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The article (and Epic) don’t seem to answer the basic question of what changed that made them take this step. It alludes to a difficult labor market, so I’m gue

by pm90 5y ago

The article (and Epic) don’t seem to answer the basic question of what changed that made them take this step. It alludes to a difficult labor market, so I’m guessing that’s the reason but it’s not clearly stated why the company decided to make this change now and what criteria it used for making these offers.

bpodgursky 5y ago
High churn in this labor market is probably pretty bad for overall productivity.
jimbob45 5y ago
I’ve been waiting for years for companies to figure out that internal promotion yields huge benefits over outside hiring. If you promote a temp to a full-time, it’s going to be successful 99% of the time because you already know the work ethic of the employee. Better yet, you get to skimp on training. If you hire someone from the outside, the chance is much lower that you’ll get a solid hire. What I’m saying isn’t new - companies promote from within all the time. What I’m advocating for is to codify the practice - only hire your software devs from your QA testers. Not only does putting that pipeline in place ensure better devs but you also make the QA job more attractive as a reliable stepping stone. I’ve seen this suggestion swatted down at multiple companies.
- Talanes 5y ago
  How would that work as a broad industry practice though? If a dev wants to change companies, they would have to start all over as a QA somewhere else? Most people would rather find another industry their skillset is compatible with than do that.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  Hiring all your devs from testers? Generally dev requires a comp sci background, tester doesn’t. I won’t claim every developer needs a 4 year comp sci degree, but I would be worried on a project with 0 degree holders. At some point someone has to like pick a data structure or interface with like hardware.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    We are far past self-learned experts in the field. Ofc, there is always a handful, but for making big commercial comp. sci. intensive product I would prefer graduates myself. Let's not forget Epic's main product is an game engine. Which is in upper echelons of product complexity. Not that there isn't lot of work to run store and related services also at Epic Games.
  - monksy 5y ago
    Having worked with a few people that went from testing->upgraded to dev.. there are some large gaps in software composition, design, and stances. It's not imposible to go from testing to dev.. but it really depends on the person's effort into doing so.
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    Most testers at the companies I’ve been at have had dormant CS degrees. They don’t bother keeping their CS skills up because there’s no chance for them to be promoted. Nevertheless, they often know the product extremely well and work hard. If there was a known pipeline for them to follow, I’m certain they’d follow it.
    - gkop 5y ago
      Your story doesn’t add up. Since a CS degree isn’t a pre-requisite to be a tester, and a CS degree goes a good way toward qualifying for a better paid software development job, why are your companies predominantly hiring testers with CS degrees? Why did the testers get the degrees just to let them go “dormant”?
      - yoyonamite 5y ago
        I've never been involved in the game industry but it sounds believable to me. It's not a given that having a CS degree means a person can code, which is one of the reasons we code test in interviews. And I imagine the game industry requires higher coding ability. There are also people that want to be in the game industry no matter what. They would rather be a tester in games than a programmer outside it.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  I don’t think your idea would work. Most QA testers can’t become software developers. It’s not the same job. Some can but most can’t - they would already be software developers if they could as the pay is nicer. You would need significant training for it to work and even then it would prevent you for hiring more experienced talents as needed from the software developers pool.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    I’m not sure this is true - I moved from test to dev and then back to test. I definitely earn more money than I did as a dev and honestly from an engineering perspective I find it’s more interesting. While a developer might focus on web or desktop or embedded or games, I’m a developer that focuses on testing. Maybe you’re right for a subset of manual testers but I like to think there are very capable developers working in the QA realm.
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      Just because there are QA testers that can do software development doesn’t mean all, or even most, can do it.
    - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
      What industry?
    - ThrowawayR2 5y ago
      That's true in the software industry in general but games industry QA is very much different from that. The bulk of games industry QA is largely untrained, non-technical personnel manually executing test cases written by others and therefore wages are low and they are treated as completely fungible. (I'm not defending it, just describing it.) The article mentions hundreds of testers, so it's far more likely they're that type of tester rather than SDETs.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  First part yes, second hell no. I haven't met testers in past 16 years with deeper dev knowledge (because they would be already doing that, usually better paid and more creative), business knowledge alone isn't gonna cut it. Unless testers are actually coding unit & integration tests in same language and platform (again, never saw or even heard about that, normally devs did those). Another thing is that if you go external -> itnernal, you save time and money on whole hiring process. That's quite a bit of valuable time of senior people, and at least in corporate sphere easily 6 month salary of the hire that would go to agency.
- pawelmurias 5y ago
  That's ridiculous. In most game companies the bulk of testing is manual testing which is an unskilled repetitive job that has more in common with data entry than programming. You would get better results by only hiring devs from say visual artists.
- zem 5y ago
  QA is an entirely different job from development, and does not use the same skill sets. what is needed is for good QA people to be paid and respected on par with devs, not for it to be viewed as a low tier job where you can get "promoted" to development. promotion for a tester should ideally be to senior QA engineer, with more autonomy to come up with effective test plans, designing and implementing automated tests, being a team lead for more junior testers, etc .
lumost 5y ago
Contract arrangements are ideal when there is an infinite pool of fungible labor to use. You can even imagine reducing the term of contract to be advantageous when labor gets cheaper. On the flip side if workers have many competing options and labor is limited, you will need to pay a premium to get workers in the door on a short term contract. More likely, you’ll find that most high quality workers were already taken off the market by career track positions.

by pm90 5y ago

bpodgursky 5y ago

High churn in this labor market is probably pretty bad for overall productivity.

jimbob45 5y ago

I’ve been waiting for years for companies to figure out that internal promotion yields huge benefits over outside hiring. If you promote a temp to a full-time, it’s going to be successful 99% of the time because you already know the work ethic of the employee. Better yet, you get to skimp on training. If you hire someone from the outside, the chance is much lower that you’ll get a solid hire. What I’m saying isn’t new - companies promote from within all the time. What I’m advocating for is to codify the practice - only hire your software devs from your QA testers. Not only does putting that pipeline in place ensure better devs but you also make the QA job more attractive as a reliable stepping stone. I’ve seen this suggestion swatted down at multiple companies.

Talanes 5y ago
How would that work as a broad industry practice though? If a dev wants to change companies, they would have to start all over as a QA somewhere else? Most people would rather find another industry their skillset is compatible with than do that.
brianwawok 5y ago
Hiring all your devs from testers? Generally dev requires a comp sci background, tester doesn’t. I won’t claim every developer needs a 4 year comp sci degree, but I would be worried on a project with 0 degree holders. At some point someone has to like pick a data structure or interface with like hardware.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  We are far past self-learned experts in the field. Ofc, there is always a handful, but for making big commercial comp. sci. intensive product I would prefer graduates myself. Let's not forget Epic's main product is an game engine. Which is in upper echelons of product complexity. Not that there isn't lot of work to run store and related services also at Epic Games.
- monksy 5y ago
  Having worked with a few people that went from testing->upgraded to dev.. there are some large gaps in software composition, design, and stances. It's not imposible to go from testing to dev.. but it really depends on the person's effort into doing so.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Most testers at the companies I’ve been at have had dormant CS degrees. They don’t bother keeping their CS skills up because there’s no chance for them to be promoted. Nevertheless, they often know the product extremely well and work hard. If there was a known pipeline for them to follow, I’m certain they’d follow it.
  - gkop 5y ago
    Your story doesn’t add up. Since a CS degree isn’t a pre-requisite to be a tester, and a CS degree goes a good way toward qualifying for a better paid software development job, why are your companies predominantly hiring testers with CS degrees? Why did the testers get the degrees just to let them go “dormant”?
    - yoyonamite 5y ago
      I've never been involved in the game industry but it sounds believable to me. It's not a given that having a CS degree means a person can code, which is one of the reasons we code test in interviews. And I imagine the game industry requires higher coding ability. There are also people that want to be in the game industry no matter what. They would rather be a tester in games than a programmer outside it.
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
I don’t think your idea would work. Most QA testers can’t become software developers. It’s not the same job. Some can but most can’t - they would already be software developers if they could as the pay is nicer. You would need significant training for it to work and even then it would prevent you for hiring more experienced talents as needed from the software developers pool.
- exdsq 5y ago
  I’m not sure this is true - I moved from test to dev and then back to test. I definitely earn more money than I did as a dev and honestly from an engineering perspective I find it’s more interesting. While a developer might focus on web or desktop or embedded or games, I’m a developer that focuses on testing. Maybe you’re right for a subset of manual testers but I like to think there are very capable developers working in the QA realm.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    Just because there are QA testers that can do software development doesn’t mean all, or even most, can do it.
  - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
    What industry?
  - ThrowawayR2 5y ago
    That's true in the software industry in general but games industry QA is very much different from that. The bulk of games industry QA is largely untrained, non-technical personnel manually executing test cases written by others and therefore wages are low and they are treated as completely fungible. (I'm not defending it, just describing it.) The article mentions hundreds of testers, so it's far more likely they're that type of tester rather than SDETs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
saiya-jin 5y ago
First part yes, second hell no. I haven't met testers in past 16 years with deeper dev knowledge (because they would be already doing that, usually better paid and more creative), business knowledge alone isn't gonna cut it. Unless testers are actually coding unit & integration tests in same language and platform (again, never saw or even heard about that, normally devs did those). Another thing is that if you go external -> itnernal, you save time and money on whole hiring process. That's quite a bit of valuable time of senior people, and at least in corporate sphere easily 6 month salary of the hire that would go to agency.
pawelmurias 5y ago
That's ridiculous. In most game companies the bulk of testing is manual testing which is an unskilled repetitive job that has more in common with data entry than programming. You would get better results by only hiring devs from say visual artists.
zem 5y ago
QA is an entirely different job from development, and does not use the same skill sets. what is needed is for good QA people to be paid and respected on par with devs, not for it to be viewed as a low tier job where you can get "promoted" to development. promotion for a tester should ideally be to senior QA engineer, with more autonomy to come up with effective test plans, designing and implementing automated tests, being a team lead for more junior testers, etc .

lumost 5y ago

Contract arrangements are ideal when there is an infinite pool of fungible labor to use. You can even imagine reducing the term of contract to be advantageous when labor gets cheaper. On the flip side if workers have many competing options and labor is limited, you will need to pay a premium to get workers in the door on a short term contract. More likely, you’ll find that most high quality workers were already taken off the market by career track positions.