One thing about "modern" software development that I find striking is that the process seems to have largely jettisoned user testing. That is, testing performed

One thing about "modern" software development that I find striking is that the process seems to have largely jettisoned user testing. That is, testing performed by humans, usually by teams of testers. Maybe that's still a thing and I just don't see it, but I also don't see nearly as many job ads for testers as I used to, and those seem to be exclusively at BigCorps. Back in the day (let's call that pre-2000 as an estimate), in the places I worked we'd never dream of releasing something to the public that the test team had not beat the crap out of in their own sweet way, and even the smallest of companies had at least one full-time tester on board. I realize that automated testing has become extremely popular but I've always been skeptical that it could replace user testing in effectiveness and have viewed the two approaches as complimentary. This doesn't seem to be the majority view now, I get the feeling that the "modern" opinion is "if the test can't be automated, fuck it, it's not worth doing" ... essentially the coders won, the testers have finally been vanquished! How about at your company?