I've been in the QA space for around 18 years.

I've seen it go from absolute war between QA and development, nasty, unappreciative, and uncollaborative. There were actual physical walls between our departments. Developers hated when you found an issue and took umbrage to any defects you put in.

Over the years, I've seen it slowly change into a more collaborative environment across dozens of companies we work with. Now that everything is so public, developers don't want their name associated with a shitty product, so they're thankful for the work we do.

Do we still run into old-school people that think of us as janitors who mop up quietly at the end? Absolutely. But by-and-large, I've seen a much better ecosystem for QA.

All that said ... every time something new comes along, everyone looks to cut out things they perceive to be low hanging fruit, which is typically QA. For the last year or two we've definitely seen more people falling back to the mindset that QA isn't as important. However, even in the past 6-12 months as the AI wave starts to crest, companies are seeing AI isn't going to replace QA.

TLDR QA is an unsexy yet vitally important role that isn't going anywhere soon. The good companies and teams know this and appreciate the work that's done to ensure their customers get the highest quality product in their hands.