Considering a Career In Software Testing? A realworld experience based alternative view.

are you considering a career in software testing watch this video first before making any decision so I saw a lot of really bad software testing career videos on YouTube and they seem to be high we're a big consultancy and we want to recruit really cheap staff for our software testing team and that could be you if you're creative and imaginative I thought you know really let's have a look at software testing as a career from a reality perspective I've been doing this for 20 plus years I'm gonna go over what I've learned and why see now now one of the good things about software testing is there's there is a lot to learn right over the course of your career you have a chance to become incredibly technical deep diving into protocols looking at how systems work learning databases look at all the HTTP traffic figuring out how browsers work looking at all the different programming languages see how to test those doing performance testing security testing automating applications you can test under the covers you can do really technical testing from the front end or you can focus on the people you can look at the requirements you can look at the management aspects you can look at how people interact you can help people test bear rather than just you testing or you can do both right there is no limit here and what you want to do when I started doing software testing the reason I went and testing cuz I started as a programmer I was a good program when I was writing commercial software and I moved into testing because it gave me the chance to do programming and do design and do testing and do management and do there was that thing that spanned the entire lifecycle so software testing has a lot of opportunities if you are interested in software I think that's the key thing here if you're interested in people and the requirements and the relationships your software testing is gonna edge over into business analysis and that's fine or edge over the management that's fine there's a lot of overlaps there's a lot of spaces to move in here that he calls software testing has all those opportunities it can take a long time to learn and software testing is fundamentally a skill and is an enormous amount to learn some people seem a star or focus on software testing because it's the stepping stone to becoming a programmer to be honest if you want to be a programmer start with being a programmer as you can find a lot easier to become a programmer if you learn how to program and code and focus in on the design and the programming part if you are in a good company and you are learning that be a tester and you are automating and you learn how to code then there might be a career route naturally into program and if that's what you want but don't star in software testing because you think it's an easy in to the industry and it will help you become a programmer more likely than not if that's your viewpoint you will get stuck on a software testing level that you can advance cuz you're not really interested in testing or you will end up becoming an altimeter rather than a tester or a programmer and that might work but I think if you want to do software testing you have to be interested in helping people make software work communication and trying to find the problems in software they're hard so it's a it's a problem investigation and experimentation mindset so in order to get started in software testing getting started with no money whatsoever just read everything on the internet so read all the free testing magazines look at all the people that they list look at them on Twitter go and read their websites follow everyone that's on all the Twitter lists subscribe to the Ministry of testing blog aggregator you get as much information as humanly possible and just immerse yourself in and go on YouTube watch every video but don't just focus in on a single person look around what YouTube has got so many conference talks on there I can watch every conference talk there's really it's software testing just everything and then as you get into your career keep doing that right that's the focus we have to continually learn continually watch videos conference talks books now the books that helped me these remember I'm old now so these books are a little bit they're not the most modern write bar to me they're still the most valuable this book for aspire software testing techniques this was my Bible for a year I went through this every exercise this is probably the most important software test in book I've read because one of the things we have to do software testers learn the fundamental techniques that underpin our craft and there's a bunch of books that will cover that so pick one or more or many of them I encourage you to read as much as you can this is essentially a process book testing computer software by Kyra Faulk and Gillian I think that's how you pronounce his name this is a process book it teaches you the process is round testing and some of the mindsets around testing and it doesn't necessarily cover the the techniques like the visor does but this is a good overview book this is an experience based book lessons learned in software testing by Ken keener James backer Bret petty Court this is a book to read to learn how to think about testing and how people in the real world think about testing and to cause you to think about how are you testing the software and is it the way you want but read every book you can get your hands on but read as much free material because I'm not asking you to spend money but we do these books are someone has sat down and for a year just thought about the topic so they've condensed it and they've presented in a way that makes it very easy to read and you can read these books very relatively if you're a fast reader but we don't stop there right because software testing if all you do is focus on testing you're going to get stuck so we need to learn software engineering design processes at this point in time this I think is one of the easiest books that's an in rodent the designing process for software domain driven design and again there's dementia and design websites there's plenty of talks on YouTube watch those read those and if you're interested then get this because software testing fits into the development process and very often the software development process that we use is custom for every environment therefore we have to flex testing to fit in there so we have to know as much as possible if I that's not true the more that we know about the software development process the more we can tailor our testing process to fit in there so because I started as a programmer and designer and analysis I have some of those skill sets already and find it much easier to flex my test approach if I didn't have those I would have to learn coming at the software testing it's not about just learning testing it's about learning the process of software development why we test within that and how to test more effectively and we have to take ownership of our testing to do that when we come through certainly in the modern world you probably want to start learning how to code at some point so you may want to read kind of books that I've been writing Java testers automating and testing a REST API or just any other program book that resonates with you because if you learn how to code once you've learned how to test then you start having more opportunities in how you approach testing if that's all it's not your child become a programmer it's not you're trying to do automated execution of entire applications you've just given yourself another tool another way of approaching your work that can help that's all plus it rounds you off more as a software development professional and I'm really strong on that we need to round ourselves off as software development professionals but we have a testing focus within there but to get started focus on software testing right the key to being a good software tester is to learn software testing that means the techniques and the processes you're probably going to be encouraged to pursue a certificate to get started and that might be important if that's the only way that you've got of getting a job that's the only way you've got getting a foot in the door all right hope and I hope that's not the way that you have to get a job I hope that you can get a job but by demonstrating that you read some of the books that you're interested you've watched YouTube you've actually tested some open source software that you've created a github account and you've started creating logs of the testing that you have done and the defects that you have raised against open source software that you have a blog that demonstrates and book reviews for the books that you've read that your thoughts on those books all of those I hope are a much better way of getting a foot in the door than doing certification I don't value the certification very much I think it's very expensive for training that may not cover what you need I'm not going to say any more about that I don't value it as a route in but for a lot of people that's their filtering process for CVS so you're gonna have to make a tough decision at some point if you want to get a software testing and a really struggling do you get the certification to help you get in or do you find a better way of presenting your software testing skillset and hope that eventually there's a company that sees that and wants to recruit those people and usually there is right usually certainly if you're at the more junior level people struggle to hire good testers so if you can demonstrate that you understand testing and that you've been doing the work and that you've got evidence that you can test I think you will be able to get hired as a junior software tester without having certification now let's get real here software testing is still viewed as an entry-level job I see some companies advertising for programmers with three four years experience testers with three or four years experiences and the salaries are like that developers are getting paid more than software testers in some organizations because it is still viewed as an entry-level and unskilled job it's up to us as testers to demonstrate that that is not the case and that we have the skills and then sometimes you're gonna take something that's low just to get food in the door it's our job once we've got a foot in the door to control our careers right your control your career is going to be limited purely by your ability to identify opportunities to advance and your ability to be able to take them up because you may not have done the work that allows you to company over there is looking for a performance tester if you haven't done any performance testing haven't investigated haven't explored your experiment with any performance testing tools but you want to performance testing why should they employ you you take control of your career and you work towards that and yes that doesn't mean effort and time and lunch hours just spent learning people who have worked with me have seen me not quite for lunch but just sit at my desk learning stuff because that's what I did one of the benefits of software testing still being viewed as an entry-level job is it's usually easier for people who haven't done software testing or haven't done software programming or any computer science to move into software testing us we have so many people from business analysis music history whatever else because software testing is about thought processes modeling communication and when the right employer sees that there's a good chance of getting into that but that's because underpinning software testing what we're looking for is creativity tenacity problem exploration problem investigation problem solving a questioning mind very similar skills for all the parts of software development and testing in particular that ability to question and just not have a single point not a fixed point of view is really important all right so at some point you're going to need to get into the right company you can start with any company you want but once you've paid your dues once you've got hands-on experience when you've got some tool knowledge once you've mastered a technology like web or mobile or desktop or api's whichever one and once you've got a good grounding and testing so you understand the terminology you understand the techniques you know how to apply them and use them it's time if your company is not a good one to move companies because your company is going to hold you back if there's not opportunities for exploring your technical knowledge using new technologies moving into the areas that you're interested in doing more automated execution doing performance testing expanding into security testing you're working in a company where you are writing test cases you're writing test scripts you're putting never in the test management tool you're not really doing exploratory investigative work that's not really testing and that is the lowest point in what we classes software testing and it's a vulnerable position and it's not a good career path if you're in that career path you're basically going I need to go there's no need to get the management that doesn't have to be the career path you can get a career path by becoming a better tester and moving into a better organization that values testing now that's very often the case if you're working at one of those big consultancies there's no how a testing is a great job where there you're essentially an outsourced vendor for people's testing which means it's very documentation heavy and it's very not even evidence based it's just have you followed these steps have you followed our process so it doesn't adapt to the software development process it's very often squeezed for time it's very often a horrible way work so to escape we need to focus on testing a problem-solving activity modeling systems exploring systems looking for risk building experiments in how we test them boosting your recording skills to give you extra options to just automate some tasks of I mean when I started I automated the report generation that the management on it i aughtta mated the creation of test scripts that were mandated in our process because it was taking so long to write them there were a complete waste but I had a model and I just went through that model built the test scripts automatically because I had programming skills that could augment my testing process learning how systems are architected so that we can pull them apart understand where the risks are and that we can test it were deeper levels focus on testing as a questioning process learning how to identify ambiguity and requirements and challenge them in ways that people take noise but they don't exclude you from the conversation these are hard skills people class them soft skills but these are hard skills to learn and if you can master those you have a huge opportunity for moving into different sectors and for they're certainly important skills moving into management when you're learning testing learn to focus on the outcomes of testing and understand what they are rather than the processes threat testing is not test cases test scripts testing is I want to explore these paths through the system how many ways have I got of identifying those paths and working out what variation I have to do in them if your only approach is test scripts you are limited in your way of achieving that outcome so learn to identify what the outcomes are experiment different ways of doing of generating those like learn about agile because we're gonna move to more agile processes in more and more industries and take control of your processes to help make the more agile regardless of what project you're in so that when you're going for those jobs for agile jobs even if you worked in a job before you're able to explain how YouTube ownership of your work to make it more agile to make it more lean to make it add more value more effectively more quickly alright so in order to escape the bad rules you have to build your experiences essentially a software engineer round-off learn as much about testing as you can be able to communicate it but always remember that as you're rounding off your experience you are focused on improving as a software tester if you want to be a tester that's your main skill set that's your main focus even if you learn how to code even if you learn how to design even if you learn architecture even if you learn communication testing for a while is still gonna be your focus after 20 plus years you might discover that your programming skills are as good as programmers that have only been programmers for five or ten years because I've got 20 plus years program experience now I have the same level of programming skills as some of the lead programmers out there that's a natural extension just by working in the industry for enough time take a long term view focus on testing build your skill set out but don't aim within two years to have master testing and automation and design and requirement analysis because you won't have mastered any of them at the start focus on mastering testing to the best extent you can then augment augment it and just build out so if you've looked in the industry you've looked at should you or to me at the start the answer is well if you've got programming background then use your programming background as you learn how to test so automating parts of your work is going to be a natural extension to that that doesn't mean you learn how to automate through the GUI that doesn't mean you have to learn how to do page objects and all these abstractions because that's going to distract from the testing learner it means that you learn how to build little tools for analyzing log files generating data all that kind of stuff you harness your programming skills and testing but over time that will make it easier for you to learn how to automate I don't think that you probably want your first job in software testing to be automating because you haven't learned how to test at that point so you're gonna automate you probably you might be able to automate well but you probably won't be able to do automating for testing particularly well because you don't know testing so really you're just a junior programmer you haven't really got the testing part but a lot of companies don't realize that so it may be that that's the best way to get a job now I can't tell you not to do that I can tell you to do that I've got programming expertise I can automate I think but if you're focused on software testing the automating part is not the most relevant thing but if you can program it might help you get in so use whatever skills you've got if you've got a skill if you've studied history your understanding of depends what type of history is but human interaction why people make decisions understanding that you can look back at trends and see how they possibly impact the future will be useful to you in testing if you studied physics your ability to do experiments will help you in testing whatever skills you've got harness them and use them in your software test it's fundamentally learn how to test as your core but learn everything else as well but take your time doing it the important point is to control your career identify opportunities within the companies you work for or outside the company and target those with learning be very specific about your career certainly in the early days take ownership of it and experiment with as many things as you can because that gives you a broad range of experience I think there's still a lot of scope in software testing for learning effectively what you have to do I think it's still a good career but you have to own it is possible and software testing to get stuck on dreadful jobs in dreadful companies doing the most mundane and horrible work now equally those same companies hire programmers to do dreadful coding dreadfully mundane coding in horrible languages with horrible processes horrible IDs so it's not really the role that is bad right software testing can be enormous ly flexible challenging rewarding technical however far you want appreciate it but you have to take ownership and control of that and if you're considering just start now there is a lot of scope here there's also much to learn but it's not an entry-level unskilled this is an easy way to make money I'll do a training course for two days I'll get a job that will be well-paid that will satisfy me long term you're gonna have to push it to get that satisfaction out there and I hope that if you're considering software testing you are prepared to push it because the industry needs good testers who do learn who do push it who have a career trajectory that is going to push testing and software development forward and I hope that's you

Channel: EvilTester - Software Testing

Views: 97,224

Keywords: Software Testing Career, Software Testing Job, What does a Tester do?, How to get a software testing job?, Why Software Testing, why software testing career, testing as a career, testing career, why testing career, software testing jobs, softwre testing certification, career in software testing, software testing, how to become a software tester, start a career in software testing

Id: iOA3lxZyFwA

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2018