Cheryl — 2011-03-29 @ 20:41
@Cheryl – very good point there – indeed I take your same view that most developers don’t tend to fulfill the role of a tester as well as a specialist.
Maybe that’s a hard generalisation on developers, but I’d certainly agree that testers are specifically know how to break things whereas a developer works the other way around.
Comment by Sam Dorrington — 2011-04-04 @ 14:57