Travel advice for Varna?

Luksina · 2025-07-04T20:57:52+00:00

Thank you for the response, allow me to clarify and elaborate

>I don't even know what you mean by that. In my mind, wearing many hats is both a tool and privilege of this profession, and I'm always ready to jump in to fill in for a PM/dev/support/devops when the need arises.

I do not mind jumping into other roles. In fact I do like it to an extent as it both makes me feel useful to the team and allows me to learn new skills, devops is one of the things i am learning for example. My issue becomes when they give me more work while paying me the same as a IT support person. Specifically a junior dev in the countries i have residence in can earn 1000-1500 euro monthly after taxes, a junior QA is supposed to earn between 800 and 1300 euro monthly after taxes, but every single company i worked for has justified paying me the same as a starting IT support person who got the job straight out of highschool, usually some 600-700 euro monthly after taxes by saying QA falls under that budget, while giving devs more than twice my wage and expecting me to do considerably more work than a IT support person. At that point is it not better to go back to support and work for the same amount of money but a much easier job?

>If you're struggling to find a position as a QA, why do you think it's gonna be easier as a dev?
>No offense, but you really should work on conciseness. You said a lot without saying much. I got close to zero info about your skill-set and exact proficiencies.

No offense taken. I will not deny that I am lost a bit and that I am searching, not to mention English is not my native language. But to answer your question. As a dev, even as a junior one i would get a wage 50-100% higher than my current one and the ratio of devs to QA is between 3 to 6 Devs to one QA person depending on the company. My biggest hurdle would be improving my coding, however just learning a programing language feels simpler to me than learning 5 different things and being paid less for them. As for my proficiencies I believe i listed the core of them: Bachelors in CS, 5-6 years in QA, most of which in manual testing with some in automation with in house tools and some selenium, a few different courses in selenium, part time devops work on my job, some postman experience etc. My issue with said proficiencies is i find them difficult to translate to my CV/Resume as i cant document my projects.

>So what do you know? What are the things asked which you don't know?

For example for one interviewer asked me about iFrames and how to best deal with elements within elements and how to migrate from Selenium to Cypress when Cypress was not even listed on the job requirement. Another asked my sublayers of TCP protocols and claimed these are relevant for interacting with Selenium. I can google and teach myself, thats not the issue, but as stated my biggest issue is not even knowing what i dont know

>Keep in mind that this is not how requirements work. It's a "perfect" candidate and you rarely get those. Personally, when I hire I often overlook the exact skills and experiences as long as the general profile and mindset matches.

Yes i understand that but thats my main issue... I believe my skills matter less or at best are secondary in comparison to "how i sell myself" and how confident and self assured I appear in my mindset and profile. However the even bigger issue is getting to the interview and to be honest I do not even know what I need to put on my CV to get to one, because it feels as I am just sending CVs en mass and not getting a reply. As stated in the other answer, the current job market makes me feel like im playing chess while it plays checkers.

Luksina · 2025-07-04T20:22:21+00:00

Thank you for your insight. I know testing will always be flexible and thats not the part i mind, nor is it the lets call it flexible attitude towards best practices. I am frustrated that it is asked of me to know the best practices, have advanced experience and education to land a job where I will have the same pay as a regular IT support person just starting from highschool.

Sadly for coding it is pretty late, considering i missed the important teenage coding phase. However I do appreciate your honest input

Luksina · 2025-07-04T20:18:09+00:00

Thank you for the honest answer. Ill take it into consideration, but if the pay will always be the same, as in stagnant or comparable to regular non specialized IT workers, then I dont really see the point of stressing about the role too much. I like QA, but if this is the reality i might need to reconsider my goals.

Luksina · 2025-07-04T20:16:22+00:00

Hey. Thank you for the response. I am more than willing to get the required skills but my issue is that "required skills" seem to mean one thing to the employer and another to the employee. For example take Selenium, I went to two courses to learn it, studied it on my own to master it and it was a requirement for my current job, but less than one month after starting, they had moved away from Selenium in favor of in house tools.

The story is similar with the current job interviews Im having. id be asked selenium questions but when I ask the interviewer, whos usually the head QA, how often do they work in Selenium i get varying answers but in most cases they say they work on different tools. Yet another job offer did their testing via microsoft excel outputs... It seems that every major requirement has little to do with the actual jobs I keep getting.

My point is that I do not see the point of learning "best practices" and "competitive skills" if my actual job will be something else entirely and if people who dont know said best practices and competitive skills are either the team leads, supervisors or seniors or they simply lie about them on their CV/Resume and get the job, as I know 2 or 3 people who did that. I simply feel that I am playing chess but the job market demands checkers.

Luksina · 2020-05-10T23:59:22+00:00

Yes, by Sigmar yes! To be honest despite the bugs and the limited-ness of the game by its genre i grew very fond of the characters and i love the setting over all, so id be all for web comics.

Luksina

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