12 Oct Test automation: is it promising?

How promising is automation of testing?

No more or less decent industrial software is released without testing. This is a fact. If we are talking about enterprise applications with a huge number of fields that somehow depend on one another – it’s a very large amount of work for the tester, and it is quite tedious and boring. So gradually manual testing is being replaced by automated testing.

How do automators work? When software (a feature or an application) appears for the first time, the automator tests it manually, because you cannot write an automated test if you haven’t done it manually. Then the entire process is automated in order to be able to perform regression testing, perhaps even load testing for some complex cases that need to be tested for loads. But it is regression testing where the main work lies – if you change just one button then the entire application must be tested. This is a lot of work, and of course it is beneficial to the business if all this is done with a script.

All firms that know how to count their money have long ago moved or are moving from manual testers to automators. Naturally, knowledge of automation is a huge plus for a tester in the marketplace.

Prospects in this field are huge, because any software needs to be tested. Therefore, there will be a lot of work. And just now it is profitable to stand out against the background of manual testers, for whom the only goal was to get into IT, but they do not want to develop further.

The salary of good automators is +/- the same as for programmers in the corresponding language. The most popular programming languages for test automation are Java and Python. As a rule, the language used for automation is the same as the development language. For example, if the company works with Ruby, they try to automate in Ruby. This makes sense, because the knowledge base is the same, and the admins know how to configure everything. Why would they want to add Python or Java?

Is it easy to go from test automation to programmers?

If you have always wanted to be a developer, and you got into testing because it is easier to get into IT, then of course it is possible to switch. But here’s the situation. A good programmer will be snatched away, so the company certainly does not want to lose a programmer and get a junk programmer (if we are talking about the transition within the company). But of course it will be much easier to master programming than for someone from the street. It is also worth remembering that when you move to a lower level, of course there will be a loss in wages.

When to Switch? If you’ve decided to become a developer, the sooner the better, ideally from a middlegame position. At least for the reason that moving from the position of a senior QA-automizer will be very painful on the salary. Yes, you will have more experience and you will grow faster, because you are able to communicate with the customer, you understand the software development cycle, you can read test cases from testers, but not everyone is ready to lose 2-3 or more times their salary.