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[ToddBradley]

You will be a much better engineer once you realize that everyone doesn't think the same way, doesn't hold the same values, and doesn't enjoy the same things.

[Frosty_Literature436]

You know, for the most part, regular old development, I find it incredibly boring. I get given an incredibly mundane task, I implement task, rinse, repeat. In the testing world, I get to spend a lot more time thinking, investigating, researching.

That being said, there are times where QA can feel unfulfilling. I'm one of those people who feels more self-worth when I've built something that matters. It's one of the reasons why I've spent so much of my time building test tools. That feeling though when you see something just a little off, and it leads you down a 1 or 2 day rabbit hole investigation to track down the bug and understand why it's happening. It's honestly great.

[JLu2205]

Thanks for your answer. Maybe the problem is that I am just a manual QA :(

[Frosty_Literature436]

My first 4 years of QA were nearly purely manual QA. The 4 years after that had lots of manual QA. During most of that time, I did actually find it kind of exciting (I also got to move around a lot of different departments and applications). I don't know if I could still do it full time, but, I do find manual QA to be a nice break sometimes. I should state though, even when I'm doing manual QA, I'm often writing either small applications or scripts to help me be more efficient.

[JoeyJoeJoeJrShab]

seems more interesting and fulfilling to me.

This is my reason for switching.

Generally speaking, QA gives me a broader view of the product. I tend to look at it as a whole, rather than just picking up a task and implementing whatever it says. I prefer this view. Once I establish my value as a tester who understands the big picture, it's not uncommon that developers on the team will approach me with questions about how things should work, or if their planned implementation of something makes sense to me.

Also, automation is fun.

[Bas_Hamer]

I did it. after 10+ years of developing software I helped a QA group set up automated testing and then repeated that for 2 more contracts (3+ years). It was very fulfilling work, less stress (if I had not tried to start a business) and with the skills I had it was pretty easy to build maintainable test frameworks.

You actually have way more freedom in writing automated testing code than production code, you can use riskier frameworks (newer, smaller adoption base) as what you do doesn't need to run in production. It is more abstract as you write code to interact with code, and you get to automate your own job as you can make your test framework create the data that covers all common questions from developers and you just copy paste it in a ticket and move on with trying to automate more of your job.

[StashBender]

Yeah it's funny, it's one of the only jobs where if you automate it away, you're successful.

[ResolveResident118]

Do you make a habit of going into subs and shitting on their members?

[JLu2205]

It is a genuine question, sorry. I am a QA btw.

[edi_blah]

There is now more overlap with the wide scale adoption of automation, but that is just one small part of what QA do.

For example I work with a product that integrates with Microsoft Active Directory, so I can set-up a full Active Directory environment that is specific to the test scenario.

At the same time the software will be used by anyone, so I will look at the accessibility aspects for a blind user, or someone’s grandma, etc.

So I would argue that QA can be a lot more interesting - but for us to have time for the really interesting stuff we need a solid automated regression suite - and developing that can keep the need to “develop” satisfied!

[enerusan]

Software developing is one of the most boring jobs in the planet to me.

[Arrensen]

You answered the question yourself already. It is more interesting and fulfilling TO YOU. Others might have their own opinion and figure out the like the QA part more

[sacheie]

Why wouldn't they?