Regular testing that you'd expect to do many times, and that's part of your product development process, is almost certainly automated. But one-off tests are s

Regular testing that you'd expect to do many times, and that's part of your product development process, is almost certainly automated. But one-off tests are still squarely in the territory of Ye Poor Intern. I remember interning at an auto parts plant years ago where I spent two whole days stuck in a windowless lab where I laser-measured the precise diameter of a batch of motor shafts because there was suspicion of a defect from the supplier. It's the sort of mind-numbing repetition and boredom that threatens to liquefy your brain, and to this day gives me a greater appreciation for how good I have it writing code for a living :) (the fact that I was using frickin' lasers to do my job was novel for only the first half hour) Certain parts of automated testing are still manual too. In the aforementioned plant I was responsible for going into the oven and making measurements every few hours and measuring hundreds of things as part of the heat-cold cycle testing, even though the actual temperature shifting and vibrational stress was fully computer-controlled. Good times. Glad I'm in software now.