Addressing wage disparity between QA and other engineering roles
My org expects QA to fully integrate AI tooling. In fact, the only manual they’d like is exploratory. Fine by me, that’s where I find the most bugs.
There’s no pipeline for QA to even move into automation. They want devs and junior devs doing that. There used to be a path to move into automation, but they removed that and restructured. There’s not a lot of lateral movement to be had here.
But now, I am expected to automate tests and fix bugs with no title change or wage increase. I can do both skills-wise, but it’s starting to piss me off. I’d like to AT LEAST be paid as a junior dev. I get that I rely on the AI tooling more than the others, but considering that I test my fixes really well before submitting, they are rarely rejected.
Plus I am still the primary QA and the only one automating. The rest are struggling with the tooling. I was able to get started in just a couple of hours. I am still paid far less than my peers. I’ve had three sit down sessions with management and they say that a title change and compensation discussion is in progress, but it’s been about seven months.
I’m currently looking for new roles.
Are any of your orgs trying to use QA as a cheaper dev? Have any of you had success with securing better compensation if you are adding more value?