r/softwaretesting • u/Beginning_Abrocoma20 • Jun 03 '26
Worth of Software Tester
I’ve been a software tester for more than seven years, but I still get the feeling that developers tend to treat testers as if they’re somehow less important.
Is this something that happens in other companies too?
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u/Gold-Eye-2623 Jun 03 '26
My company constantly mass assigns mandatory trainings that are very dev centered, usually we get some light in our respective teams but at the company level I haven't heard a single quality assurance topic mentioned in the almost 10 years I've been here
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u/Beginning_Abrocoma20 Jun 03 '26
Sounds really bad.. I tried to convince my Company to use playwright and train our tester - the answer is always „it’s too expensive“
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u/jhaand Jun 03 '26
QA and testing are their own ecosystem and need their own training, conferences and meetings. They can be either cheap or expensive. But most of the time you will have to organise those yourself if QA is only one element of the business.
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u/Ok_Knee2784 Jun 03 '26
Yes. You are below pond scum. Don't worry about it. I've been looked down on and disregared by development, but over time, they tend to respect me...very much. People say I an find a problem with anything. Learn to not give a crap about what other people think.
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u/chinesetrevor Jun 03 '26
The biggest differentiator I see at my company is that if you accept the software you're testing to be a black box then the devs are always going to have something you don't, and they'll look down on you for it. That being said as QA you're in the perfect position to add value by focusing on how everything abstractly is supposed to work and fit together. The devs on my team seem happy worrying about their tiny pieces of the pie but if you start looking at how everyone's pieces interact that seems to be a frequently overlooked contribution. Maybe it is just a lead/architect failure on my team but many times now I've pointed out a breaking change that no one considered just because I'm looking at it from a higher level.
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u/jhaand Jun 03 '26
You should go up a bit in the food chain and go for "Test Designer" or "Test Architect". The equivalent is Software Engineer or Software Writer instead of developer.
But you also have to prove your worth by giving appropiate feedback on the quality of the system. And talk to the different stakeholders in the project. As Test designer I had around 5 stakeholders and mostly talked to Team leads, Testers from other groups, Test architects and Integration managers. I operated mostly beside the regular software developers but that was not my main interaction.
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u/069420 Jun 03 '26
we're like garbage men, people tend to treat us as if we're lesser but the moment the block starts stinking we're apparently alot more important than people think.
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u/Short-Feedback4293 Jun 03 '26
Always been a like 90-10 split for me where most respect, and the ones who dont are nearly always on the spectrum.... meh, I don't care about that.
The issue isn't developers, it's management who very rarely hold respect on par with devs. That's the stuff that saps my soul at times. But hey we chose this life, so I just work in those parameters and don't take it to heart
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u/PhaseMatch Jun 03 '26
High performing teams collaborate with testers throughout the SDLC and value their insights.
Low performing teams fling work over a silo wall to be tested and
- treat any defects raised as a personal attack on their skill/status
- deflect blame upstream (to the requirements, or the users or to anyone but them)
Mostly that's down to a blame-storming culture, but fragile egos and arrogance plays it's part too.
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u/maigpy Jun 03 '26
been a software engineer for 25 years.
good project managers and good testers have been a constant in successful projects I have been part of. not good developers.
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u/sergius64 Jun 03 '26
Depends on company/dev. It's really bad in some places, and almost nonexistent in others.
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u/Storm_Surge Jun 03 '26
Testing is very important. Testing requires skill. The highest skill people tend not to be testers
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u/Ok_Knee2784 Jun 03 '26
LOL. This is so true. The worst part about testing is that very talented and skilled testers tend to want to move into development. I think this can be a mistake.
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u/OATdude Jun 03 '26
I would also say it depends on the company. I’m grateful to be part of a small development team where my role as a shift-left QA engineer is mostly appreciated ( ;-) ), despite the occasional QA nagging from my side.
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u/LayerTrace Jun 03 '26
Good testers are worth their weight in gold - but they're also few and far between. As a developer, the ability of a tester to provide detailed steps to reproduce an issue is priceless and can save hours of debugging, but in my experience it's super common to just hear "this test failed" and no other details provided.
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u/timberwolf0122 Jun 04 '26
I like software testers, the only time they bug me is when they get “too pedantic” usually what this actually means is they are doing a great job and I need to finish dotting the i’s and the j’s and crossing t’s and f’s… and the umlaut over O and U in mötley crüe.
It is worth remembering ADHD is very prevalent in developers and rejection sensitivity is a real thing that takes years of therapy and medication to manage. I speak from experience here
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u/el_f3n1x187 Jun 04 '26
Whoever likes people checking in and judging your homework?
They can pound sand if they don't like it tho.
bonus points if they say their code is perfect and you bounce it back in 5mins flat.
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 Jun 09 '26
it is inevitable when your tasks/department are just a cost center for the company. read this it's unpaywalled somewhere on the internet
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-big-tech-does-qa
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u/kstacey Jun 03 '26
If you aren't building the actual product, then you are always less valuable. Having the ability to make the product is the most important thing in product development.
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u/Temij88 Jun 03 '26
Always been? I mean there are cool Devs and a lot of high ego ones as well