Experience and thoughts regarding career as a software tester (2024)

Most probably if you are reading this article you might know what software testing is on some level. But just to provide a concise overview for starters it checking whether software is working as it is intended. for example take an application such as calculator, testing of calculator would be to check whether its working and working as it is intended which is ,its giving 1+1=2 not 3.Generally software testing is divided in two main categories.

1. Functional Testing: it is checking whether certain functionality of software is working as it is required to. for example the calculator app is adding the numbers and not multiplying them instead.
2. Non-functional Testing: it is to check software against certain markers such as reliability, security and maintainability. That means we know software is functional but we are checking how good it is in terms of speed and how much load it can handle and is it secure or not. This type of testing are generally done at the end of software development lifecycle once software is fully developed and all the functionalities have been implemented.

Software testing or Software development

In India many graduates from colleges are getting into IT service based companies thinking that they would be developing software, writing programs and much more later to find out that they have been allocated to software testing or technical support projects. If you are one of them and you are very passionate about software development and genuinely enjoy converting a plain requirements written in English to actual working software then please don't think about software testing as a career, upgrade yourself and look for opportunities in development. If you are someone who is in field of Computers just because of money then don't go to development thinking that career in software testing won’t yield much financial gains. In fact learning curve in software testing much linear than that in software development field. you can easily learn new technologies here in testing regarding automation or any non functional testing and land a high paying job and comparatively competition is also less. Yes in Software development you can get a high paying job more easily but you have to learn more complex technologies too.

How is software testing in terms of money does it pays well ?

To be candid, the likelihood of finding a well-paying job in testing might be slightly lower compared to development. On average, developers tend to receive higher salaries than testers, though it’s important to note that I’m referring to probabilities and not absolute facts. Your career trajectory as a software tester depends on how adeptly you navigate it. There are instances where testers earn more than developers with similar years of experience, and vice versa. Nonetheless, it’s generally true that the software development field offers greater financial rewards than the software testing field, owing to the inherent complexity and steeper learning curve associated with development.

To provide a clearer perspective, consider this: “Developers can write their own test cases and evaluate their applications, but testers cannot create software.” Their cant be any testers without developers.

is it growing or is it a dead end job?

Just to be Concise Nope its not a dead end job. It will continue to grow as IT industry grows because there would be more and more complex applications to test. Its just that relying on manual testing wont be as beneficial because its and unoptimized way of testing software application but still it is necessary.Automating every testcase is something very expensive and not generally a good idea. Testers just like developers have to learn new technologies and tools to test software as Software industry will grow. Demand of it might rise and fall but it wont be irrelevant job in future as quality of software applications are necessary.

How to grow as a software tester ?

Simple answer to this is master your skill and learn more about it. Learn new technologies and also be technically strong ,it would give you and advantage over other testing professionals who still believe learning programming is not worth for testing profiles.