At first, I thought you were preaching to the converted, here. Whether or not everyone here uses dedicated testers, they probably all appreciate the value of a

At first, I thought you were preaching to the converted, here. Whether or not everyone here uses dedicated testers, they probably all appreciate the value of a well tested system. In theory, that is in fact the case, but reflecting on my experience this is not usually the case in practice. Testing is dropped by the wayside when the rubber meets the road - particularly in any early to mid stage ventures. IMHO there is a strong cultural component at play. Testers are, quite frankly, second class citizens in the land of software. This is due in part to the ambiguity of the term itself, as it can mean everything from a button-clicker to an engineer (with perception often defaulting to the former). As a result, testing becomes unsexy. Few developers with options choose to do it full time, and it becomes an afterthought. Even dev-centric approaches like TDD get brushed off as "crutches" for "junior" engineers. This all helps propagate a fairly downward-tending cycle of testers and testing lacking voice and status within the organization.