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> From my experience, QA, especially game QA is looked down upon by leadership and developers - peers - alike. If you have a dedicated QA team that is staffed

by seneca 4y ago

> From my experience, QA, especially game QA is looked down upon by leadership and developers - peers - alike. If you have a dedicated QA team that is staffed by people who don't write software, those people are at best technicians. They are not peers of the engineers, they're a different job function with a much much lower barrier to entry. They're closer to the customer support team than they are to engineering. That's not to say that they are somehow undeserving of basic respect. They are (as are support personnel), but given the choice between QA and engineering, almost anyone would choose engineering. The reason QAs aren't on engineering teams is that they can't pass the interviews. The inverse is not true. None of that is to bash QA. But pretending they're peers of engineering and lamenting that they aren't treated as equals is just based on a fantasy.

mrpopo 4y ago
> But pretending they're peers of engineering and lamenting that they aren't treated as equals is just based on a fantasy. You have just built an elaborate strawman. No one argued for equal rights/equal salary/equal treatment of QA people with their dev peers. They are just looking for better work conditions and better job security.
- cr__ 4y ago
  I’m definitely arguing for equal rights and treatment for them (??????)
  - mrpopo 4y ago
    Erm, yeah, not sure what my intent was, but that was not the right wording. We should definitely fight for equal rights and treatment of workers.
wincy 4y ago
In my experience a QA is to an engineer what a nurse is to a doctor. They take measurements and can have a good eye for what might be going on, but they don’t know the code. A QA automation engineer is more like a nurse practitioner. It doesn’t mean they aren’t smart but if they could write code they would, unless you’re working somewhere that compensates QAs and engineers the same (which I’ve never seen). Had a QA coworker try to learn to code and he just couldn’t quite get it.
- seneca 4y ago
  I think that's a apt and succinct analogy. Completely agreed.
- dgb23 4y ago
  Proper testing, especially manual, explorative testing is _incredibly_ difficult and it can also be mentally exhausting and tedious. IMO a good tester is worth their weight in gold. And I think as a developer one can benefit greatly from thinking and working more closely to and with testing and usability. I'm possibly biased, because explorative testing is one of my weaker areas as a dev. I'm way better at debugging once I know that there is a problem, but finding a problem that I don't know about yet, I find quite hard to do to say the least. And I think it's awesome to observe people who are really good at this kind of thing.
- g_sch 4y ago
  That's an interesting choice of analogy. Just a few weeks ago there was a popular submission here reporting how 90% of nurses are considering leaving their profession in the next year due to burnout and poor working conditions [0]. It's true that doctors receive more training, but without nurses (hell, even with any fewer nurses than we have now) our health system would completely collapse. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180646
  - thebean11 4y ago
    Ehh, not sure I'd make the comparison. Plenty of tech companies don't have QA engineers. Hospitals without nurses not so much..
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      It's a very rough analogy. Required skills for an entry level QA tester is pretty low. It's essentially "do these things in a video game, look for bugs". It's certainly not just having fun playing video games all day, it's far more rote, but it's hardly a scare skill. Nurses, on the other hand, have a higher barrier to entry as they need at least a year and up to four years of schooling before starting to work. Pay is higher accordingly, with average nursing salaries being $75K as compared to $55k for QA testers. It's probably better when you normalize for cost of living (came studies are in expensive parts of the country, nurses more evenly distributed).
de_nied 4y ago
> But pretending they're peers of engineering and lamenting that they aren't treated as equals is just based on a fantasy. Being QA is not that much different from engineering. During my childhood I quite enjoyed breaking games if I could. I hated being restricted, and I loved hacking[1] them. Speedrunning works much in the same way. This is what lead me into engineering. Of course one requires much more education, but I'd argue that the time, dedication, and thought process is about the same. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture

by seneca 4y ago

mrpopo 4y ago

> But pretending they're peers of engineering and lamenting that they aren't treated as equals is just based on a fantasy. You have just built an elaborate strawman. No one argued for equal rights/equal salary/equal treatment of QA people with their dev peers. They are just looking for better work conditions and better job security.

cr__ 4y ago
I’m definitely arguing for equal rights and treatment for them (??????)
- mrpopo 4y ago
  Erm, yeah, not sure what my intent was, but that was not the right wording. We should definitely fight for equal rights and treatment of workers.

wincy 4y ago

In my experience a QA is to an engineer what a nurse is to a doctor. They take measurements and can have a good eye for what might be going on, but they don’t know the code. A QA automation engineer is more like a nurse practitioner. It doesn’t mean they aren’t smart but if they could write code they would, unless you’re working somewhere that compensates QAs and engineers the same (which I’ve never seen). Had a QA coworker try to learn to code and he just couldn’t quite get it.

seneca 4y ago
I think that's a apt and succinct analogy. Completely agreed.
dgb23 4y ago
Proper testing, especially manual, explorative testing is _incredibly_ difficult and it can also be mentally exhausting and tedious. IMO a good tester is worth their weight in gold. And I think as a developer one can benefit greatly from thinking and working more closely to and with testing and usability. I'm possibly biased, because explorative testing is one of my weaker areas as a dev. I'm way better at debugging once I know that there is a problem, but finding a problem that I don't know about yet, I find quite hard to do to say the least. And I think it's awesome to observe people who are really good at this kind of thing.
g_sch 4y ago
That's an interesting choice of analogy. Just a few weeks ago there was a popular submission here reporting how 90% of nurses are considering leaving their profession in the next year due to burnout and poor working conditions [0]. It's true that doctors receive more training, but without nurses (hell, even with any fewer nurses than we have now) our health system would completely collapse. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31180646
- thebean11 4y ago
  Ehh, not sure I'd make the comparison. Plenty of tech companies don't have QA engineers. Hospitals without nurses not so much..
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    It's a very rough analogy. Required skills for an entry level QA tester is pretty low. It's essentially "do these things in a video game, look for bugs". It's certainly not just having fun playing video games all day, it's far more rote, but it's hardly a scare skill. Nurses, on the other hand, have a higher barrier to entry as they need at least a year and up to four years of schooling before starting to work. Pay is higher accordingly, with average nursing salaries being $75K as compared to $55k for QA testers. It's probably better when you normalize for cost of living (came studies are in expensive parts of the country, nurses more evenly distributed).

de_nied 4y ago

> But pretending they're peers of engineering and lamenting that they aren't treated as equals is just based on a fantasy. Being QA is not that much different from engineering. During my childhood I quite enjoyed breaking games if I could. I hated being restricted, and I loved hacking[1] them. Speedrunning works much in the same way. This is what lead me into engineering. Of course one requires much more education, but I'd argue that the time, dedication, and thought process is about the same. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture