That kind of attitude is why my entire career path exists. QA Automation is something that I'm constantly surprised people don't know exists. Product devs resen

That kind of attitude is why my entire career path exists. QA Automation is something that I'm constantly surprised people don't know exists. Product devs resent writing tests so we are the ones who do that exclusively. As a counter to your experience I've spent a great amount of time stamping out issues with record-and-playback tests. They're a passable stop-gap if you desperately need testing and, for whatever reason, haven't written any. Sikuli is possibly worse, though it's been a few years since we last evaluated it and quickly decided against using it in any serious capacity. Using manual testers as discount automation testers is a waste of everyone's time. They're the true experts in actual use of the product. I've seen them find more issues that from a code perspective shouldn't really be possible that it's given me an implicit trust and respect of their abilities. If someone wants automated testing it's another thing they're going to have to spend money on. Doing it half-assed is more than likely going to do more harm than good.