Life as a QA Analyst

What is it like to work as a manual software tester? Well technically my job title is QA & Testing analyst. If you are just getting started in coding or possibly exploring the idea to transition into a programming career it is a good way to get your foot in the door.

As a QA & Testing Analyst I work closely with the developers of an online product. Because we are on a monthly release agile schedule we have a pretty consistent monthly testing cycle. We perform functional testing in the dev environment for new features. We test those same features in the beta environment later on in the month. Finally when release night rolls around we are testing those same features in the product environment until 3am to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Our positions at Xactware don't require us to code or write automated tests. All of the work I have been doing with that has been strictly extracurricular. It seems to me that few startups are offering these positions - they typically expect their QA people to have coding experience with the ability to write automated tests.

I had no experience doing this kind of work before becoming a QA analyst. For the past six months I've learned a great deal of testing principles that I feel will serve me well in my future positions as a developer.

To be completely honest this is one of the least stressful positions I've ever held. It can be a challenge to find defects in the software but I can reassure you - they are there waiting to be found. Our release cycle and the amount of features that we tests as a team has felt very manageable for the last six months. I'm kind of craving a job that will offer more challenge.

Working as a manual tester has given me a great deal of opportunities. It will be a stepping stone to my eventual career in coding. It is not for me in the long term but in the meantime I am super happy I made the jump to QA.

Does anybody here have previous/current QA experience? Do you feel like it helped you achieve your goals? For other QA analysts who decided to make that their career I'd also be interested in hearing your thoughts. Keep the discussion going in the comments below.