The goal post being moved is what does “not working well” mean. If it’s not working well I would consider it not working as designed. Otherwise I would just call it poorly designed. If something doesn’t work as designed, then things like outages and data issues are a problem.
"You probably drank the kool-aid to get that position, so you feel the need to claim carry water for the illusion that upper management always try to project. "
Sure. Or I worked my ass off to get there and learned things along the way that you are not aware of. Things I have pointed out through our conversations.
"And yes I wrote regression tests. And I worked hard to maintain them while writing tests on features. But with a 5 to 1 ratio of devs to QA, it wasn’t possible to not cut corners. "
It is very possible. The standard is 3-5 QA per eng, that has been the standard for a while. Look up what the ratio should be. I don’t know what you’re expecting in order to keep up, a ratio of 1:2? But this is very common. We have a ratio of 1:4 with about 40 devs and my QA team keeps up without issue. If you are seeing issues it’s usually due to a poor process or lack of skill by the team.
“And of course the age old quote… “why is QA slowing down our release process”.”
You must work for a backward company. I’ve worked for about a dozen tech companies and not once, after explaining the need for QA did they ever say that. You explain what a Sev1 incident is or how a hack can impact the company and smart people listen. You may have worked for bad companies that put this taste in your mouth, but I have worked in some of the largest tech hubs (bay area, NY, SLC) and this is a huge exception not the rule.
"The moment industry trends started touting the Swiss army knife developer who could do it all including testing, they dropped qa teams like a bad habit. "
What, when was this? AGILE development is pretty much the standard, with SCRUm waterfall a second. In both cases you have dedicated QA with possibly devs writing unit tests. But is a massive antipattern to have a dev be the only one QAing their work, it always has been, always will be.
"Presentations were given on how too much testing was bad, and less tests were better… that pendulum swings back and forth every decade or so. "
Yah, except that pendulum swinging can cause events that tank entire companies. Any company worth it’s salt would never fall into that trap because they know it could burn their investment to the ground in a heartbeat.
The shift was around 2018 or so. It was talked about on qa forums and conferences. It likely was talked about at conferences that management go to, but I can’t confirm that.
It seems like you must work in a specialized industry. 1 QA to 4 devs is about the standard. And they keep up by cutting corners. The effort required to creat test automation to test a feature is on par with the effort to create the feature. And then you have to add in old tests that need to be maintained. No way one person can cover 4 and not cut corners.
The company that takes the risks gets the product out before those that don’t. And the ones who get lucky not to have a major thing tank them win in the end. That is just how the system works.
No no no. They do not set the ratio like it is knowing they will purposefully do a bad job. Anyone with half a brain can explain to a board why that’s a bad idea and the risk around it. Do you have any proof at all that companies knowingly build up a dept that will cost them a bunch of money and only prevent issues sometimes? No, that’s absurd. I have seen first hand as a developer, a QA resource cover up to 5 people without issues. I have managed teams, still do, that have a 1:4 ratio and keep up. It can be done and has been, just because you’ve not experienced it doesn’t make it impossible.
Yes, this company taking some risk like in a movie, beeting them to market. And what if their solution causes massive issues due to QA not catching some critical bugs due to cutting corners. They forever lose that entire market. They company could be out of business instead of being able to still compete in that space. No investor would risk money like that. Where are you getting these ideas from?
The goal post being moved is what does “not working well” mean. If it’s not working well I would consider it not working as designed. Otherwise I would just call it poorly designed. If something doesn’t work as designed, then things like outages and data issues are a problem.
"You probably drank the kool-aid to get that position, so you feel the need to claim carry water for the illusion that upper management always try to project. "
Sure. Or I worked my ass off to get there and learned things along the way that you are not aware of. Things I have pointed out through our conversations.
"And yes I wrote regression tests. And I worked hard to maintain them while writing tests on features. But with a 5 to 1 ratio of devs to QA, it wasn’t possible to not cut corners. "
It is very possible. The standard is 3-5 QA per eng, that has been the standard for a while. Look up what the ratio should be. I don’t know what you’re expecting in order to keep up, a ratio of 1:2? But this is very common. We have a ratio of 1:4 with about 40 devs and my QA team keeps up without issue. If you are seeing issues it’s usually due to a poor process or lack of skill by the team.
“And of course the age old quote… “why is QA slowing down our release process”.”
You must work for a backward company. I’ve worked for about a dozen tech companies and not once, after explaining the need for QA did they ever say that. You explain what a Sev1 incident is or how a hack can impact the company and smart people listen. You may have worked for bad companies that put this taste in your mouth, but I have worked in some of the largest tech hubs (bay area, NY, SLC) and this is a huge exception not the rule.
"The moment industry trends started touting the Swiss army knife developer who could do it all including testing, they dropped qa teams like a bad habit. "
What, when was this? AGILE development is pretty much the standard, with SCRUm waterfall a second. In both cases you have dedicated QA with possibly devs writing unit tests. But is a massive antipattern to have a dev be the only one QAing their work, it always has been, always will be.
"Presentations were given on how too much testing was bad, and less tests were better… that pendulum swings back and forth every decade or so. "
Yah, except that pendulum swinging can cause events that tank entire companies. Any company worth it’s salt would never fall into that trap because they know it could burn their investment to the ground in a heartbeat.
The shift was around 2018 or so. It was talked about on qa forums and conferences. It likely was talked about at conferences that management go to, but I can’t confirm that. It seems like you must work in a specialized industry. 1 QA to 4 devs is about the standard. And they keep up by cutting corners. The effort required to creat test automation to test a feature is on par with the effort to create the feature. And then you have to add in old tests that need to be maintained. No way one person can cover 4 and not cut corners.
The company that takes the risks gets the product out before those that don’t. And the ones who get lucky not to have a major thing tank them win in the end. That is just how the system works.
No no no. They do not set the ratio like it is knowing they will purposefully do a bad job. Anyone with half a brain can explain to a board why that’s a bad idea and the risk around it. Do you have any proof at all that companies knowingly build up a dept that will cost them a bunch of money and only prevent issues sometimes? No, that’s absurd. I have seen first hand as a developer, a QA resource cover up to 5 people without issues. I have managed teams, still do, that have a 1:4 ratio and keep up. It can be done and has been, just because you’ve not experienced it doesn’t make it impossible.
Yes, this company taking some risk like in a movie, beeting them to market. And what if their solution causes massive issues due to QA not catching some critical bugs due to cutting corners. They forever lose that entire market. They company could be out of business instead of being able to still compete in that space. No investor would risk money like that. Where are you getting these ideas from?