About Learning and Growing: 9 Tips for QA Engineers

A software quality assurance (QA) engineer monitors every phase of the development to ensure that the software adhere to company standards. A software QA engineer helps meet deadlines by breaking up the development process into attainable testing goals and relaying any issues back to the development and product teams or leaders.

There was a rumor that Huawei started to dismiss engineers who are over 34 years old. It has caused a massive panic among engineers. Since the entry to QA engineering is not as high as to development production, and the skills and requirements of QA engineers are not as much as that of software engineers, QA engineers tend to worry about their career path as they are getting old.  Below are tips from a senior QA engineer and hope it helps you improve yourself continuously.

image from http://www.simonarcher.me/blog/wp/from-qa-to-developer-and-managing-the-different-disciplines-of-each/

1. It is all about you.

This is a common rule for everyone, not just for QA engineers. You either keep learning or you get eliminated. Therefore, you have to be self-driven and determined to learn something that help develop your skills.

2. Keep learning

Knowledge comes with learning and accumulation. You have to acquire must-have QA basics. So you would not panic when you see an issue. You actually have a lot of resources and all have to do is to pay attention and get it when you see it.

3. Think before you ask for help

When you have problems, you should try to fix it yourself. 80% of your problems can be fixed by googling it, especially tools and errors. For QA engineers, troubleshooting is an essential skill, as well as problem analyzing, and problem solving independently.

4. Can I?

Don't question yourself. Whether you can acquire a technique only has something to do with yourself. If you really want to learn it, you can absolutely do it. Always spend more time on it and ask questions if you don't understand it.

5. Challenge yourself

Is it challenging to learn a new skill? Well, it cannot be defined. What I find easy might be difficult to you, while you might have already acquired a skill which I find challenging. Learning something can be tedious. Only one who is persistent could defeat tediousness and eventually acquire the knowledge and skills.

6.  Ask questions

It is quite usual that you might have questions when learning a new stuff. If you ask a question clearly and provide details about it, people will just be happy to answer it. The premise here is that you know how to ask questions. Do not ask questions that you have not thought over it or too simple, or you can find the answer directly from the Internet. It would be a waste of time for the one who has already answered it on his blog.

7. Read more

Learning a new skill starts with reading the introduction books, so you will have an overview of the knowledge structure. Then start to learn the basics and on top of that, acquire in-depth knowledge of it.

8. Career path

Some QA engineers might want to change the career path, such as starting a developer job. Before you do that, do a thorough research on knowledge system of the job, and then ask yourself whether you like it and can excel in this job role. Don't just think about the salary. All high paid job requires advanced skills. So you would better improve yourself and be qualified for this job, rather than just care about the salary.

9. Still confused

After a few years' working in the same role, you might be confused. What is your future? What are your advantages and disadvantages compared to your peers? Leave a message below and we can talk about it.

Reference

1. https://www.quora.com/How-difficult-is-it-for-a-QA-engineer-to-switch-to-a-software-developer-of-the-same-or-another-company

2. https://www.testwo.com/blog/8355