As someone who got their first big break out of college doing QA as an FTE at Microsoft, albeit not in game development, I take some offence with the second to

As someone who got their first big break out of college doing QA as an FTE at Microsoft, albeit not in game development, I take some offence with the second to last paragraph suggesting that QA is the lowest rung. While it is true that much of the software industry treats QA as such, that perspective really needs to change. QA can make or break a company, and depending on your skill level, should be treated as peers with other disciplines. I know that I came to the industry with more knowledge than many of my QA peers, but what was often overlooked was where I was sometimes more knowledgeable than most of the Devs and PMs I worked alongside. I am a consultant today, and after 10 years of hard work, have demonstrated my capabilities in other roles, but it has been very difficult to find the right projects to bring these other skills to light. For the past 3 or 4 years, I've been working in Dev and PM capacities, but my inbox is still filled with recruiters that only see me as possessing QA abilities; this is because finding highly skilled and qualified SDETs, or even STEs, is hard. As long as QA work is regarded as starting in the mail room, this won't change and the good QA employees, like moths to the flame, will leave those roles to less qualified workers. This practice perpetuates the idea that QA is only entry level work and drains the talent pool. As a result, software development suffers.