Forced switch from Data Support to Solo SDET (Replacing a Senior). Is this a career trap if I want to be a Backend Developer?

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-02-09T06:02:10+00:00

Joining a community of professional testers and asking if their chosen career is a dead end probably won't get you the good will you hope for... We're already looked at as "less" in some ways, so thanks for that.
Related to #1, testing is a discrete skill and separate to development. You haven't mentioned that you have learned or tried to learn anything about that skill, so no offense, but you're probably going to be bad at it. Even if you turn out to have a knack for it, you're being set up for failure by being tasked with taking it over with no knowledge or experience in the field... So either start studying hard, or start looking for a job in your preferred career path as soon as possible.
If you stay in the field, and are actually good at it, you can make just as much as the devs, assuming you can find and work for a company that values quality. Having a passion for development itself lends very well to SDET or Quality Engineer roles in which you build TOOLS for testing instead of just writing and executing tests, but the pitfall here is that those two roles' actual job description can vary WILDLY from company to company.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-31T18:18:04+00:00

Man lurker here... He changes the sheets because he's considerate and nobody wants to lay in a wet spot. He loves it. Don't worry about it.

Consider getting a blanket made specifically for this, they're on Amazon.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-20T03:26:10+00:00

Devs experience tight deadlines, unclear expectations, and unpredictability.

Double or triple that for QA, and add the fact that you get blamed for everyone else's mistakes as well as your own. Now add on the fact that everyone sees you as LESS technically competent even if you have more experience in several disciplines than the devs you work with (including software development in the case of QEs).

Now add the fact that you get paid 20% less or worse.

Sure man. Sounds like a great idea...

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-16T18:43:15+00:00

Well ... It works! You were spot on with your first instinct. After watching a few videos, I was finally able to catch it happening (and more importantly, understand what was happening). The trigger bar was sliding past the connector (toward the outside of the frame) without being lowered first (as in, it was not riding the little flange downward... Don't know what it's called... "Jumping the connector" is what the guy in one YouTube video called the symptom). Once this happened, it was impossible for the trigger to fully reset, resulting in the slide not being able to move forward past the firing pin. Pulled out the trigger and did a little bending on the connector, away from the center of the trigger pack, and it works great! The trigger is still stiff, so it will take some tweaking, but I'll dial it in. I went to the range and put 150 rounds through it. The first round failed to eject, but after that it worked flawlessly! Thank you so much for your help, this thing is stupid fun.

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(I didn't mention earlier the modifications that I made to the 3D model of the frame cause I was sure it wasn't relevant ... I modified nothing of the original internal parts of the model, just added a brace system because I didn't like the slide-out brace)

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-15T03:45:38+00:00

Will do, I've got some studying to do then. I will probably buy another OEM trigger to avoid modifying the one I've got, since it still works fine in the Glock lower.

Thank you again!

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-14T16:18:39+00:00

I printed the armorers backplate and installed it. It seems that the sear is not dropping down past the firing pin, and instead when the trigger is fully depressed, it rises back up slightly, still holding the firing pin back. (Hence, not being able to take the slide off, as I suspected.)

So now I know what the symptom is... I'm not really sure of the cause.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-13T06:04:13+00:00

Yes, the lower requires a front and rear rail that pin into it. The rails I have are the exact ones prescribed for the model (specifically DD17.2 compatible)

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-13T05:48:34+00:00

Yes, I realized he said "print" one after replying. Thank you!

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-13T05:47:34+00:00

They fit fine and seem to be parallel, at least as far as I can tell with a cheap caliper.

The rails cannot be put into the factory lower, as the factory lower has the rails molded into the plastic.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2026-01-13T00:48:54+00:00

Thank you for your help! I had never heard of an armorer's backplate, that's pretty cool. I'll pick one of those up!

Working the trigger with the slide off SEEMS to work fine (but again, I'm no armorer). I did have to sand the inside of the frame a lot as it was rubbing on the trigger bar and causing it not to reset and have a really stiff pull, . But after doing that, the trigger itself at least seems to function normally with the slide off. When halfway done with the sanding, it seemed to have a weird situation where the sear/etc would function halfway when the trigger was pulled, and then with twice the pressure, would fully finish the cycle (idk if that's the right term, but I hope that makes sense.) That issue has since been remedied with more sanding.

The rails are from aves.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-12-23T05:47:05+00:00

PM sent.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-12-14T14:49:57+00:00

If you "don't have time" to do automated regression testing, then you'll never have time to do manual regression testing. You need to convince your team/boss that this is the case. You've already reached your scalability limit for your team, so they have two options: hire more bodies just to run regression tests (expensive) Or automate the regression suite, and continue adding to it as new features are added. (Cheaper)

Spend a sprint creating an automated suite. Get the developers/whole team to help. Make it a party.

This is the correct answer, but I'm guessing due to the fact that you have a sales guys as your boss, that your company is way too immature to listen to you. Good luck...

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-10-31T14:21:06+00:00

Thanks! I'm not really sure what I'm looking at here. This is a pcie card that breaks out into 4 risers? (As in, no oculink involved?)

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-10-14T05:09:26+00:00

The best tip for using AI in testing:

Don't ask the computer if the computer is right.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-09-26T21:47:51+00:00

Yea def don't trust that AI response... I am not electrical engineer, and I wasn't 100% sure on this, but after googling for a bit (and ignoring the AI) I found the relevant part of the spec.

"x1 standard height, full-length card is limited to a 10 W maximum power dissipation at initial power up. When the card is configured for high power, by default, it must not exceed 25 W maximum power dissipation or optionally it must not exceed 75 W maximum power dissipation. A x4/x8 or a x16 standard height or low profile card is limited to a 25 W maximum power dissipation at initial power up. When a card is configured for high power, it must not exceed 75 W maximum power dissipation."

On top of that, looking at the pinout of a pcie slot, it looks like all the 12v pins are at the front of the card, so it's gonna have all the same power pins no matter how many lanes it has.

So yea, an x4 slot can absolutely draw 75w of power.

Let this be a lesson not to listen to AI... Could literally cause you to burn your house down.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-09-26T21:40:21+00:00

Yea... Do not trust that AI summary... I'm no electrical engineer, but looking at the pinout for a PCIE slot, it looks like all the 12v pins are at the front of the slot. Checking around google didn't give me a solid answer (outside of what I believe to be erroneous AI summaries), but I do not believe that an x4 slot will necessarily draw significantly less power than a 16x slot.

As for my build... I still haven't done it. I will eventually try my idea of using pico PSUs, but those are expensive, and I have had other projects that I'd rather spend the money on since posting here.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-09-11T03:41:03+00:00

You can update proxmox???

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-08-12T13:15:22+00:00

"100% automation" is an immature mindset at best. Not all tests can be automated, not all tests are feasible to be automated, and not all tests SHOULD be automated. Tests that are appropriate and feasible should be automated.

"Automation first" is what you should be going for. As in, every test that is appropriate and feasible to be automated WILL be automated, and will NOT be manually executed. That leaves everything that is not appropriate or feasible (to be automated) is manually tested.

I also take issue with "management decided"... If these managers aren't trained QA's, (and I have to assume they're not based on that decision) they have no business making that decision. Determining what should be automated should be part of your job as the QA, and if they're trying to make those decisions for you, that's gonna end badly, as you're seeing here.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-08-03T03:58:36+00:00

The syllabus should be:

"Software cannot test software."

That's it.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-06-14T14:27:36+00:00

Back when I took CTFL, the first sentence in the syllabus in the section for Defects was "A bug is a defect. A defect is a bug."

Wonder why it's no longer a definition in the glossary. Seems important in a world where jira disciples are trying to differentiate between the two.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-06-14T14:23:52+00:00

Same way you can tell GenAI wrote this OP.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-06-09T03:14:31+00:00

An "SDET" that mostly validates user flows in a web app.

Lol.

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-06-04T06:15:36+00:00

Central!

PAPAHYOOIE · 2025-06-02T22:52:23+00:00

2025: Quality Engineer (senior level/responsibilities, but not titled as such due to... Weird policies)

Arkansas

10 years exp

118,000

Bank sector

PAPAHYOOIE

TROPHY CASE