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This point is brought up in the article but I think it is at the real heart of the issue. QA is almost always seen as a 'cost center' by the business and upper

This point is brought up in the article but I think it is at the real heart of the issue. QA is almost always seen as a 'cost center' by the business and upper management. I have a hypothesis that you never ought to work in a department that is seen as a 'cost center'. The bonuses, the recognition, and the respect always goes to the money makers. The cost center is the first place to get more work with less hands, get blamed for failures, and ultimately fired when the business needs to slim up. I think the same thing applies to IT. This spiral is why QA will always be a harder career than just taking similar skills and being a developer. It self reinforces that the best people get fed up and switch out as soon as they can.

robofanatic 3y ago
> QA is almost always seen as a 'cost center' by the business and upper management Well everything involved in making a product is seen as a cost, that includes the entire development team - QA, Developers, Devops, PM ....
- rubidium 3y ago
  No. That’s not actually how most orgs break it down. R&D, marketing, sales is “bringing new business” so are profit centers. This means their budget grows with revenue. Manufacturing, QA, IT and service are cost centers so get squeezed year-over-year even if revenue is flat.
  - jdlshore 3y ago
    It depends on the org. In my company, which is a SaaS-like company, all of product and engineering is a cost center, despite creating the product the company sells. It’s just the way they do their accounting.
  - itsdrewmiller 3y ago
    What software companies are not classifying QA as R&D?
serial_dev 3y ago
Even as a developer (mobile app developer) I feel like one has to be careful not to work on "cost center" things. Accessibility, observability, good logging, testing infrastructure improvements, CI/CD tweaks, stability, better linting and analyzer issues are all important, but you will be rewarded if you ship features fast. This year I spent too much time on the former because I felt like that's what the team and app needed, because nobody on the team priorized these issues, and I'll be sweating at the end of the year performance reviews. Now knowing this, I understand why the others didn't want to work on these items, so next year, I'll be wiser, and I'll focus on shipping features that get me the most visibility. Sorry for the bugs in the app, but I need a job to pay my mortgage.
- tstrimple 3y ago
  The purpose behind all those things you were pursuing (apart from accessibility) should have been to increase the rate at which the team is able to ship features. If your work on these items over the course of a year haven't demonstrably improved delivery speed, then what value did they actually bring? If they have improved delivery speed and you can show evidence for that, why would you be nervous going into a review?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hj3939393d 3y ago
    > demonstrably improved delivery speed Thinking this can be reduced to a single metric is the blight of modern software (and business in general, I think). Mapping an individual change to improved delivery speed is in the vast majority of cases an impossible task and any decent developer knows this. It's management+ that wants simple easy metrics since they lack the deep understanding required to do their job well. Software development is - despite management's hopes - not line work. It's much more akin to R&D. The line work gets eaten up by AWS.
    - tstrimple 3y ago
bumby 3y ago
I agree with the 'cost center' sentiment, but I'll try to add some nuance from my experience. 1) Some organizations have come to really value what QA/QC brings to the table. From my experience, this seems to be more visible in manufacturing than software. I speculate this is because software is more abstract by its very nature and waste is harder to track. 2) The really good QAs are those who really believe in its mission, rather than those who are looking for the path of least resistance. Both of those underscore the value lies in organizations and individuals who really buy-in to the QA ethos. There are lots of examples of both who are simply going through the motions.
perlgeek 3y ago
> I have a hypothesis that you never ought to work in a department that is seen as a 'cost center' That's why I don't work in an IT department of a traditional business.
NegativeK 3y ago
I've worked in cost center groups almost all my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm fine with bonuses, etc going to other groups. I'm paid well as a tech worker, and many of those jobs would make absolutely miserable -- assuming I turned out to actually be good at them.
dclowd9901 3y ago
I work on our frontend platform team and my perf work, CI design and process engineering definitely have a harder time getting recognition and promotions than folks who ship things that translate to dollars in the bank. I don’t care though. I enjoy making things better and more robust. It makes my soul feel better. I’ll leave fucking things up to the cynics.

robofanatic 3y ago

> QA is almost always seen as a 'cost center' by the business and upper management Well everything involved in making a product is seen as a cost, that includes the entire development team - QA, Developers, Devops, PM ....

rubidium 3y ago
No. That’s not actually how most orgs break it down. R&D, marketing, sales is “bringing new business” so are profit centers. This means their budget grows with revenue. Manufacturing, QA, IT and service are cost centers so get squeezed year-over-year even if revenue is flat.
- jdlshore 3y ago
  It depends on the org. In my company, which is a SaaS-like company, all of product and engineering is a cost center, despite creating the product the company sells. It’s just the way they do their accounting.
- itsdrewmiller 3y ago
  What software companies are not classifying QA as R&D?

serial_dev 3y ago

Even as a developer (mobile app developer) I feel like one has to be careful not to work on "cost center" things. Accessibility, observability, good logging, testing infrastructure improvements, CI/CD tweaks, stability, better linting and analyzer issues are all important, but you will be rewarded if you ship features fast. This year I spent too much time on the former because I felt like that's what the team and app needed, because nobody on the team priorized these issues, and I'll be sweating at the end of the year performance reviews. Now knowing this, I understand why the others didn't want to work on these items, so next year, I'll be wiser, and I'll focus on shipping features that get me the most visibility. Sorry for the bugs in the app, but I need a job to pay my mortgage.

tstrimple 3y ago
The purpose behind all those things you were pursuing (apart from accessibility) should have been to increase the rate at which the team is able to ship features. If your work on these items over the course of a year haven't demonstrably improved delivery speed, then what value did they actually bring? If they have improved delivery speed and you can show evidence for that, why would you be nervous going into a review?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hj3939393d 3y ago
  > demonstrably improved delivery speed Thinking this can be reduced to a single metric is the blight of modern software (and business in general, I think). Mapping an individual change to improved delivery speed is in the vast majority of cases an impossible task and any decent developer knows this. It's management+ that wants simple easy metrics since they lack the deep understanding required to do their job well. Software development is - despite management's hopes - not line work. It's much more akin to R&D. The line work gets eaten up by AWS.
  - tstrimple 3y ago

bumby 3y ago

I agree with the 'cost center' sentiment, but I'll try to add some nuance from my experience. 1) Some organizations have come to really value what QA/QC brings to the table. From my experience, this seems to be more visible in manufacturing than software. I speculate this is because software is more abstract by its very nature and waste is harder to track. 2) The really good QAs are those who really believe in its mission, rather than those who are looking for the path of least resistance. Both of those underscore the value lies in organizations and individuals who really buy-in to the QA ethos. There are lots of examples of both who are simply going through the motions.

perlgeek 3y ago

> I have a hypothesis that you never ought to work in a department that is seen as a 'cost center' That's why I don't work in an IT department of a traditional business.

NegativeK 3y ago

I've worked in cost center groups almost all my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm fine with bonuses, etc going to other groups. I'm paid well as a tech worker, and many of those jobs would make absolutely miserable -- assuming I turned out to actually be good at them.

dclowd9901 3y ago

I work on our frontend platform team and my perf work, CI design and process engineering definitely have a harder time getting recognition and promotions than folks who ship things that translate to dollars in the bank. I don’t care though. I enjoy making things better and more robust. It makes my soul feel better. I’ll leave fucking things up to the cynics.