The field of information technology has given us many vacancies where you can develop yourself, be useful and earn good money. One of these specialties is a software tester or QA Engineer.
The advantage of this specialty is that it's not challenging to master it. And it doesn't require such skills and properties as programmers, for example. But at the same time, a tester is a pretty demanding specialty (and well-paid at the same time).
This is a specialist who ensures the quality of an IT product (QA stands for Quality Assurance.) His main function is to find a bug or an error in the product before the user does it after the release. So, he puts himself in the user's place and tests the functionality of the new project.
When the bugs are founded? he sends a bug report to the developers to fix it. When testing is completed and QA is sure that it's done, he passes it to the Product Manager.
The tester is the first user of the program. And he must test all the program functions as a user and think through all the options for user interaction with this program.
That's why there is a joke among IT people that if the programmer thinks about how to fix it, then the tester thinks about how to break it. And actually, this is why developers “dislike” testers, because they will always come up with a new job.
Let's take a closer at who is a tester is and what kinds of them there can be. A software testing specialist can be various and perform similarly, but different functions. Conventionally, the specialty of a tester can be divided into three levels:
So, QA includes all the functions that the tester and QC perform.
QA (software testing) is the process of checking the quality of a product and all of its processes to ultimately satisfy the client's needs.
But these are not all the tester's classifications. The fact is that the tester can also be manual and automatic.
Testers work with different types of IT products and can also be divided according to this criterion. So, there are testers:
At the same time, testing is carried out according to various parameters: Security, Performance, Usability, etc.
Any user and developer will say that a bug is at least unpleasant. And as a maximum, it can reduce the profit from the product and damage the company's reputation.
Sometimes even a poorly designed and delivered “Buy” button can lower sales by several times. Bugs and errors are an inevitable part of development, and they can happen for a variety of reasons:
Also, something can go wrong in the system if team members don't understand each other, which often happens if the members are in different countries.
It may seem that being a professional tester is a simple and not very serious job: you just sit and press the buttons, and the bugs seem to be from this. But this approach will never bring results. To gain a certain result, a QA engineer performs his work in a certain sequence: from creating a test case to bug reports and validation.
It only seems at first glance that the profession tester is a boring and routine thing. QA engineers must understand how the user will think and how he will interact with the product. Here you need to have good critical thinking and an approach to the work creatively.
If you are one of those people who pick up something and it immediately breaks, then the tester for this is ideal for you. You will also need skills such as:
And of course, testing this as another IT field requires English.
This is the favorite question of everyone who even intends to study to be a tester. Despite the high demand and no less high supply, the tester salary will allow you to feel good even at the start of your career.
And finally, the highest bar in the career of a tester is Team Leader. This is when a tester has gained solid experience, and a portfolio knows how to communicate with clients and a team, and has never stopped developing professionally. At this stage of a career, a tester salary can earn $3,500 or more.
Today, novice IT specialists are offered a huge selection of different IT schools, of all types and profiles. Many of them offer a program tester from scratch with additional English courses and even further employment.
The courses teach everything that every tester should know, even if it is a newly minted June:
And how to work in a team, how to write a resume and look for a job, and what career advancement options a tester has.
You can also view all kinds of video courses with further employment, and read books and manuals:
And of course, you should understand that the tester must always develop. Technologies don't stand still, and even with advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, people will be needed to control these processes and identify defects. And you can't do without good testers.
