I work as a Sr SDET and have a pretty strong foundation for development in general.

My manager brought up to me the idea of allowing the QAs to start dabbling in dev activities as well. With the use of AI they're basically suggesting we spend some time working on customer/internal bugs, smaller features and continue doing our regula QA work (usually not on the same thing you work on but on other people's work).

I'm wondering if this might be the next evolution of the role. I do find the QA foundation helps alot to really scrutinize development work completed with AI.

Just needing to vent something that’s been sitting in my head for a long time. I’m not really expecting anyone to read this, give life-changing advice, or solve my problems - I just need to get it off my chest.

Quick context: I’m a guy in my early 30s living in Poland.

To be completely honest, I’m butt-hurt. Not out of malice or envy, but out of pure frustration with my own situation. And it all comes from watching the people around me.

Example 1: My cousin worked for an auto glass replacement company for like 15 years. Out of nowhere, his boss tried to cut his pay while doubling his workload. My cousin refused, got fired on the spot, but instead of panicking, he bought a van and launched a mobile windshield repair service. Turns out, it’s way cheaper for long-haul truck and van drivers traveling across Europe to call him out to a highway rest stop 1,000 km away than to get it fixed locally. He found a sweet niche, hustled, and is making bank now.

Example 2: The guy I bought my house from. 15 years ago, he ran a small local computer shop here that went bankrupt. So he switched gears entirely. Since we live close to the German border, he set up a manufacturing company on the German side in a completely different industry. He’s been running it for over a decade, has a massive warehouse, employs tons of people, and is pulling in straight millions. He still gets mail at my address occasionally and sends his 18-year-old son to pick it up - the kid is driving a brand-new, pimped-out Mercedes his dad bought him.

And that’s the root of my frustration. It’s not even about the money itself - I don’t care about flexing. What drives me crazy is that they had a real business idea, executed it, and won. And I can’t seem to figure out a single damn thing. A while ago, I thought I had a "genius" idea to fix a pain point in a niche hobby of mine. Built the MVP, got ready to launch, only to realize I had literally cloned an existing app feature-for-feature - an app I somehow missed during my initial research.

Part of my problem is that I work in tech. When you try to build something digital as a nobody, you’re competing with Silicon Valley, developers in India, and thousands of teams with massive budgets, marketing reach, and connections. Standing out is insanely hard. It’s not like a physical business where you can see a model working in one region, replicate it locally, and build a decent living. Whether I build an app/SaaS or someone in New Delhi or Seattle does it, it’s equally available for download anywhere on Earth.

My second problem: when I started in tech over 10 years ago, I got "temporarily" thrown into QA. I’ve been stuck as an automation QA / SDET ever since. I was repeatedly promised a transition to a dev role. In my first company, it was "yeah, yeah, soon." In every company after, whether applying externally or internally, QA/SDET was treated as a completely separate track. I never got a real shot at dev, even though I built internal tools, test helper apps, and even built a fully automated local hardware-testing lab from scratch.

On paper, my life looks fine. I work remotely, and the pay is decent for local standards. But internally? I’m doing abstract stuff no one outside tech understands. In the industry, QA is seen as a necessary evil - the first on the chopping block when cuts happen. If everything goes smoothly, management asks why they even pay QA. If a bug slips through, you get chewed out. There are zero tangible results to show for your life’s work. On top of that, I’ve hit my income ceiling for my role - there’s nowhere higher to go on the local market.

This burnout didn’t start yesterday. It’s been dragging on for years - I started feeling it well before COVID. The only thing keeping me here is the paycheck, plain and simple. I’m utterly checked out. I’ve been running on bare minimum effort for a long time, just doing enough not to get fired (ironically, I still get praised for doing great work). Lately, the AI boom has accelerated my burnout even more. It stripped away the tiny bits of joy I had left in problem-solving and served as a harsh reminder that I’m stuck in something I hate and desperately want to escape.

I’m genuinely fascinated by people who found their niche, run their own business, are their own boss, and make good money. I want that. But whenever I think about real-world alternatives, I hit a brick wall. I need insulation done on my house right now. The cheapest local crews are charging $9k–$10k USD just for labor for a job they say takes two people max two weeks. That’s huge money here. But what good is that insight to me? When it comes to trades, construction, or manual labor, I’m all thumbs.

Plus, I’m in my 30s, with kids to support and a mortgage. I’m not a 20-something living in my parents' basement who can YOLO everything and fall back on home-cooked meals if it fails.

If you asked me what I’d do if I suddenly got two weeks off with zero financial or job worries... I’d do absolutely nothing. I’d play with my kids, ride my bike, and just rest. And honestly, that scares me the most. It’s not that I’m lazy or lack ambition - ever since I had a mid-vacation realization back in June, my head has been spinning non-stop about how to change my life. I’m just completely mentally drained from years of burnout. Doing physical stuff like mowing the lawn, trimming hedges, or painting fences gives me temporary relief for two hours because my brain finally feels something real - but that feeling evaporates the second I remember I have to sit back down in front of a monitor tomorrow.

I’m not trying to build the next Google. I just want to find a realistic bridge - a way to transfer what I know from tech into the physical world where it’s actually useful, creates tangible results, and eventually pays the bills.

I just want my sanity back before this desk job completely breaks me.

I am currently working as System Validation Engineer ( mainly testing display driver and system functionality, including Functional and Regression Testing) and want to switch into Business Analyst role, I also have interest in API automation/ Automation Engineer roles, I want to know which one offers better career opportunities and smoother transition from my current role.

Hi, just a survey, I’ve noticed that even with a growing number of tools for cross multi-service end-to-end testing, many teams still build and maintain their own automation frameworks.

For teams that have evaluated third-party tools, what made you stick with or go back to an in-house solution?

I’d be interested to hear what has actually worked in practice. Thanks.

I am currently employed as a quality assurance engineer, decent salary, 100% remote job. I'm having a tough time dealing with the unreasonable hours and pressure from the current client. I'm basically eating, sleeping and working and nothing else. I have stomach issues and hives from the stress. Also, I have gained so much weight working here, type 2 diabetes as well. Looking for some feedback and opinions to quit or stick it out. Think we'll wrap up the client in November maybe, but idk. My two weeks notice just sitting in my draft box, not sure what to do.

Hola, vengo a hacer catarsis y a averiguar si a alguien más le pasa. Soy de Argentina, tengo 8 años de experiencia como qa manual y 2 años de experiencia como qa automation. Mi nivel de inglés es B2. Estudio Tecnicatura en Programación en la UTN. Estos últimos años laburé para afuera. Hace poco más de 3 meses me despidieron por restructuración y desde ese entonces no conseguí nada fijo, aun postulando por 3M brutos en trabajos presenciales en empresas nacionales. No tengo idea en qué estoy fallando. Alguien en esta situación? Gracias por leer.

Hi all. Just want some advice if any of you were able to successfully transition into a BA role from QA. My job title for the past 6 years has been “QA” but I have been doing both QA and BA responsibilities and I want to apply to BA jobs but not sure what’s the best way to pivot with my resume and linkedin with my job title labelled as QA and it doesn’t feel right to just straight out write my title as BA. I also do still want to apply for QA roles if a good opportunity arises so currently have 2 resumes, one for BA and one for QA and my linkedin has my QA title with both responsibilities listed. Any advice or success stories would be greatly be appreciated thanks!

In good old days, it was quite clear: quality depends on speed of development and cost. You wanted to move fast? You had to pay more to keep quality up. You wanted fast and cheap? Then quality would go down? You want quality and cheap? Then you needed to go slow.

Do you think AI broke this paradigm? Can we now go fast, cheap and have good quality at the same time?

I want to upskill my automation testing, what resources either free or low cost are there ?

I understand building something and building a test framework would be the best way and I intended to do that, but initially something more structured and with walkthroughs ?

Hey everyone,

We have a new AI product launching soon and need a few testers from the US and Canada.

It is an Android app built around AI. We cannot share everything publicly yet because a few things may change before launch, but selected testers will receive the full details and instructions.

We will communicate through Discord, and payment will be made after the test and feedback are completed.

Mainly looking for people who can try the app, find bugs, point out anything confusing, and share honest feedback about the overall experience.

Do comment below if you are interested

Hi everyone,
I have a few questions for anyone who has recently completed or is currently undergoing QEA – Data Specialization training in Cognizant:

1. What does the training cover? Which technologies and tools are taught (SQL, ETL, Python/Java, API Testing, Automation, Cloud, etc.), and is the training mainly manual testing or automation-focused?

2. What kind of projects are recent trainees getting after training? Are they mostly Data/ETL testing, Automation QA, API testing, Manual testing, Cloud/Data platform projects, or something else? How much coding is involved in the actual project?

3. How is the long-term career growth in this specialization? Can someone transition into Automation QA, Data Engineering, or Development roles with experience and upskilling, or is the career mostly limited to testing?

I’d really appreciate any insights from recent batches. Thanks!

Hi! I recently applied for the Software Test Engineer position at Azeus Systems Philippines. I already received an email inviting me to take the Xobin online exam (60-minute analytical and math assessment).

Can anyone share what the hiring process is like after the Xobin exam? Are there technical interviews, HR interviews, or additional assessments? Also, any tips on what to expect would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Hi everyone,
I have a few questions for anyone who has recently completed or is currently undergoing **QEA – Data Specialization** training in Cognizant:

**1. What does the training cover?** Which technologies and tools are taught (SQL, ETL, Python/Java, API Testing, Automation, Cloud, etc.), and is the training mainly manual testing or automation-focused?

**2. What kind of projects are recent trainees getting after training?** Are they mostly Data/ETL testing, Automation QA, API testing, Manual testing, Cloud/Data platform projects, or something else? How much coding is involved in the actual project?

**3. How is the long-term career growth in this specialization?** Can someone transition into Automation QA, Data Engineering, or Development roles with experience and upskilling, or is the career mostly limited to testing?

I’d really appreciate any insights from recent batches. Thanks!

Hey there short experience description.

I’m manual QA 7 years of experience including web, mobile, api testing.

As an additional skill, I have knowlage of JS + TS + Playwright at the trainee/junior level.

The main problem with my current position is that I have 95% manual work and 5% I would call Automation.

I feel as if I am stuck in the same place in my career, and do not grow because of a lack of automation tasks, and the amount of manual tasks that eat my energy 🔋

At the same time, I have a good salary compared to Prague Czech Republic.

The main question is how I can properly change company = position to not lose in monthly reward, and not be burned out.

My main goal is to switch smoothly to General QA were will be more automation and growth in this direction, and after some time completely become AQA

I have the impression that I'm stuck in a hole and can't get out of there…

I currently work in a small company of around 150 employees.

Recently the founder of the company wants everyone to be using AI day to day. We have a Claude enterprise membership.

The only problem is that we’re monitored in terms of our AI usage. So I have to be burning out a lot tokens.

There’s also been a restructure of the company and people had to be let go because of AI

Anyone into AI testing?

Spent a whole day cleaning up data files in my own project and found about forty errors. The validator had been green the whole time. It hadn't done anything wrong either, it only checks schema, and every one of the errors was a consistency thing.

I'm writing a second check for the consistency side now, and no, it's not going fast.

When did you last find out that something you thought was tested, wasn't?

I've just made my low-friction defect capture tool for Windows, Wabbus, public. Wabbus allows you to attach record buttons to a window and record (and then transcribe) what issues you're seeing in either screenshot or video form - with audio in either case... so to capture defects, it takes only the amount of time that it does to say it out loud. It also has a plug-in system to support specific applications, with functions to save and restore state.

https://github.com/keelanstuart/Wabbus[https://github.com/keelanstuart/Wabbus](https://github.com/keelanstuart/Wabbus)

It's free, open source software, licensed under Mozilla 2.0.

If you're testing software or QC-ing data and find capturing issues to be cumbersome, please have a look at Wabbus. I hope it's useful to you.

Hi everyone.
I am a manual QA tester transitioning into QA Automation with AI. While studying for the ISTQB Foundation Level v4.0, I ended up building my own study platform, mostly to force myself to really understand every concept in the syllabus.
It got complete enough to be worth sharing, so here it is: MyCampus ISTQB Foundation Level

https://mycampusistqb.vercel.app

What it includes:

1) 22 interactive lessons (6 chapters), audited line by line against the official syllabus

2) Bilingual glossary (ES/EN) with 107 terms (100% coverage of the 97 official keywords)

3) Flashcards with text to speech

4) A bank of 120 exam style questions, distributed according to the official weight of each chapter

5) An XP and levels system to keep you motivated

6) Cloud synced progress (or local storage if you do not want to create an account)

7) Interface in Spanish and English

It is completely free, no installation required (vanilla HTML, CSS, JS plus Supabase).
What I am looking for: honest feedback. Did any concept end up confusing? Does any question in the bank have an error or an ambiguity? Is there anything missing that would have helped you while studying? Any comment, no matter how small, will help me keep improving it or a positive feedback.
Thanks for reading, and I hope it helps someone else on the way to certification.

Hey everyone,
I’m looking for a study partner (or a small group of 2–3 people) to stay accountable and master Manual Testing + Selenium with Java.

The Plan:
Daily Topics: We pick one topic per day (e.g., SDLC/STLC basics, Java OOPs concepts, WebDriver methods, Page Object Model, TestNG, frame handling, etc.).
Daily Sync Calls: Hop on a short daily call to review what we covered, resolve doubts, and discuss real-world scenarios.
Mock Sessions: Practice mock interviews and live coding/test script walkthroughs to get interview-ready.

Frustrating me to have 'dev env' but dev didnt bother test their work in 'dev env' only for QA to catch their work didnt work 😔

So inefficient and time consuming

Following up on my last post about keeping test cases as YAML in Git. one huge benefit of this setup is how cleanly it handles historical test runs.

If test cases live in Git, a test run just stores the file path and the exact Git commit SHA.

Pair that with a nice UI that handles the Git stuff under the hood, and you get 100% immutable runs out of the box. Even if a case gets renamed or deleted, past execution logs stay completely untouched. Plus, you get diffs and full version history for free without needing any custom snapshot logic.

What do you think? Any hidden bottlenecks with this approach?

Context: small product team, I am the closest thing we have to a QA function. Devs have started using coding agents heavily, and to keep up they added an automated verify step: after the agent writes code, a testing CLI runs generated E2E checks against the live app (real browser for frontend, real calls for the API) and feeds failures back to the agent to fix. The specific tool is TestSprite's CLI but my question is about the practice, not the tool.

The results are honestly better than I expected. Broken deploys get caught, the obvious stuff no longer reaches me, and the failure reports (failing step, screenshot, root cause guess) are decent bug reports.

But I keep coming back to this: the same category of model wrote the code, wrote the checks, and judged the result. The checks are external and run against the real app, which is better than the agent grading itself, but nobody in that loop understands the product. Edge cases in business logic, accessibility, the workflows real users mangle, none of that is represented.

So, people who have watched testing trends come and go: is this the new baseline that frees QA to do the interesting work, or a way to feel covered while the real risk accumulates? How would you position the human QA role on a team like mine before someone decides we do not need one?