Hi, I have been using Robot framework for automated tests. I am a software developer who also does automation. I am proficient in Java. How long would it take for me to learn automation with Selenium? I have an interview coming up in 2 weeks which also needs Selenium knowledge. Will 2 weeks be enough? Is there any free recommended course? Any help is appreciated. Thank you!
Locators are the part of Selenium that always bites me — By.xpath("//div[3]/span") breaks the moment someone touches the CSS. Playwright sidesteps this with getByRole/getByLabel That targets what the user perceives, not the DOM structure.
I've been building an accessibility-first locator layer for Java Selenium that does the same — getByLabel("Username"), getByRole(Role.BUTTON, "Login") — plus web-first assertions and a framework-managed driver so there's no WebDriverWait/quit boilerplate. And I wired up an MCP server so an AI assistant can drive a real browser and generate the test using those locators.
Before I go further, I really want a reality check from people who write Selenium daily:
getByRole/getByLabel approach actually hold up on your apps?It's open source; happy to share the repo in the comments if anyone wants to poke at it.
Curious how people here actually handle this day to day
I completed my internship at a fintech company, where I gained experience in Manual and Automation Testing for web and mobile applications. I also contributed to developing an automation testing system using python and playwright.
Run the test cases. Mark them Pass or Fail. Report bugs.
I thought if every test case passed, the product was ready.
I was wrong.
One day, I decided to ignore the test cases for a while and use the application like a normal user.
I clicked buttons faster than expected.
I refreshed pages in the middle of a process.
I switched between screens.
I entered unexpected data.
I used a slow internet connection.
Within an hour, I found bugs that no test case had covered.
That was the day I realized something important:
Users don't read your test cases. They write their own.
Every user behaves differently. Some are patient. Some are not. Some click everything. Others abandon a process halfway through.
As QAs, our responsibility isn't just to verify requirements.
It's to think about how real people will actually use the product.
Over the years, one habit has helped me find more valuable bugs than any checklist:
Test like a user, not like a tester.
Walk through real user journeys.
Try to break the application.
Test on slow networks.
Test on different devices.
Ask yourself, "What would a frustrated user do next?"
That's where the bugs usually hide.
In my experience, the most valuable bugs are rarely found on the happy path they're found in real user behavior.
What's one testing lesson that completely changed the way you approach QA?
I want to know how HCL select the candidate if the candidate having the referal and specifically for QA role like api testing or manual testing I want to know all about interview process anyone having experience just share here no matter how much just share it help me a lot.
I'm doing some stress testing in my project soon and I need to know if k6 is a good option to learn. I wanted to do JMeter at first and it was recommended too but I just found out the target no. of users for the testing can't be done through my PC if I were to use JMeter. I was looking for other options and found k6 and supposedly it's lightweight and can handle more users. I wanna know more about these tools form someone who has used these. How's the experience ? And is there another better alternative.
Got laid off from a fintech QA role in May. Been through the recruiter gauntlet ever since.
Some conversations have been great. Others made it obvious the recruiter had no clue what they were recruiting for.
Stuff I keep running into:
10 years of Cypress and a Selenium checkbox treated like the same skill.
Job posts that say "QA" but are really three different roles mashed into one listing.
Manual tester, automation engineer, SDET. They get these mixed up constantly. Pitched for one, interviewed for another. Different jobs. Different pay.
So I am curious what everyone else is seeing.
If you could make recruiters understand ONE thing about QA roles before they pitch you, what would it be?
Manual testers, SDETs, automation folks, leads. All of it welcome.
Hey everyone,
I recently joined a spirits company as their first QA hire. The product is quite large, but there’s very little documentation, and up until now, developers have been responsible for testing.
Right now, things feel unstructured. I often find out about new features or deployments after they’ve already happened, and testing requests come in randomly. Most of my work ends up being exploratory, without a defined process or clear expectations.
I’d like to introduce some structure and improve how testing is handled, but I don’t want to overwhelm the team or disrupt their current workflow too much.
Where would you recommend starting in a situation like this?
I’d really appreciate any advice or experiences you can share.
I have been using AI in my testing workflow for a while now. Not for everything. But there are three things that genuinely changed how I work.
Bug reports
I used to spend way too long on these. Staring at a blank Jira field trying to remember exactly what happened and how to describe it without sounding vague.
Now I just describe the bug the way I would explain it to someone sitting next to me. Two or three sentences.
Paste it into Claude with a little context about what I was testing. What comes back is a clean structured report I can paste straight into Jira. The whole thing takes about a minute.
The key is giving it real context upfront. Generic description in equals generic report out.
Test cases
Most people just paste the AC in and ask for test cases. The output is fine but it is missing the edge cases that actually matter.
What changed things for me was adding one extra thing what good looks like from the user's perspective. Not just what the requirements say. What the user is actually trying to accomplish and what would make them trust the product.
That one addition gets you scenarios you would not have thought to write yourself.
Test strategy
This one took me the longest to figure out but it is the most valuable.
Before I write a single test case I ask one question. What is this feature actually supposed to do for the user. Not the technical requirements. The real promise. What is the user trusting this feature to deliver.
Once I know that I figure out the most important things it absolutely must do first. The scenarios where if something breaks the feature has failed its whole purpose. I start there. Everything else gets built around that.
AI helps me think through all the layers once I know what matters most. But that first question has to come from me. Only someone who actually understands the product can answer it. AI cannot.
Been doing this for a while and it is the closest thing I have found to a real system versus just using AI randomly and hoping the output is good.
Anyone else approaching strategy this way or doing something different? Curious what is actually working for people.
Hi everyone! I'm researching how mobile QA engineers automate app testing. This isn't for promotion I'm just trying to understand real-world workflows and pain points.
Suppose you need to automate this flow:
A few quick questions:
Even a one-line answer is helpful. I'm trying to understand real-world QA workflows and pain points not promote any tool. Thanks!
Hi,
About a year ago, I completed a master’s program in Robotics and AI at a top-tier university in Germany.
Since most of my experience has been in robotics testing and validation, I spent the last nine months trying to land a job in this area, but unfortunately, it has been quite difficult. Opportunities for junior candidates are very limited, and the competition is very tough.
I recently decided to switch to QA Automation, focusing on Playwright, Python, pytest, and API testing with Postman.
So far, I have completed one end-to-end e-commerce test automation framework and one API testing project.
However, out of around 40 applications, I received only one interview invitation. I reached the final round after four stages, but was rejected in the end without individual feedback.
I have two questions:
Could recruiters see me as overqualified for such roles and suspect that I only want the job as a bridge until I find something better? If yes, what can I do about this?
What else can I do in general to improve my chances? I am struggling even to get an internship.
Best regards,
Hey everyone,
I just finished a project I've been working on intensely — a multi-layer QA automation ecosystem that tests a financial expense tracking app across every layer of the stack. Sharing it here because I want real feedback from people who do this professionally.
new_set - old_set) and SQL aggregations.mark.use_ai or globally with --ai-analysistest_id so the same data file serves multiple test scenariosTests → Workflows → Actions/Verifications → Page Objects + Data Layer
Every layer has one job: Page Objects hold only locator constants. Actions are u/staticmethod with u/allure.step. Workflows compose actions into business flows. Tests never call raw actions directly.
DB_TYPE from environment. Is this a pattern teams actually use, or is it overcomplicating things?| Layer | Tests | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| Web | 10 | CRUD, DDT (3 datasets), boundary, reload persistence, AI analysis |
| API | 14 | CRUD, DDT (5 datasets), negative (missing fields, bad route, deleted ID) |
| API ↔ DB | 6 | Create/update/delete reflected in DB, set theory integrity |
| Mobile | 16 | Smoke, CRUD, DDT (4 datasets), negative, boundary, background, keyboard |
| Cross-Layer E2E | 3 | Web UI → API → DB, negative amounts blocked by MySQL CHECK constraint |
| Total | 53 | 9 test files across 4 layers |
I'm a QA Automation bootcamp graduate transitioning into the industry. This was my capstone project. I deliberately went deep on architecture and cross-layer validation because I wanted to understand how data flows through a system — not just write tests that pass.
GitHub: Financial-Integrity-Ecosystem
Not looking for a pat on the back — I want to know what's missing, what's naive, and what would make someone reviewing this in a hiring context actually stop and look.
Thanks.
Got laid off after 7.5 years mid June along with few others due to some company restructuring.
Been doing QA for the last 20+ years with a heavy focus on feature (manual testing - UI and API) on SaaS, Enterprise on prem and even desktop software. Last 10+ years though have been SaaS products.
Most of those times, the QA teams were small and automation wasn't a priority up until maybe the last 1 or so?
The mantra for the team was, feature testing to make sure our customers don't have a bad experience. Automation would be secondary so recently. There were existing automated tests from before so refactoring and creating new tests wasn't so bad given I had examples to use.
When we started a new project, we decided to go with Playwright / Python and it was pretty good. I'm still no expert on the Python side but the Playwright docs are pretty good. When Github Copilot and Claude Code were cleared for enterprise use, I was able to crank out tests with the tooling which felt good but also, realized that's where the learning stopped.
Being the lone QA on a team probably doesn't help that.
In any event, I'm panicked. Anxiety is setting in with the job market the way it is. I feel like I'm experienced in all the wrong areas now. It seems most postings are all about automation mixed with "some" manual testing, exploratory testing, test case design, planning etc.
Ageism is creeping in for me, I worry about my family and haven't had an appetite since I got laid off. I'm losing weight, continued of lack of sleep and can't stop doom scrolling the job boards seeing that I'm not qualified anymore. Everyone that I worked with reached out and said that I was great, totally improved the quality and provided confidence that we could deploy everyday. Some said I outgrew the QA role on the team and don't understand how this could happen. There's also no more QA on that team.
Sadly, management didn't see it that way.
I was working remotely and resigned to the fact I would go back into an office locally, except there's only a handful left in this city.
I feel alone, trying to put on a brave face for my family but suffering here in silence. I'm frightened I won't be able to provide for my family since I'm the primary income earner.
I'm not even sure what the point of this post is, other than to get this out of my head and hope to lesson my anxiety.
So i am a fresher and got automation testing role but people and some seniors start telling me that this role has no growth and all and i feel really demotivated what do I do??
Are there any blindspots people are missing just because of the AI hype cycle?
Hey there, I'm a QA laid off recently from T-Mobile.
I was thinking about creating an automation suite to keep my skills sharp, choosing some enterprise website to build a small regression suite for, and a couple some other ideas. But I thought why do it alone when I could perhaps do it with others.
The idea is treat it like work and log in every day 7 or 8:00 AM have daily stand up to coordinate what we're going to do, what we're going to work on, you know just like work.
Time commitment would be 4 hours a day, but at the same time I would like to attempt to coordinate our efforts for job searching and interviewing. We could do mock interviews with each other, share strategies for job hunting, resume review etcetera.
My idea is to meet every day on discord at 7:00 AM and have daily stand up at 7:10, and work till about noon.
The main goal is really just for us to find work, so if we find it to be more beneficial to coordinate efforts In that respect then there's nothing wrong with just doing that.
I've been in QA for years but my scripting abilities are a little rusty as I've spent a couple years doing manual testing, and a couple years before that leveraging scripts that were already written, working with an automation team and directing them instead of writing my own scripts. So I am looking forward to sharpening my skills again.
looking for 3 or 4 people.
Time zone is not a relevancy. You just need to be online when we're online, just like work.
I would be the team lead for this effort.
If you want to be involved, Please shoot me an email which is in my attached resume below.
Thank you.
-Christian
Hey guys, we are looking or some good free tool for our nonprofit test management. We were very dissapointed with Jira Xray and were happy in the past with testrail, testiny - however they are paid and expensive.
Can you recommend some free/cheap/nonprofit friendly test case management system for us, similar to testrail/testiny, with nice big dashboard, ability to invite others for testing, see progress, scenarios and etc. ?