Thursday 17 May 2012

Development to Testing, is it good career move ?

I have seen people thinking over and over again about this question.

The reason for this change can be

1) Too much work pressure. They need to work on Saturday and Sundays. Evryday its like 12-14 hrs they spend in office.

2) Not good team member/ manager/lead

3) Marriage and or Children : AS they are getting married or planning to have babies they think of moving to testing.

Reasons stopping them (Myth)  :

1) Good salary ( Most cases the only reason !!!)

2) The pride they feel when they are into development.

So is it a good decision to move from development to testing? Yes and NO. IT always depends again on few factors. Every individual is different and so every situation is. So you should think about few things before making move:

1) IS it something you wants to move away from work pressure ? 


   The fact can be stated like: Lets say the developer works 15 days in a month, give the code to tester , the tester tests the code in a week and developer will again fix the code in a week. So effectively if you see the developer works for 3 weeks in a month and tester only one week. But this one week the tester has to work very hard to break the code. So if the developer put X % effort in writing code the tester has to put 2X% effort to break the code. So the remaining 3 weeks will be spent by the tester in analyzing standards, learning about tools, knowing about use cases etc.
     The developer will always be in pressure to make the code and for tester it is always break the code.

 Generally for breaking the code there is no set time lines but for making code it is , so developer will always be tensed and working.

 If you want to move away from that pressure "Testing" is the job for you.


2)   Are you running from your boss?
      If you want to change because of your team/ lead or manager, then may be this is not the right move for you. In QA or in development there are "Best Managers" and "Worst Managers" , whom you are reporting or whom will report you dont know, both departments has its own share of both types of managers.
    Better will be, for you, is to involve your managers' manager and  let him know what is happening.

3) Marriage or Children : Yes , please move to testing. "Family" and  "Money" both are important. Once money gone you can earn it again but "Family" gone , you can never get back. So you should see if you are spending good time with your kid and family members. To work once-twice on weekends is ok but if it is a routing you should look for change. It can be either company change or career change to testing.

4)  Salary difference: Salary in company to company varies, but in general, for product based company the salary of testers are equivalent to developers. For services companies still there is difference but its closing fast. Now for same experience, the salary for tester and developer is almost same.

5) Pride and EGO issues : I have seen QA people getting more respect than development people. Its all about knowledge, if you have good knowledge of your subject, you will get respect. It does not matter whether you are in development or testing.

So if you are sure and know the reason don't think too much . Try to make "Testing as Career" , it is worth.

Believe me !!!!