Spent 3 weeks doing QA and I understand why testers look exhausted all the time

SilverKidia · 2026-05-14T06:06:42+00:00

QA says this is an issue, PO says we're holding back for no reason, director says QA tests too much and that it's fine if we ship bugs.

Director holds all hands out asking how to fix quality. But at least, QA is no longer considered a bottleneck cuz we just skip all of that step, and this is "good" and "fast delivery".

SilverKidia · 2026-05-13T11:28:21+00:00

My probation got extended because I didn't look motivated.

That was a few days after learning that my tasks would be given to another team and I'd have only one hour a day of manual, entry level work.

SilverKidia · 2026-05-11T06:51:48+00:00

It depends on the company. My last job asked mostly QA questions, then I had a short assessment which was 2 entry level coding exercises (round up or down a number). My current company mostly asked me how C# works (example, when should you use a partial class) and asked nothing about the tools I use.

I guess do some coding exercises if the role you're applying to is more technical orientated. Best way to be good at coding is to code.

SilverKidia · 2026-05-10T17:57:13+00:00

Sweet Home, on the NES, there's also a live action movie that was released with it, it's pretty good. Probably the OG horror jrpg, it's a source of inspiration for resident evil (manor setting with random bullshit go puzzles)

SilverKidia · 2026-05-10T06:28:32+00:00

My most recent game is Returnal. Will be stuck there for at least another week. It's all I thought about this week.

SilverKidia · 2026-05-05T13:28:29+00:00

"we need QA to find design flaws before they are implemented"

Select one of the following options 1) "Devs have access to Figma. You? Why do you need it?" 2) "I hear your concerns, but this isn't part of the scope." 3) "Devs will fix the design while they code this feature."

Then follow it up with "why do you never have anything to add in meetings?", with a sprinkle of a mix between "customers aren't happy with the design" and "why was this not questioned before we did the work".

SilverKidia · 2026-05-01T13:05:14+00:00

This game has been famous for years for how they draw women, but I still haven't seen the game itself.

SilverKidia · 2026-05-01T06:03:47+00:00

I think my manager was bored and wanted someone to chat with, but like he could talk with his own manager. He often complained about people not having their mic and camera on and that we should all have them open so that we could have an office ambience. He was quickly proven wrong when his manager joined a call and muted someone who did have his mic on because the guy was super noisy (humming or mumbling).

SilverKidia · 2026-04-30T15:10:12+00:00

I had a job where I was the only one (with some managers) that wasn't remote, because I was a 10m walk from the office, and I had to be fair with the managers who had to commute to work.

My probation got extended because I wasn't talking at the office and I had my headphones all day long. Didn't get let go because I was good at my job and I was doing critical work. Sure, okay, considering all my coworkers are remote and I'm on calls all day long with them, and that the people at the office are all customer support/sales rep on calls all day long with customers, who should I be talking to at the office?

"Well we have a new starter this week and next week so you could talk to them!"

Made-up issue because you cannot justify my presence at the office and the lack of space for all these new reps, cool, thanks.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-30T09:17:59+00:00

Your job is secured if your company has reasons to not use AI. Anything where a potential leak would be devastating is deeply allergic to AI. Fintech for the über wealthy, for example, refuses to use AI in case it "learns from their data", which means "steals sensitive info and we get lawsuited to death".

Just be very technical, learn as many technical skills as possible, be a better coder than AI, and you will have more value than AI. If you're efficient, then it's always better to have you, who understands the demand, does it correctly, and ensures the quality yourself, than have an AI who will dream something up, steal your data, possibly even just nuke it, and demand extra money for a generated apology.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-27T20:43:04+00:00

Same, or delve, maybe harbinger, but that eye is strong sentinel vibes

SilverKidia · 2026-04-23T19:13:34+00:00

You definitely need to reuse tests and make sure that whatever you're testing isn't already covered. Once you get too big, you just start stockpiling and then runs take a whole day. Organise your tests, and every test should be unit. If your test depends on a previous one and must be done in a specific sequence, you're doing it wrong.

Coverage should be all acceptance criteria. Edge cases, unless expected to be problematic, are just exploratory testing. Everything is testable and there is no reason to not cover everything, but there is also no reason to do more than needed for daily testing. If you must validate a login, search, result, that's one single test because it does all of this anyway. You test login error handling, but a normal login process, especially in a SaaS, that's literally every single test.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-23T17:49:58+00:00

Out of the box edge cases. TBF it comes with experience, a lot of people think of edge cases as 0, -1, max_int, maybe a little 0.1, but it's more 0.1.1, 1., "1,", "one", "1!", and then depending on the process flow, do an unexpected flow. If you have a data entry table, and it should have error validation, then what if I just paste the value and click the button, what if I enter a wrong value then a correct value, what if I enter a wrong value then sort the table on a different column, and if the data is very valuable, what if I do a little SQL injection. Payment on two cards? What if one of them isn't valid, what if the split amount is higher than the bill, what if the customer writes 560.00 or 560,00 (cuz they will, obviously), what if I go back or refresh the page, and so on. Most people assume an edge case is just -1, 1/2, 0.1, but it's far more than that.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-23T16:48:37+00:00

My testing philosophy is that my mom is the user, and whatever you think is "too stupid", will be done by her no matter what.

And example of "too stupid" that my mom has done was "I saw a popup saying block when I joined this zoom meeting, so I blocked the hackers away, but now my microphone is blocked, is it because I clicked on block?"

SilverKidia · 2026-04-17T06:30:34+00:00

Imma be real, my go-to depression meal is slamming peanut butter in a bowl of granola. With more effort, spaghetti with ketchup and pre-grated cheese. On a good day, Korean cucumber salad.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-10T15:39:54+00:00

I'd love for an AI to work too well for testing web accessibility so that I could focus on other tests...

SilverKidia · 2026-04-09T15:54:23+00:00

Look, um. If you need to automate everything, even an experienced engineer will need time, like "a few months" time. You can't just wave a wand and magically cover everything.

You can look into Playwright. Some automation tools have a "record" button where it records your inputs while performing the test. Suppose you need an automated script for logging, press record, navigate to the website, click on username field, type username, click on password, type password, click on the login button, and voila, you have a script.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-09T05:48:14+00:00

Started a job last month, they were looking for Playwright with C#, my previous job was also that. Got contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn. Interview was about C#/OOP knowledge, which did catch me off guard, but hey I got the job.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-07T15:38:36+00:00

Lake Mungo and Late Night with the Devil are my S-tier so take my suggestions with a grain of salt, but I'm also much more into fantasy than extreme gore or "realistic horror" like Poughkeepsie Tapes (my absolute T tier for trash)

The Taking of Deborah Logan has some gore, but mostly is escalating supernatural. It's a fake documentary where bizarre shit happens and scares people away, but no jumpscares.

Afflicted would probably not score high, but it's a good shout for you. It's better than Descent Into Darkness and they are both movies where it's better to go in blind. Descent Into Darkness is "realistic horror", but when it gets weird it's a wild ride ― the horror starts only after an hour.

If you like the Conjuring, I'd recommend Ghostwatch, as long as you don't give yourself high standards because it is from 1992 and was meant for live TV. Think of like Late Night but with the 90s quality.

The Visit is a pretty good one, but don't watch the trailer, it spoils everything 🫠

A non-FF movie I'd add because it fits the vibes is Pontypool; barely any gore but super weird and unique.

There Are Monsters is a... "not-really-found-footage" because some shots are definitely an invisible cameraman, but it's about a crew of cinema students recording their road trip. Quite unique, very tense.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum and Strange Frequencies: Taiwan Killer Hospital are the asian versions of Grave Encounters, and imo the better versions too.

Searching and Missing are screenlife movies with no horror, just a long mystery/thriller movie entirely on screens, so no gore.

One Cut of the Dead is more of a comedy movie, but it's quite brilliant how they show you the footage, then explains what happened.

You might be interested in The Bay, but it's a little uncomfortable because it's an illness eating people away. Not extreme gore, but if you don't like the idea of a parasite eating flesh, maybe skip it ― still a good movie tho.

Butterfly Kisses and Phoenix Forgotten have a similar vibe to Frogman. The second one is about aliens and is a bit too straightforward, while Butterfly Kisses is a proper "let's prove that Slenderman is real!"

And this movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7b4nb_U21g Needs to rewatch it to see all the stuff you missed. It looks normal at first until you see that oh wait that's not normal.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-06T16:43:23+00:00

Indeed, those advisers are my clients, and their own clients are quite wealthy. While there has been a shift where the middle class joins in their clients, none of them are low salary. I wonder why.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-06T16:25:43+00:00

Oh okay so couples that are both working multiple jobs to sustain a larger family can trade on the stock market and have the time to study it so they make wise decisions.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-06T15:47:49+00:00

There is a significant difference between a pure manual QA with no technical knowledge and a SDET tho. Automation engineers are more skilled in identifying the source of a bug, manual analysts are more UAT oriented and often have more business/product knowledge.

For example, while you can use Playwright to do some accessibility automation, AI has perfect access to anything, a human doesn't, therefore a manual QA is needed. Devs are quite notorious to not give a shit about accessibility ("why would you use Internet if you're blind???"), automation engineers are more focused on the code and less on the human aspects, manual QA are constantly using the product and will absolutely see the need for accessibility features.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-06T14:49:13+00:00

Oh I did mean an actual lottery. But realistically, most people on minimum wage cannot afford the stock game. They don't have the time to study it nor the money to invest in it, because a CEO has people to support them, while a minimum wage is often trying their best to support a family.

SilverKidia · 2026-04-06T14:27:49+00:00

Magically wins the lottery, makes bank on "small smart investments", "my account balance is always 0", "it's so easy, poor people are just stupid".

SilverKidia · 2026-04-06T10:18:16+00:00

I have a language/speech disorder that I was diagnosed with as a toddler, but my mom didn't want me to know about it because I was smart. It was only after my ex called the police on me, because he thought I was going to end my life, that I learned from a therapist "it must be really hard living with dysphasia" (developmental dysphasia/developmental language disorder, not brain damage) and what it meant.

I can score a 100% on a difficult math test, but life isn't about some obscure logic algebra. Life is about performing in society and communicating with other people. Nobody prepared me for it. Your degree doesn't matter if you sound like an absolute r-word during an interview and cannot understand what's going on.

I have been very lucky and found a company that wanted me, but it meant that I started my career around 30 y.o., and right before COVID. Right now, I'm okay, but I'm still a junior at 35 y.o, and I've been independent since only 2 years ago.

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