A year in the life of a Software QA

I have been working in QA for about a year now... and this seems to be a good time to pen down how it felt.

Spotting mistakes is like your prime job!.

And the worst part is that you feel so happy when you find a fault! Sounds a little twisted right? But the feeling is so exhilarating and euphoric! That such intelligent people spend days writing this code and I could spot a mistake in an hour! Day's work vs an hour!! How cool is that!

And the feeling of power it gives you! If this build is not QA certified it is not just going into the release!

'The reign of terror' :) Yes! That's how some developers see it, when their module comes to me for testing! It's like having a developer's heart...on a jar on my desk. And the look on their faces when you reopen a bug they have fixed :)

You start to spot mistakes in any and everything. Every alternate day I spot a mistake in the Times of India, the mistake might be as small as a slightly misspelled word but oh! I do find it

All of it makes me look like a witch personified right :) Cruella :)

But there have been disadvantages of it too .... -

Its real hard to make friends [with the developers, I mean] - Though I was really fortunate that friends on my team never let the 'bugs' come between us. Even if we argued right in the morning about something 'professional' we would go together for lunch and forget that there was ever a disagreement :) and.... come back and resume!

The work starts to feel repetitive after a while. How many times do I have to test the same bloody thing!!

Its technologically not really satisfying! All you have to do is repeat a set of steps on the same product again and again. At worst you would be using excel sheets at best some test management tool! But that doesn't change the fact that what you are doing is not teaching you anything new! You think did I become an engineer to do this? Even a college graduate could have done it.

Sometimes you feel thwarted, stunted...like there can be no growth for you in this profession or otherwise. How am I better than what I was six months ago? No progress. No value addition.

And at the end of it no matter what people say, the circumstance never let you break out of the mold or stamp of being a QA. People always keep thinking that's all you can do!

Sounds like I have a lot of complaints right? May be, May be not. May be it's too early to say how I feel about it but may be another year down the line I will look back at this note and re-assess....May be some pros will move to the cons' side and may be some cons' will turn out to be a blessing in disguise :)

But here's to almost a year as a QA! Cheers!