The agile team formation where the goal was to have cross functional teams, so the upper management wanted to hire only software engineers, but some foolish managers ( such managers deserve to be laid off) converted existing contractor testers with no coding experience to full time software engineers
Now as Saul mentioned manual processes will be reduced, so now they could be just targeting people with QA in their title as their job description has manual testing even though they are performing automation tasks
So is it not fair to look at year end ratings rather than just titles to lay off?? Hope Saul reads or someone in team answers 😳
18 replies (most recent on top)
Totally agree with @1kea+17SxMy9X
People who test software code are only needed
Most basic code testing is automated. So, anyone doing basic testing is in for a big surprise. I've seen many Agile transformations. If a job tile does not fit into agile...it gets cut!
I believe QA managers are viewed as surplus to requirements, as Saul did say. Seems to me automation engineers will be valued. As for manual testers I think they will stay at least to start with because they are testing code now and who knows where that would go.
I agree that the less you know about automation, the more you think it can do.
If the layoffs hit as anticipated next week, most efforts should coast into EOY OK. Then in January we have the usual budget paralysis, and start working again in February. My guess is that the loss of expertise becomes evident with the first installs of 2021, stuff might hit the fan then. My $0.02
Say hello to India.
Forget the titles, the company needs people who test the code. They should cut off QA mangers, QA leads and Test coordinators but software testes manual and automation are required, thoughts??
It would be incredibly stupid to get rid of all QA folks. I don't care what we call them or that they're part of the engineering teams (which can be good frankly). In my career, spanning decades, you get developers that test well, but many do a horrible job testing even their own code, let alone system testing or UAT + cross system testing. We certainly need a ton of automation, test data sets and in many cases testing across many systems. There are a ton of systems that still test with production data in lower environments b/c we can't get our act together on masking solutions. To think we can just get rid of QA (which I didn't think was happening) and leave to the developers is a train wreck waiting to happen.
Post ID: @1mdx+17SxMy9X
"Plus you can’t automate everything but people who don’t actually do the job never realize that."
Not sure I agree with that. We've build some elegant solutions based on Jenkins and Chaos Monkey etc. Getting from a fully working POC to something useful at WF, well that would be another issue altogether.
Ask at tomorrow's AMA
There are high performing QA analysts in the company and if the agile transformation is only looking for software engineers, then I totally feel that is not a right decision at all. QAs needs to be given a chance to upskill themselves and get up to the speed before they take any lay off decisions. No one can test 100% to the code what they have developed. That is why testing is for. "Thinking out of the box!!!" . Hope the management takes this into consideration while laying off.
I can remember 20 yrs ago the industry moved to test first development, we got up to speed on junit. Fine. I asked how they planned to get developers used to thinking like QA people, thinking in terms of edge cases. They acted like it was an obvious stupid question and the devs could automate anything QA could do.
Now it is 2020 and I really do get tired of being right all the time.
Smh. In another year they will be begging for QA analysts to hire if they do that.
Good luck with that.
Developers here don’t test. Plus you can’t automate everything but people who don’t actually do the job never realize that.
Been there, done that, got the t shirt. It says it doesn’t work the way they thought it would.
Saul stated in one of his sessions last year that the QA Manager roles will be eliminated across the company.
All QA Manager positions offshore (India) was eliminated. The next phase was to eliminate the positions in the US, but before that happened, the Pandemic hit and plans were frozen. Chances are that these roles will be gone by the end of the year.
QA teams are already merged with development teams for the most part. QA Analysts are being told that they must train up to become Engineers.
In the Agile world, all tests are supposed to be automated. It is likely that QA Analysts that are unable to 'up skill' and become Automation Engineers will be laid off sooner or later, unless they can find other positions in WF.
Agree with your comment, first they need to lay off these old school managers who are letting the business system consultant (referring only who do not have any clue) to lead tech team by calling them as scrum master. Unfortunately they do not understand agile, project or requirements and also they are the hurdle in agile team doing politics with lot of bureaucracy. If they cleanup then they can save more than they are expecting. They do not fit anywhere in agile team.
Are they laying off Business system consultants as well?
What is their role in agile team if product owners provides clear requirements in stories.
Developers will be testers... can't wait for that fallout.
QA will transition into Dev groups
Yes in agile development and Devops there is no QA function. Lol.