Microsoft used to test this way, at least in the team I worked with. SDEs still wrote unit tests. But SDETs wrote a lot of automated tests and whatever random

Microsoft used to test this way, at least in the team I worked with. SDEs still wrote unit tests. But SDETs wrote a lot of automated tests and whatever random test tools that ended up being needed. The idea was to free up more SDE time to focus on the actual product. I think that era is over after the great SDET layoffs of 2014/2015? Now I guess some SDE teams are tasked with this kind of dev work.