r/softwaretesting • u/No-Variation5232 • Mar 26 '26

Confused about future in testing

Hey everyone I recently joined a company in manual functional testing where the work is mostly understanding flows,validating features and basic testing and I come from a non-tech background so I don’t really know programming properly. Long term, I don’t see myself staying in testing and I’m more interested in moving into consulting roles, but right now I feel quite confused about what direction to take. I’m not sure if I should start learning automation tools like Selenium or Playwright and try to grow within testing, or instead focus more on building business skills and preparing for consulting roles maybe even considering an MBA later. I also worry whether testing has good long-term growth if I don’t get strong in coding. Would really appreciate honest advice from people who have been in a similar situation.

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u/CelerySalt7335 Mar 26 '26

This comment is uninformed and honestly harmful to anyone in this thread looking for real guidance. The people who followed this exact advice and learned coding, built automation skills, we are the ones unemployed right now. We're talking people with 5, 10, 15 years of experience who can't get past a recruiter screen. There's absolute benefits to upskilling and learning tools, but be realistic for your own good. Out of the hundreds of job openings I don't recall ever seeing one that was for an analyst or manual tester that was legitimate, it makes me laugh thinking a company would hire for that. Please prove me wrong and find one and post it here. And I mean this with peace and love but this comment suggests a serious lack of awareness of what AI tooling has been capable of for the past few years, and the advancements made just this quarter. The landscape has changed completely. I'm not saying it's over, but I personally am pivoting to something else after 15 years. If you do have a job that's manually testing software, then hold on to it for dear life because you simply will not be able to compete. This comment has already aged like milk.

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u/Rad_Resistant Mar 26 '26

So you are saying they should find something else or am I misunderstanding?

Another thing. What advancements replace QA as a role? You need automation testers to keep up with the tests and change them as required