QA vs. Development positions

Question

This isn't a coding question, but a career question that I am stumped on. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I graduated college this past spring and since then have worked in the QA department for a large e-commerce website for the past three months. My duties including running automation and manual tests, writing test scripts, writing test plans, and working to fix our current QA processes. Quite frankly this is a little boring and frustrating considering a lot of our test plans/scripts have problems and the processes in place cause a lot of rework to be done. The QA department is well respected though and we have a healthy relationship with the development team.

Just the other day I was contacted by someone whom I worked with a few months where I was a web development intern. At that internship I created some internal company websites using ASP.NET and MS SQL server. This person told me they recently took a position at another company which is now hiring a junior programmer for which they think I would be a good candidate for. This company is much smaller than where I am currently and it seems that I will have a lot of influence and opportunity to work on interesting projects.

Do you think I should pursue this opportunity? I enjoy developing a lot more than QA, but am not sure changing jobs after only working for 3 months is a good idea. At the same time I feel that it will be more difficult down the road to change career paths and go down the development path. Development to me is a lot more interesting and feels more fulfilling as opposed to running tests on someone else's code. At the same time staying in QA will most likely open up some management opportunities that seem to be more difficult to attain from a development position.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Answer 1

I think you should go. It's nice to have a starting point as a developer and it doesn't matter if the new company is small - if you have experience then you'll be hired by the big ones. Just do it!

UPDATE: If you are bored in three months of work, imagine yourself one year later doing the same routine scripts, manual tests, bla, bla, bla...

Answer 2

It's not fair, but QA is generally not given the respect that development positions are. It is a lot more difficult to move from QA to development than vice versa. So if you have the opportunity, and really want to do development, I'd recommend taking advantage of it.

The development experience will be valuable if you want to go back to QA later. In contrast, the longer you are in QA, the less valuable you will considered if you want to switch to development later. (Again, this isn't fair, but it's how it is.)

Answer 3

Apply for the Jr Dev job - not worth planning until you are actually offered the job.

QA is generally known for high turnover because it's so boring, and lot try to use QA as entry into a company to leverage for something better. While QA is monotonous, higher end QA jobs exist so it's not bad to hang in for the experience that might come in handy latter on.

Answer 4

If you're okay with doing QA as a career, stay there. Apply for the job, or you'll be doing QA forever. No one much cares if you bounce job-to-job for your first year, and no one much cares if you bounce job-to-job once a year after that for quite awhile.

The goal is for you to do well, which involves not burning bridges as you go, but does involve a few changeups over time.

Bad QA shops run tests manually, and get overwhelmed as time goes on; full testing of the application becomes impossible as more and more is added. Good QA shops need developers to automate tests, and while that's less technical code - generally - than being a straight-up developer, it's still development, and can be very interesting.

One example of the technical QA person would be the Software Engineer in Test position at Microsoft. It's programming, and it pays pretty well, but I'd say Microsoft is the exception in QA, and not the rule.

Answer 5

For a junior developer, small companies can be a really good thing. You get a lot more involved in every stage of development. This will really help your versatility.

As others have said, QA jobs have a high turn over rate because people always want to move on to something more fun.

Answer 6

I'd pursue the opportunity and get more information here. While this may seem like, "Take the developer job," I would note that you may find out at the interview there are things you really don't like about the company with the junior developer position. If the job seems like a great opportunity then you resign where you are QA now and say that you are moving on to a better opportunity.

Answer 7

I am in the same positon, however I dont have the luxury of being offered a job, if I were in your place I would jump at the Dev job.

QA is definitely not interesting for developers, if you want to keep your sanity intact after 1 year on the job, definitely take the dev job.

P.S if you dont take the Jr. Dev job can you refer me to it :)

Answer 8

I think you already had your answer in your question. :)

I enjoy developing a lot more than QA

It is your passion. Go get it or you will be sorry in the future. Life will be more beautiful and easy if you love what you do to live :).

Actually, I was a developer but I got an opportunity to be a part of QA department. I was afraid at first because my friends always said that QA activities are boring. But here I am. I am still in QA department because I found my passion here. For me, QA activities look like a puzzle for me and I love to solve that puzzle.

I hope you can take the right decision. :)

Answer 9

For me, QA activities look like a puzzle  and I love to solve that puzzle.

I completely agree. I have a comp sci degree myself but my co-op work term (a super long 16 months in one shot) and the way the cookie crumbled meant I ended up in QA. 

I've been asked several times by different developers across a few jobs why I'm not a dev myself, since I understand the concepts and can keep up quite handily in debugging conversations. 

I like where I am and I think the dev background gives me a  different perspective into the development of a software product. I've worked with QA people who didn't care how the guts of the product worked. I don't get that at all. I 'need' to know how the app updates the DB, etc. I carry a lot of respect among the devs where I work because of that. 

Dev jobs may be sexier : ) but I can assure you that you won't always be working on stuff that's interesting. 

Good luck though.