Tuesday 22 May 2012

Moving from Testing to Development, is it OK?

So you are planning to move from testing to development ? Is it a good move? Please answers below questions:

1) How many years of testing experience you have?

2) Are you into manual or automation testing?

3) How many hours you can spend in office?

4) Are you aware of online forum and communities?

5) How comfortable you are in Linux w.r.t Windows?

6) Are you comfortable working late nights and weekends?

7) Is salary is main reason, because of which you are thinking of this career change?

8) Hows your testing team , are you a team player?


Lets see how it goes:

1) Generally i have seen people moving from testing to development in early years of career i.e. between 1-3 years.  If you have crossed 4 rth year in testing, its preferable to be in testing only. if you move into development it will be like you have started with zero experience even if you have 4 years of testing experience.

According to me , development is always a subset of testing. In testing you will have system knowledge but in development its in modules. For development you need coding  skill set and for testing you need attitude.
I know many people wont agree to this, but this is what i think.

So the main point is if you move from "testing to development", people tend to zero your experience of testing. But if you move from "development to testing" its like moving from one specialized set towards whole system knowledge so still your development experience hold true.

2) If you are into manual testing moving to coding will be little difficult. But nothing is impossible, if you are determined. IF you are already into automation , then its all about logic, whether it is C, C++ or Perl, Python and TCL/TK. The transition will be easy for you.

3)  IF you think that the job should be of 9-5 time, then development is not for you. When the deadline approaches i have seen developers sleeping in office :-)

4) Do you know half of the work done in development is only porting of software. Generally 80 % companies take code/ module from open source platform and implement in their platform. The biggest drawback is if an issue exists in open source it is quite possible that you will also face that problem. So you should be comfortable in asking in forum and open source communities. I have seen developers getting fired for not solving issues which exists in open source platform.

IF you face such situation you should be smart enough to convince people/management that its not your fault, if you fail to do so it may affect you appraisal process. Don't get scared just be smart.
 
5) You should be as comfortable in Linux as you are in windows.

6) Testing and development both has their own share of late nights and weekends, but development has more, be prepared for this change.

7) Salary in product company for testing and development is almost same. But in Services based company it may vary. Generally its twice your valid experience.

8)  I have seen a very good bond between team members of testing team. I have seen only 1-2 two guys/gals in a team of 25 who are "Different". By "Different" means the typical type of people with ego, i-am-better-than-you attitude, i-know-lot-but-i-wont-tell attitude . Otherwise the testing team share a very good bond between themselves. But in development everyone is "Different" , so be prepared for it. Generally its all alone job in development, so don't rely on others to solve the logic for you. If he/she does also he/she will take the credit so be prepared for it.

Happy Transition !!!