I first stepped into a software quality related role ten years ago this month, and I haven't had Sunday night dread since. My nerdy brain clearly can't get enough of it.
It feels like a good time to reflect and consider what's changed over the decade, what hasn't, and a few things I've picked up along the way.
how the work has changed
My first testing gig was a reactive, over-the-fence "traditional" testing setup. Devs would build a feature and lob it to QA, which was usually the first chance we had to look at something. QA's role would then be to find bugs. We would occasionally get sight of a PRD to review but not often, and we held the final go / no-go on every release.
I had to switch roles to get my first taste of agile and devops. After seeing a few different flavours of that I'm now in a bit of a funky pseudo-leadership position. My scope ranges from co-leading a company-wide QA Transformation project as we adopt Quality Assistance, all the way down to some hands on "in the weeds" stuff. It's been an interesting challenge so far to say the least.
Even taking the change in roles and seniority into account, it feels like a totally different landscape to when I started. I can distinctly remember some finger pointing in my first QA role, which I haven't seen much of for a while. I'm a big fan of the ol' blameless culture.
There also seems to be more appetite from teams to shift left, but that might be because I don't shut up about it. I meet less resistance from software engineers too, and they're more willing to learn about quality.
It's a similar story with the tooling. In my first QA role the majority of testing was manual, with heavy manual regression test suites. This was supported by some automation in tools that aren't widely used anymore (Sahi Pro, SoapUI).
When I switched roles my automation skills evolved to ReadyAPI, SoapUI's paywalled big bro. It felt like a step up at first, but the more I learned about what it actually takes to be an effective quality engineer, the more I realised it was holding us back.
My first exposure to a "proper" automation framework (Cucumber + Protractor) came when I briefly worked on a different internal system. When Protractor was deprecated we started migrating to Playwright and the jump, from proprietary GUI tools to a real code-based framework, really clicked.
I have since built out a few frameworks from scratch and worked with various languages and tools, but I've come to realise that the core concepts around automation remain largely the same. You setup data, you do the thing, you tear down the data.
... and then AI happened
AI has emerged over the last few years, and it's still terrifying how much it can do. The entire tech industry is evolving and it feels like we're already past the point of no return, which led to a bit of an existential crisis at first. With the way things are going, it seems that product owners won't write requirements anymore, software engineers won't write code anymore, and quality engineers won't write tests anymore. The lines between roles are starting to blur.
The human side of quality engineering is taking a bit of a beating from the AI EVERYTHING demands, too. I've been advocating for how important things like exploratory testing, stakeholder relations and DevEx are, but it can be difficult at times.
As someone who has always been very technical I'm riding the wave regardless, like a big sell out. It almost feels like I've crossed a picket line, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the challenge of finding ways to implement appropriate human reviews, evals, guardrails and quality gates in AI workflows.
I think these are the technical skills that are going to be VERY in demand for the next few years. This is the language the big bosses are willing to hear, but it also takes the human side of QE for it to be truly effective.
how I've changed
Despite wanting to break into tech for years, it always felt like "just a job" until I made the jump from my first tech workplace to the second. About halfway through my time there, testing stopped feeling like a job and started feeling like a career.
In hindsight this coincided with a shift from tester to quality engineer, though I didn't realise it at the time. I started feeling passionate about what I did, pushing back when I thought there was a better way instead of just shrugging and getting on with it. It's when I truly bought into continuous improvement.
That passion brought a motivation to learn. Aside from the ISTQB Foundation I'd never really bothered with learning continuously for work. It hadn't crossed my mind that I could do so in my own time. A friend recommended the Ministry of Testing, which has played a big part in progressing my career ever since.
My first manager in QA once said something like "you'll never be a good tester unless you've seen other systems," shortly before she took her own advice and left the company. I've only been to two other workplaces since, but in that time I've worked on wildly complex systems spanning COBOL and classic ASP through to modern Spring Boot microservices with React frontends.
Every new system has added a layer of tacit knowledge that makes it easier for my brain to spot things. If there's an alternate universe where I stayed in that first role all this time, I'd absolutely batter them in a quality-off.
The biggest shift, though, has been in how I hold responsibility. In my first role we owned the go / no-go decision, so we'd put our foot down whenever we had to, and that stuck with me for a long time. These days I've made peace with the fact that some issues get accepted as a risk no matter how well you make the case, and that's okay. Providing the context for people to make well-informed decisions is sometimes all we can do.
epiphanies
A few epiphanies completely blew my mind. They were the career equivalent of core memories from Inside Out. Here they are in full:
- I am the captain now: the first time I reported to an engineering manager who wasn't from a quality background, I realised I knew more about some things than they did. That did more for my confidence than anything else and I started proactively seeking out ways to become better at what I do.
- Devs should not be put on pedestals: I've always been okay with code, but never an expert, because I don't do it every day. I assumed engineers were more technical or better skilled than me. This was until I started looking at PRs and started spotting issues that I thought were obvious.
- You can be a leader AND an individual contributor: when I was told this it was alongside examples of ways I had been leading without realising. It immediately snapped something into place and I finally ended up going for a Lead role after putting it off for years.
has anything stayed the same?
The fear from the early years being involved in go / no-go decisions is still with me, which I see as a good thing. I feel personally responsible for every release I'm involved with, and the fear keeps me sharp.
The other constant is my passion for computers, systems and tech in general. Three workplaces and a decade of systems in, I still find all of it genuinely fascinating. Hand me a system I've never seen and I just want to dive straight in and poke things.
what next?
I know a lot of people are hoping that the AI bubble is going to burst, and maybe it will to some extent, but I think the way we work has changed for good.
From what I've seen, the core of a quality related role has shifted. Hands on testing is likely to become a thing of the past with few exceptions such as exploratory testing. Our focus will probably shift more towards enabling teams to bake quality in, and to review any AI frameworks we work on from a quality and testing perspective.
I've got mixed feelings about that. On the one hand I find it really exciting to be working with cutting edge tech every day, and I'm in a role where I've got a degree of freedom to do so. On the other hand, over a long enough period of time it seems that there will be fewer jobs to go around in tech.
I guess we'll need to wait and see how it goes. Lucky for me, though, it's a good time to be technical and curious.
If you've managed to make it this far then I would be interested to hear how you think things have changed over the last decade. What has changed most for you?