What is being an software developer in test (SDET) like?

Question

There are a lot of positions that are pure SDET positions. I'd be interested to hear from individuals who are or have had experience with SDET or have been at companies that have dedicated SDETs.

1. What is the job like (day to day responsibilities)
2. What kind of code are you writing (i'm assuming mostly unit tests, test runners, test automation)?
3. Is the career fulfilling for the long term, or is it mostly used as a foot-in-the-door into the company for a SDE position?

Answer 1

I really liked my years as an SDET. The coding is completely different than being an SDE. You don't have to worry as much about writing 100% shippable code. You get to hack a lot more and try and break things. All the while, you can experiment with new coding techniques with much greater freedom than an SDE. It was loads of fun and I would jump at the opportunity if the pay was good enough.

Unfortunately a lot of companies see it as an inferior position. My personal opinion is that it's a harder job than being an SDE. Finding some memory leaks or crashes can be HARD!

Here are a few lengthy articles about it:

• http://microsoftjobsblog.com/blog/sdet-testers-behind-the-myths/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/chappell/archive/2004/10/06/239001.aspx

Answer 2

I'll share my experience.

I Interned at a big IT company for a summer, I won't name names. I flew through my internship with flying colors, I interned at a test department. There were four layers and corresponding departments of test for that software product.

I was getting job offers out the ears at all four test departments. Then on my last day I got lucky and met with a manager for a developer position. I ended up taking it, thinking that I would rather write the code then be a boring tester.

Looking back, I would have rather been a tester. I was a proficient and creative coder, but I was stifled by a monolithic software process and had to be reviewed and scrutinized. I didn't have a lot of freedom of creativity when fixing existing code. So I was scrutinized, disheartened, and I had to write some tests as extra and that was like a kick in the pants.

If I were a tester, I would still write code, but the code is just test cases. I am the one doing the scrutinizing and breaking things. That is a creative challenge without all the restrictions. Yeah I can see how it could get boring like any job, but looking back, being a tester would be less stressful.

I don't see how you can get acclaim for finding bugs, but engineers rarely get acclaim anyway, wether they make or fix the bugs.