6 ms·

QA job interview questions for managers to ask

36 points by ohjeez 6y ago

inglor 6y ago
This smells of a marketing article shoved to the homepage. I'm not a fan of the trend I'm seeing of articles with little technical merit suddenly making it on the homepage next to legitimate technology pieces. I'm not sure what HN can do about it and maybe I'm just cynical and people genuinely think this PR piece has good technical value and "How do you test a soda machine?" is a good QA question.
- lefstathiou 6y ago
  So what is?
  - tdsamardzhiev 6y ago
    He's right though, not even Paul Graham's blog gets 25 HN posts in 3 months.
- metrokoi 6y ago
  Theoretically a marketing article can contain valuable information and good insights, but I've personally never come across one. It's always surface-level discussion and the bare minimum to get web traffic.
- dvt 6y ago
  Agreed, flagging. Luckily, these kinds of pieces only survive the front page for a few minutes.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  I kind of agree that this is indirectly a marketing article but the "test an X" question is actually commonly used in software QA interviews, though usually for non-technical testers or new graduates. It's the equivalent of "how does an HTTP request work?" for dev interviews.
- dang 6y ago
  Shoved? I didn't see evidence of vote manipulation on this post. Content marketing is sort of orthogonal to whether an article is interesting or not. If it's interesting, it doesn't matter much if the intention was to advertise. See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22content%20marketing%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... for past explanations on this. Technical merit is only one way to be interesting, so that's also a bit of a non-issue. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
folex 6y ago
Looks like another marketing article, empty of any insight.
- KukicAdnan 6y ago
  Looks like HN should have used Functionize(r)(tm) to test their software to make sure this doesn't happen.
shaggyfrog 6y ago
How the heck does this get onto the front page? The top question is "What methodologies have you used?" -- is this a joke? The answer will tell you nothing about the candidate's ability to do a good job. This article is a waste of time.
- ohjeez 6y ago
  It says up front: Get the obvious questions out of the way (such as "what methodologies do you use") so you can put your attention on the ones that matter.
  - quicklime 6y ago
    Why get them "out of the way" when you can just skip asking pointless questions?
    - ohjeez 6y ago
      Because there ARE good reasons to ask job candidates about the skills they put on their resumes. Some people add the keywords to be buzzword-compliant. Others include a tool or technology in passing, as a summary of 5 years of work with it... and if it's important in your shop, it'e reasonable to ask about it. Find out whether "experienced with ToolName" means "I once started up the app" or "I can make it dance." My resume barely mentions OS/2 anymore, because I'm unlikely to get a job that requires the knowledge. But if I happened to interview at a company where it mattered (perhaps for legacy tech) or where the interviewer shared an interest ("oh! something we can chat about!") then it's a reasonable topic of discussion. Also, interviewees expect those questions. They can be a kind of throat clearing. That is... get 'em out of the way.
  - shaggyfrog 6y ago
    If that's an "obvious" question that needs to be asked, then that's a signal to the candidate that the hiring manager doesn't know WTF they're doing. Waste of time for everyone involved.
genev 6y ago
This is just blog spam.
dmundhra 6y ago
I am a developer who happen to also have to manage a QA team and found this article interesting to atleast ask some questions to get the interview warmed up. Otherwise I always struggled to find good questions to ask for a QA interview. Am sure if I had googled I might have found something- but I never did. This coming on the HN feed just removed that friction too for me to read!
ninedays 6y ago
QA here. The article is decent for someone who has little to no experience in the field and wishes to know more about QA practices or processes.
socketnaut 6y ago
Had to triple check that this wasn't satire after reading the first two points. Focusing on familiarity with buzzwords and trendy tools is exactly the wrong thing to do.
someone7x 6y ago
"Best Catch" and "One That Got Away" are the only good questions here, and "Best Catch" is the only one I ask every single time. This is one of the most important question because it reveals the "soul" of the tester; the flavor of brokenness that excites them most. For every once in a lifetime "you won't believe it, but..." answer there are dozens of boring "one time mysql went down on prod" answers. It's not a golden snitch or anything like that, but I find it to be indispensable in the interview process.

36 points by ohjeez 6y ago

This smells of a marketing article shoved to the homepage. I'm not a fan of the trend I'm seeing of articles with little technical merit suddenly making it on the homepage next to legitimate technology pieces. I'm not sure what HN can do about it and maybe I'm just cynical and people genuinely think this PR piece has good technical value and "How do you test a soda machine?" is a good QA question.

lefstathiou 6y ago
So what is?
- tdsamardzhiev 6y ago
  He's right though, not even Paul Graham's blog gets 25 HN posts in 3 months.
metrokoi 6y ago
Theoretically a marketing article can contain valuable information and good insights, but I've personally never come across one. It's always surface-level discussion and the bare minimum to get web traffic.
dvt 6y ago
Agreed, flagging. Luckily, these kinds of pieces only survive the front page for a few minutes.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
I kind of agree that this is indirectly a marketing article but the "test an X" question is actually commonly used in software QA interviews, though usually for non-technical testers or new graduates. It's the equivalent of "how does an HTTP request work?" for dev interviews.
dang 6y ago
Shoved? I didn't see evidence of vote manipulation on this post. Content marketing is sort of orthogonal to whether an article is interesting or not. If it's interesting, it doesn't matter much if the intention was to advertise. See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22content%20marketing%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... for past explanations on this. Technical merit is only one way to be interesting, so that's also a bit of a non-issue. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

folex 6y ago

Looks like another marketing article, empty of any insight.

KukicAdnan 6y ago
Looks like HN should have used Functionize(r)(tm) to test their software to make sure this doesn't happen.

shaggyfrog 6y ago

How the heck does this get onto the front page? The top question is "What methodologies have you used?" -- is this a joke? The answer will tell you nothing about the candidate's ability to do a good job. This article is a waste of time.

ohjeez 6y ago
It says up front: Get the obvious questions out of the way (such as "what methodologies do you use") so you can put your attention on the ones that matter.
- quicklime 6y ago
  Why get them "out of the way" when you can just skip asking pointless questions?
  - ohjeez 6y ago
    Because there ARE good reasons to ask job candidates about the skills they put on their resumes. Some people add the keywords to be buzzword-compliant. Others include a tool or technology in passing, as a summary of 5 years of work with it... and if it's important in your shop, it'e reasonable to ask about it. Find out whether "experienced with ToolName" means "I once started up the app" or "I can make it dance." My resume barely mentions OS/2 anymore, because I'm unlikely to get a job that requires the knowledge. But if I happened to interview at a company where it mattered (perhaps for legacy tech) or where the interviewer shared an interest ("oh! something we can chat about!") then it's a reasonable topic of discussion. Also, interviewees expect those questions. They can be a kind of throat clearing. That is... get 'em out of the way.
- shaggyfrog 6y ago
  If that's an "obvious" question that needs to be asked, then that's a signal to the candidate that the hiring manager doesn't know WTF they're doing. Waste of time for everyone involved.

genev 6y ago

This is just blog spam.

dmundhra 6y ago

I am a developer who happen to also have to manage a QA team and found this article interesting to atleast ask some questions to get the interview warmed up. Otherwise I always struggled to find good questions to ask for a QA interview. Am sure if I had googled I might have found something- but I never did. This coming on the HN feed just removed that friction too for me to read!

ninedays 6y ago

QA here. The article is decent for someone who has little to no experience in the field and wishes to know more about QA practices or processes.

socketnaut 6y ago

Had to triple check that this wasn't satire after reading the first two points. Focusing on familiarity with buzzwords and trendy tools is exactly the wrong thing to do.

someone7x 6y ago

"Best Catch" and "One That Got Away" are the only good questions here, and "Best Catch" is the only one I ask every single time. This is one of the most important question because it reveals the "soul" of the tester; the flavor of brokenness that excites them most. For every once in a lifetime "you won't believe it, but..." answer there are dozens of boring "one time mysql went down on prod" answers. It's not a golden snitch or anything like that, but I find it to be indispensable in the interview process.