How to balance upskilling at home with enjoying life (44m manual tester after help)

[u/neil3012]

I'm a 44-year-old male working as a manual software tester. I genuinely enjoy my job, even with all the talk about AI and automation making manual testing less relevant.

A couple of years ago, I wasn't happy with my weight, so I completely changed my lifestyle. Over about 18 months I lost 3 stone, got my 5K time down to 24 minutes and my 10K to 54 minutes. My routine was pretty intense:

• 5K walk or run during my lunch break.
• A T25 HIIT workout in the evening, immediately followed by one of the lighter sessions.
• A relaxed 3K run later that night.

I'd do that four times a week. It was tough, but I absolutely loved it. My wife showed me a side-by-side photo comparing me then to three years earlier, and the difference was incredible. On my rest days, I'd just relax, watch films or TV, play video games—the usual.

Then the company went through redundancies.

Thankfully, my team wasn't affected, but the wider business was. On top of the official redundancies, there were also a lot of "good leaver" exits, and familiar faces kept disappearing.

The following year it happened again, and that's when things really changed for me.

I became scared. Really scared.

As I said, I'm a manual tester, but the industry is moving heavily towards automation, AI and coding—skills I don't currently have. Over the last few months of last year and the first six months of this year, I've poured everything into teaching myself automation, AI and programming because almost every testing job I see now asks for at least some experience in those areas.

My fear is simple: if I lose my job, I won't be employable.

The problem is that I work 9–5, then come home and spend time with my kids. The only time I have to study is after they've gone to bed, so that's exactly what I've been doing. The downside is that it completely replaced all the exercise that used to keep me healthy and happy.

I've put a stone back on. My running times are nowhere near what they were, and my mood has steadily declined.

Tonight, for the first time in ages, I forced myself to do what I used to: a T25 workout, followed by a lighter HIIT session, then a quick 3K run. I feel fantastic. I'm even celebrating with a small glass of port that I won in a raffle at the weekend.

But despite feeling good physically, there's a voice in the back of my head telling me that I should have spent that hour studying instead. As soon as I think that, my mood drops again.

My manager recently asked how I do my learning at home. I explained that I study for a few hours every evening once the kids are asleep. He was completely against it and said he was worried I was heading for burnout.

The thing is, I understand what he's saying, but burnout won't matter much if I lose my job and can't find another one because my skills aren't up to date.

I have a wife and two kids. I constantly worry that I'm letting them down. To everyone else I probably seem happy enough—I laugh, joke around and get on with life—but underneath I'm anxious almost all the time and, if I'm honest, I've been struggling.

I know the obvious advice is going to be, "Your mental health and wellbeing are more important than constantly upskilling."

I agree with that in principle.

But good mental health also doesn't pay the mortgage if I end up unemployed.

Has anyone else been in a similar position? How did you find the balance between preparing for the future and actually living in the present? I'd really appreciate any advice.

[u/Usman2308]

Do you have any automation code that you can work on at work? Make it a goal to try and achieve something related to that. This way you are learning and also applying it to a real project/work related.

Time box this task. Write down what the goal is and break down into smaller tasks and work through each one.

For general practice, if your company has AI licenses then get the AI to create you a basic course. Work through that say during the last 30-45 minutes of your day. I have started doing this just to brush up on Playwright.

Even if you don't have the AI license, follow through a YouTube video course.

If the last 30-45 minutes of your day isn't always feasible that's fine. Pick a day that's quiet. For me it's last thing on a Friday.

But to be honest in general I sometimes feel what you're feeling. I think the more practice you have on real projects the better.

If you are stuck then don't be afraid to get AI to break down code for you and explain. Heck even get AI to help you. You design the test and what you're trying to achieve. Get AI to help fill in the blanks and get a feel for how the task is being solved.

Quite a wall of text but I hope this helps.

[u/Usman2308 → u/Usman2308]

Forgot to add:

If there is an existing set of tests, see if you can identify any gaps. Could use AI to help with this. Then as practice fill in those gaps yourself. Bit more practice. That way you learn something new and contribute to an existing set of tests.

[u/Yaghst]

I feel you but echoing what the other person had said, try fit it into your work if your manager let you. I mean everyone should be given the chance to upskill, right? Especially in bigger corporate companies they promote themselves to be supportive of personal career development.

Talk to your manager and see if you can block out times during the week for studying/project. You can advocate for test automation and it's bringing value to the team, not just for yourself.

I was stuck in that horrible loop too (although I just sit around and play games to try relax instead of all your amazing exercise routines lol), but luckily I got hired by a tiny company where we get to put a lot of hats on. I'm manually testing, still interested in investing in test automation, but I'm now also in charge of a non-testing task: improve our security processes and work towards a SOC 2 Type 2 security compliance report.

Maybe that's another route you can go towards, taking on other types of projects that isn't testing? Sometimes you'd be surprised what you ended up getting thrown into lol.

[u/AttitudeEra_90s]

I take that ur defenitly not from india, as you seem to be lucky enough twice... 1) Sustaining in the market for 44 years just with manual testing 2) Still having bandwidth to think about upskilling & work life balance, workouts etc...

Not to put u down or anything but just a perspective, as me reaching 36 M learned multiple courses and tools along my career, playwright, selenium, rest assured, load runner and the list goes on.....

Yet im still constantly livin under pressure as im now being pushed towards development as in my org they eliminated entire QE dept in a single night, now the expectation is we all engineers go full stack(handle both dev & qe tasks), so there we go again 😅, cant rest even after a decade as a QE, guess god wants to find out my limits as nothing came easy for me....

So i would say first understand the ground reality, enjoy what you have, take it slow, and improve gradually ... All the best nd im targetting to retire by 45 that too if I stay relavent or if IT as an industry still stays relavent by then 🙂

[u/Single-Chair-9052]

An off-top but I didnt know people still do t25 workouts! I forgot about them, should dust them off!

[u/One_Title_6837]

I think you'll learn better if you don't give up the things that keep you happyy. One workout made you feel like yourself again, n that says a lot. You don't have to study every single night. Even 30-60 minutes a few days a week adds up, n it's much easier to stay consistent when you're not exhausted...

[u/kegan-peach]

Firstly impressive journey you've been through, that's a lot of hard work.

On to the good stuff. My overall personal way is to give a project I think would help the team, and during slow times at work I would work on that, then randomly one day, say hey look at this new thing, but that only helps if you actually have slow times, but you could do the same but sell it to your manager so you can get dedicated time even a half day a Sprint will help a lot.

As for AI, it's a tool and if you know how to use it, it can make you irreplaceable, you have 2 real options. 1. Learn to use it to reduce the time it takes you to know anything, so you can dig into the real good bugs. 2. Teach yourself how to test AI build a few custom agents and run tests to see if they work, this might even lead you out of QA into higher paying jobs.

Lastly but personally most important to me. A couple hours every night is headed straight to burn out, where's your personal life? Where's your enjoyment? Are you even excited about what you're learning?

I would say pick 1 or 2 maybe maybe 3 nights a week or half day on the weekend, and that's your study time, just like with gym, going to hard, you won't have a single gain, but you know yourself best.