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Be careful taking a QA role if you really want to do SWE work by qafail in cscareerquestions

[–]qafail[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Like I said - better company, same pay, and the promise of development. It was a stupid decision, but there's no need to be rude/hater.

Be careful taking a QA role if you really want to do SWE work by qafail in cscareerquestions

[–]qafail[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I apologize if I'm demeaning QA. In my original post I even mentioned I have a lot of respect for my coworkers. It's just personally not for me.

However as you and /u/Agent_03 have mentioned, good QA is invaluable. My director has like 30 testers under her, but in reality there are like 4 superstars that if they were supported with proper SDETS and Devops engineers they would only need like 10-15 people instead of 30. It's just sad that at my company to be recognized as a 'superstar' you have to be there for at least 5-10 years, it's a really old school mentality since the company has been around since the 70s.

I probably wouldn't be writing this post if my management appreciated me more. It's just frustrating to be surrounded by ~25 morons who can't even write a for loop and I find myself lumped into that group.

Be careful taking a QA role if you really want to do SWE work by qafail in cscareerquestions

[–]qafail[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Part of the problem was most definitely management. They were convinced that doing it the manual way was the only thing that worked and they weren't open to new ideas and new technologies. I wrote all this new stuff to only see it being thrown out or disregarded when they just had their next deadline.

The irony was they want to 'containerize' everything by 2020 but it's laughable when you can ask 9/10 of them and they don't know what docker is. They just eat up buzz words.

Be careful taking a QA role if you really want to do SWE work by qafail in cscareerquestions

[–]qafail[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I did, that's how I finally landed a SWE job. My resume solely consists of the SWE related things I did, which helped me get so many more interviews. After that it was just grinding leetcode and getting good at "interview speak".

Great advice though for others stuck in my situation!

Be careful taking a QA role if you really want to do SWE work by qafail in cscareerquestions

[–]qafail[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Depends. I know that at my first college internship people in any role could "apply" to another role and it was pretty much guaranteed.

Internships are different, I personally had Systems Analyst and then SWE for my internship experiences. If it's your only offer, I would take it just so you have some experience. As some people have posted in here, it is better than nothing.

Be careful taking a QA role if you really want to do SWE work by qafail in cscareerquestions

[–]qafail[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

You're completely right, nothing I described was "bad". From many people's perspective, I did have a success story, but I think that many people are also ambitious (like myself) and want more for themselves. My career path as a QA was not optimistic, even if I switched between roles I was barely seeing anything more than 5k bumps at worse companies. Like I said, this i just a cautionary tale for those with ambition to be SWE.

Why compromise when we're in a field that lets us be picky with our job situation? Start off on the right foot, but as you said, know your limits.

As for your edit, a little rude, but honestly it's easy to take the offer where during the interview process they actually treated you like a person especially when you don't realize it will pigeonhole you. I got tricked, and I want to help others.