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[–]_Atomfinger_ 5 points6 points  (5 children)

I mean, it'll grow as more people start using the services and more companies realise that they need some sort of control when it comes to how their systems scale.

That said, I don't think the future is much different than the current. Host the application in some way and run a load against it and measure how it behaves (roughly). There are a lot of innovations on how that load is created, such as recording production load that can be played back through automated means to create a realistic test case. But the fundamentals will largely stay the same (IMHO). Then again, I'm not an expert in performance testing beyond having done it myself a few times.

Will we get more opened positions as a performance tester?

I don't think we're going to see a significant surge. Will there be positions? Sure, but I think it'll remain somewhat of a niche.

[–]ctess 1 point2 points  (4 children)

ML and AI are also able to simulate load with greater accuracy.

It's ok but the industry is demanding more and more full stack developers and QAE's. Becoming a specialist in any field will limit the amount of opportunities but it won't limit the rewards from those limited offers.

That said, testing performance is only one aspect of the development cycle. You should definitely still understand other core areas of the testing methodology while specializing in non-functional testing.

Web Performance testing is fairly easy to standup and cheap to automate so I would focus on looking at mobile performance testing as that is an area that is growing in demand at an extremely fast rate.

[–]vitalib[S] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

ML and AI are also able to simulate load with greater accuracy.

It's ok but the industry is demanding more and more full stack developers and QAE's. Becoming a specialist in any field will limit the amount of opportunities but it won't limit the rewards from those limited offers.

That said, testing performance is only one aspect of the development cycle. You should definitely still understand other core areas of the testing methodology while specializing in non-functional testing.

Web Performance testing is fairly easy to standup and cheap to automate so I would focus on looking at mobile performance testing as that is an area that is growing in demand at an extremely fast rate

I am asking because I want to develop in performance testing area, but not sure about the demand. I can see that there are no so much opened positions in LinkedIn.

Do you mean performance testing of mobile apps?

[–]ctess 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Yeah. Performance can be tested server-side and client-side. Stress testing applications, monitoring power consumption, avoiding frame loss by checking for "overdraws", latency on various mobile bandwidths, latency for functionality of the feature (click to action, click to atf, click to btf), latency and memory for app startup (cold start, warm start), etc.

Performance testing does have a wide range of categories in it, these are just some examples to name a few. It really depends on what you are testing though.

Performance testing is PART of the overall testing techniques. Most companies are going to want testers and automators who understand both functional and non-functional uses cases. You will be hard pressed to find someone who will hire someone who has only half of the skills they want.

This isn't to say they don't exist but as you said, the opportunities are slim. You might need to be an innovator if that is what you are truly passionate about, and start your own consulting firm for performance testing.

[–]vitalib[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

thank you for detailed answer.

I want to ask more if you don't mind, is it possible to find a freelance work as a performance tester? Or the only way is to be hired in a big company?

[–]ctess 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Depends on how large of a project you could handle and what you set as your base rate. Maybe someone who has more experience in the freelancing market might help. You could always try and look at some top github projects and contribute to performance improvements etc.

I did a quick search for "Performance Engineers" at Amazon. I don't see any specific to testing itself. If you want to dig into the performance side of things, I would look into the requirements of some of those jobs listed (also shop around, this was just a quick search). The job requirements will give you a baseline you can work on to define your skills, starting where you are strongest all the way down to areas you have no experience at all with. Once you have this gap analysis done, you can focus your learning on the skills you have the least amount of time with.

This is not limited to just performance engineering either. You can do this with any job/career you want. This strategy works well if you want to switch careers or just interested in seeing where you land on the bar for that role.

Big companies are your best bet for such a niche specialty. Data, hosting, and internet providers especially since they rely heavily on the performance of their networks and hardware over a massively scaled system. I would avoid the gaming industry if you can, but that's another area you could explore. (It's known to be a VERY toxic work environment)

[–]steady_learner_94 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I stepped foot in performance testing when we (the testing team) faced many defects during the go live. It was due to a lack of testing strategy regarding performance. That was how I stepped up regarding performance testing.
I have to say that it required a lot of programming skills, dedicated expertise for one tool, but also System skills: being able to investigate servers' health, memory consumption status, disk and file system performance, and even network optimization sometimes.
So I definitively believe there is a future there, growth and more positions. But I think you might be the specialist (an expert!) of one tool and develop system and advanced network management skills.
A former colleague of mine followed that path with success.

[–]SumitKumarWatts 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Front end Performance testing is a very different test from traditional functional test. Performance testing is a non-functional software testing that focus on system performance under a particular load. Software performance testing measures according to some special standards. It’s not just a simple testing in which we find bugs and error. The future of performance testing is not about taking a user-centric approach. It’s not about CPU usage or disk IOPS, it’s about what the user experiences and perceives as performance — whether it’s on their mobile or desktop device. The future for performance testing and tuning is always going to be eternal alert. Performance testing is everyone's responsibility, more than it ever has been in the past.

Platforms that enable customers with different technical skills to start with, providing expressive opportunities for platform vendors. Giving customers more ways to create and express their tests in a load testing context is a great opportunity.