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I used to ask in interviews if they had a QA team, because it was on the Joel on Software list http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html http://

I used to ask in interviews if they had a QA team, because it was on the Joel on Software list http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html I stopped asking because the answers were always some variant on "that encourages programmers to be lazy, because they know QA will be there to catch it" and because it seemed like lot of companies treated that question as a culture fit red flag. The responses were pretty hostile, like I'd asked why none of the engineers were wearing suits. I have no idea whether it's a good idea, but the current tech culture seems pretty opposed to it.

ryan-allen 11y ago
I once ran a small team with a specific QA guy, he was awesome. He had more technical knowledge of the product than the remainder of the team (3 other programmers) combined. As a new manager, he was who I leaned on the most to find out things, and who saved my ass on a number of occasions. He deserved more respect than he got.
omouse 11y ago
If the expectations around QA aren't clear and you have a bad manager they'll actually force you to rely on QA since QA should be vetting things before they get to the customer. I've been told by one manager that I should not waste time writing unit tests and that I should rely on the QA person to test. If the QA person has skills along the lines of a software test engineer (like at Google and other places) and can actually create tools and automate things and write some unit tests or acceptance tests, then they're half-a-programmer and I'll be happy to rely on them and share the work. Otherwise I assume the QA is there just to bow to management/marketing and give the OK for deploys.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
Because having a QA team allows for a very nasty blame game. It larger organizations it can get pretty nasty. The problem only grows as greater amounts of bureaucracy separates the two sides.

ryan-allen 11y ago

I once ran a small team with a specific QA guy, he was awesome. He had more technical knowledge of the product than the remainder of the team (3 other programmers) combined. As a new manager, he was who I leaned on the most to find out things, and who saved my ass on a number of occasions. He deserved more respect than he got.

omouse 11y ago

If the expectations around QA aren't clear and you have a bad manager they'll actually force you to rely on QA since QA should be vetting things before they get to the customer. I've been told by one manager that I should not waste time writing unit tests and that I should rely on the QA person to test. If the QA person has skills along the lines of a software test engineer (like at Google and other places) and can actually create tools and automate things and write some unit tests or acceptance tests, then they're half-a-programmer and I'll be happy to rely on them and share the work. Otherwise I assume the QA is there just to bow to management/marketing and give the OK for deploys.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

Because having a QA team allows for a very nasty blame game. It larger organizations it can get pretty nasty. The problem only grows as greater amounts of bureaucracy separates the two sides.