Software Quality Assurance Engineer... Happiest job?!?

If you haven't seen this article, you want to read it:

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/secrets-toyour-success/happiest-jobs-america-173044519.html

About half way down it says:

The happiest job of all isn't kindergarten teacher or dentist. It's software quality assurance engineer. Professionals with this job title are typically involved in the entire software development process to ensure the quality of the final product. This can include processes such as requirements gathering and documentation, source code control, code review, change management, configuration management, release management, and the actual testing of the software, explains Matt Miller, chief technology officer at CareerBliss.

With an index score of 4.24, software quality assurance engineers said they are more than satisfied with the people they work with and the company they work for. They're also fairly content with their daily tasks and bosses.

These professionals "typically make between $85,000 and $100,000 a year in salary and are the gatekeepers for releasing high quality software products," Miller says. Organizations generally will not allow software to be released until it has been fully tested and approved by their software quality assurance group, he adds.

So I have a bunch of comments:

1. I guess I don't know what a "Software Quality Assurance Engineer" is -- or this Matt Miler guy doesn't. 
2. *If* anyone "ensures the quality of the final product" in software, it's a PM or higher.
3. I don't think I've met anyone with that title who smiled and told me how much they love their job.
4. I'm certain I've never met someone with that title that makes that much money. 
5. I think I'd rather shoot myself in the head than have those tasks... even at such a generous salary.

I could go on, but I'll stop.  I want to see these questions, & I want to know the demographics of the people surveyed, & I want to see the titles actually reported by respondents that got rolled up under "Software Quality Assurance Engineer." I'd also like to have a word or 73 with this Matt Miller dude... CTO to CTO, 'cause lets face it, we all know that testers wouldn't be caught dead bragging about how *happy* their job makes them, or how *satisfying* it is. Testers tend to love the act of testing, but not their jobs, or their bosses, or their companies -- and if this ain't referring to testers, I wanna know why these process people are apparently so happy about being forced to do the actual testing on top of their "real" job.


Feel free to share your thoughts, but this strikes me as "not *even* wrong" to a degree that I can't seem to even reverse-engineer a single measurement dysfunction that could account for all the ways in which this article strikes me as "just not right".

 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Director, Computer Measurement Group
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Trust is a Cornerstone to Delivering Business Value

In my last post about Metrics I introduced the notion of trust as it relates to Business Value by stating:

"Failing to trust 'the Business' does NOT add Business Value"

I'd like to generalize that statement further to say "A lack of trust that individuals or groups involved in the project are primarily focused on helping the business succeed undermines business value".

Now, I can only imagine the reaction many testers are having while reading this. For instance "If I trust the developer when they say 'This is fine, you don't need to test it', we'll have major bugs make it to production." And anyone thinking that would be absolutely right -- because that is not the *kind* of trust I'm talking about.

When I say trust, I don't mean "Trust others to tell you how to do your job" or "Trust others to do what you believe is correct/best" or even "Trust others to be successful in accomplishing what they have been assigned to accomplish on time, on mission, on quality, and on budget"

When I say trust, I mean "Trust others to approach their role with integrity" and "Trust that others are doing the best they can to make the decisions or take the actions appropriate to their role and responsibilities based on the information they have" and "Trust that if you haven't been assigned to do or to be the decision maker about something, that task or decision is better handled by someone else -- whether or not *you* have the information necessary to make sense out of why.

Context-Driven Testing Crossroads: Addendum

I guess I wasn't as done talking about this as I thought. Earlier today, I posted the following comment (except with a few extra typos that I chose to fix below) on Tim Western's blog in response to his post Is the Context Driven School of Testing - Dead?:

"A point that I think many miss is that this is not just about individual testers.

50 years ago (more or less) testING began fighting a rather arduous battle to establish an identity separate from developMENT. This, eventually, led to testERS establishing an identity separate from developERS.

On the Alleged Death of Testing

Out of respect for your time, I'll give you the bottom line up front as a simulated interview that I privately hoped for, but never came. After the mock interview is a supporting narrative for those of you more interested in my thinking on the matter.

Q: There's been a lot of talk recently about testing being dead, so my first question is testing dead?
A: No.

Q: Some of those talking about the alleged death of testing are saying that it's not that testing as a whole is dead, but that testing as it is commonly understood today dead. Is it?
A: No.

Q: Ok, so is testing as it is commonly understood today dying?
A: Not that I can see.

Q: Then why all the talk about testing "as we know it" being dead?
A: IMHO? Wishful thinking.

Latest Column -- The controversy surrounding the schools of software testing

My latest column...

Periodically, discussions break out in various software testing communities around the Web regarding the schools of software testing.

As I write this, there are discussions going in SQAForums, on the Software-Testing Yahoo! group, and various blogs that (at least up to the time I started writing this piece) reside on or are fed to Testing Reflections. In principle, I'm always pleased when these discussions break out. The point of identifying the schools in the first place was to increase the overall awareness of the diversity in ideologies, practices, and values (i.e. schools of thought) in our field and to stimulate discussion about the situational pros and cons of each. That said, the discussions that actually take place tend to drift off in one or more directions that end up being disappointing, unnecessarily confrontational, and generally not useful.

After witnessing this pattern, participating in these recent discussions, and listening to comments from those who followed the discussions for several years, I've identified several areas in which these discussions go awry. Below, I call those out and share my thoughts about each.

Read the rest of the column.
 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Identity crisis or delusions of grandeur?

In this month's installment of "Peak Performance" I discuss the frequently erroneous and often grandiose titles software testers have on their business cards or in their e-mail SIGs. Identity crisis or delusions of grandeur? 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."