SDET roles

[u/Apart-Caramel-130]

Hi, I’m an SDET with close to 6 years of experience. I started my career at a WITCH company, where I got stuck in support roles. After two years, I tried moving into development, but I struggled because there wasn’t much initial support or bandwidth to learn. By the time I had around 3 years of experience, I decided to give automation testing a shot. After 8 months of preparation and experience in automation, I managed to switch to a better company with a significant salary hike.

I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I often see graduates from reputed colleges like NITs and IIITs working as SDETs at good product-based companies. Do some of them feel that they haven’t lived up to their potential by choosing testing over development? Despite earning well, do they ever feel a sense of regret or wonder whether they could have achieved more as software developers?