r/QualityAssurance

I work as a sound technician in the TV sphere, the salary is pretty average, but I would like to find myself a job where I would feel more useful. Going to work and barely doing anything is very depressing for me. I have even considered just leaving it giving myself a break.

Of course, I had an idea to switch to IT. Even had few courses of Python to become a backend developer, but dropped it because of high competition, and also unrealistic demands and expectations from employers… I was considering Manual QA to be my last resort. But reading posts and considering the job market now, it doesn’t seem like a working idea. Do you think it’s a good time to enter QA? (Not only Manual, but also Automation).

I am 26F, if it matters 😅

I’ve spent years working with traditional QA and test automation, where the mental model was relatively straightforward:
requirements → input → deterministic behavior → expected result → assertion.
AI systems are making me question that entire model.
With an LLM, RAG system or agent, the same input may produce multiple valid outputs. A system can pass functional tests and still hallucinate. An agent can successfully complete a task but use the wrong tool along the way. A RAG pipeline can return a plausible answer grounded in the wrong document.

And suddenly:

>!expected == actual!<

doesn’t describe quality particularly well anymore.
The more I study this, the more I think experienced QA engineers may actually have a very useful foundation for AI systems.
Not because we know machine learning.
Because we’re trained to distrust assumptions.
Someone says:
“It works.”
QA asks:
Under what conditions?
How many times did you run it?
What happens at the boundary?
What happens with bad input?
Can I reproduce the failure?
What happens when one dependency changes?
What evidence do we actually have that this is safe to release?
I’m starting to see an emerging intersection of:
traditional Quality Engineering
LLM evals
reliability engineering
RAG and agent testing
adversarial testing
AI red teaming
production observability
I’m not suggesting QA should suddenly own ML research, security, safety and MLOps.
Quite the opposite.
I’m trying to understand where the boundaries should be.
For people here already testing AI products:
What parts of AI quality genuinely belong to QA?
And if an experienced automation engineer wanted to move into AI without throwing away years of QA experience, what would you consider the essential new skill set?

I'm seeing so many posts how people are getting burnout, or getting frustrated/scared of AI takeover, or just not being able to get a job.

Maybe my company acts a bit different from the norm but I still find there's a good balance of ongoing and growing mix of manual and automation with AI mostly just used as assistance for test case creation, and maybe some automation coding.

We still do things like a mix of proper test prep, test rail creation, general good use of sprint and monthly release timing, and a good mix of dev/test coordination and while DEV still makes their own unit tests ultimately QA/Test Team still plays a big part of controlled testing.

Obviously no job is perfect, but in the 7+ years I've been working I like how relatively stable things to be here since proper "test thought" is always a priority for QA team and just using the right mix of manual and automation testing (hell half our team is still mostly/only manual testing)

It does help our system is pretty data sensitive so it would be risky to go the full-on AI approach but so far there's no worry of AI takeover or job security from what I see (provided continue to do good job of course).

Malta, estou a pensar em QA como carreira profissional, como está o salário nesta área? Podem partilhar por favor a vossa experiência?

Another bug slipped through and management caught it. Some of you know my situation from my previous post I’m the only QA and there’s often pressure to finish testing and push by EOD.

This one was a normal user journey: updating the note directly worked, but updating it through another workflow showed “status updated” without actually updating the note.

I accept that I missed the E2E scenario. But when you’re constantly pushed to deliver by EOD, some coverage gaps are inevitable.

At what point is an escaped bug a QA failure, and at what point is it a process/deadline problem?

Not looking for reassurance genuinely want an objective perspective from experienced QAs.

What's your advice for someone with a Master's degree in biotech trying to get a job in QA, with no previous experience. Besides doing internships, what else can I do to replace my lack of experience?

Just wanted to know how you feel these days with an AI adoption. I'm SDET/QA and using Claude code daily... Any sort of utility script? - Claude code does it in an instant! New automation test? Claude code! Fixing bugs in pipeline? Claude code! , Analyze data, preparing reports? Well...

I can create whatever now, but it doesn't made my work any easier, but other way around - all day I'm just multitasking and context switching between one task to other and it somehow fries my brains, because amount of work has increased.

Now I mostly spend time on communicating, planning and making decisions about what and how to test, in past I also did all that, but I could chill a bit when I needed to create some script or new automation test, now these kind of tasks are almost gone.

Hi everyone!
I’ve been working in QA for about 5 months. So far, I have experience with Manual Testing and API Testing using Postman, but I have zero experience in Automation.

I’d like to start learning Test Automation, and I’m currently considering Playwright.

What would you recommend for someone starting from zero in Automation? I don’t mind if the resource is free or paid — my main priority is finding something that gives me a strong foundation and teaches things properly, rather than just following tutorials without understanding.

Also, what do you think about the freeCodeCamp course “Software Testing Course – Playwright, E2E, and AI Agents”? Is it good for a complete beginner in Automation, or would you recommend starting with something else?

I’d also really appreciate hearing about your own experience:
How did you start learning Automation?
What was the best resource/course you used?
Is there anything you wish you had learned earlier?

Thanks in advance!

I am currently working as a QA in a Bangalore based company (SaaS based project), having 4.5 Y.O.E.

I am a manual tester, did a bit of performance testing as well.
I run unit and acceptance tests and have also worked with Docker & Git.
I have also worked with third party integrations like Bigcommerce, Shopify, QB desktop, Lightspeed, Magento, UPS, FedEx etc.

Recently I have started learning playwright with Python.
And also using GitHub Copilot at work.

Here are my queries:

1. Really need to switch now as it's high time. What else do I need to learn/know as per current market standards?

2. My current CTC is <5 LPA (Remote Work). What should be my expected CTC when applying for jobs?

Thanks

I’m currently working at a startup as a QA/Dev. I can’t blame the company for trying different things because it’s barely surviving. Right now, we just test the system quickly, turn it over, and release it. For the past 2–3 days, we’ve been in the hot seat for missing simple bugs. The stakeholders need to use the system within a day, and the developers build tasks in a day. As QA, we are expected to find all bugs within that same one-day deadline.

Is there any special workaround for this type of working condition anything that may help us maybe more effective?

Hi guys,

Can somebody with experience in Performance Testing or Performance Engineering explain these 2 roles and what they are doing?

I m a QA with experience in networking and linux systems and I am interested in this kind of positions.

What s the average background for a performance test/engineer? QA? DEV? DEVOPS?

How can you transition?

Thanks

Yesterday i have attempted the exam and waiting for the result. I haven't received any e-mail yet. How do i check it? Do i need to wait? Can anyone guide me here please

I work as a QA at a product based company and I regularly test software applications on embedded instruments that are connected to scanners or other hardware.

Do you think working in such a domain that involves electronics, hardware and software more valuable and secure in the age of AI? Compared to just software QA or Automation QA?

I’m curious how QA teams are handling code written with help from AI tools.

Not asking about AI replacing QA or anything like that. I’m more interested in practical testing impact.

For teams where developers use tools like Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, etc.:

• Have you noticed any change in the types of bugs that reach QA?
• Does AI-generated code create more “looks correct but isn’t” issues?
• Are tests catching most of the problems, or do some issues still require human context?
• Has it changed how you think about test coverage?
• Do developers submit larger or less understood changes because AI helped write them?

I’m trying to understand whether AI assisted development has changed QA work in practice, or whether it’s mostly the same testing process as before.

We've been on TestRail for 4 years now. we started on a small plan and now every renewal the licensing model bites us. We've got QA, devs who sometimes review test runs and 2 PMs who just need read access to dashboards. I'm looking for Testrail alternatives that cover the basics we need like test cases, test results, good reporting and some level of auditing. And the migration process is also a big point since weve got yearss of test data built up!

Hi i am 24. I work in Pune, India at SDET role (Company: Bajaj). I am on PIP since 11 August. Although i have 4 months (2 months PIP + 2 months notice period) at max left i am panicking a lot

I have strong hands on selenium java and playwright javascript (wrote from scratch while migration from selenium to playwright as a core contributor to the project). I maintain several squads and have built several individual projects for major clients

My major drawback is i have full time experience of 1 year 11 months plus 6 months internship in the same company. Currently i write it as 2.5 yoe so as to not get kicked out at initial. Another drawback is that my salary is i think on the higher end based on my experience which is 9.5 LPA. I set my expectations wherever asked as 15 LPA

I am applying to jobs via portal, naukri, LinkedIn and instahyre from 13 August. I have started sending cold mails for the job posts i find on LinkedIn. Have not got any response yet

I want to know what else can i do or if anyone may know any job or can refer me that would be a lot of help. Also please give me any kind of advice in this situation

I’ve spent the last four years building an open-source, declarative performance testing tool that requires zero coding.

The idea was simple: help QAs and performance engineers build and run performance tests without dealing with the complexity of writing scripts.

It can do many of the things scripting-based tools can do, but without requiring you to write code.

The tool has so many nice ideas to help engineers analyze bottlenecks so quick with a built-in live dashboard.

And yet… I failed to convince QAs and performance engineers to use it.

What makes this harder is that I don’t really know why.

I’m not getting enough feedback to understand what I got wrong.

So I’m asking this community:

Why do you think I failed?

Is it the problem I’m solving?
The way I’m approaching it?
The lack of scripting?
The tool itself?
Or simply that engineers don’t need another performance testing tool?

I genuinely want honest feedback, even if it’s harsh.

I can’t include the link here because Reddit considers it self-promotion, and the post would likely be removed. But I’d really appreciate your perspective on why a tool like this might fail to gain adoption.

I feel so bad for the years I spent on it and was always saying it is not mature yet! Even though I got a lot of experience out of it, but it is really a hard feeling to fail!

I want to get started on QA Automation as soon as possible. Are there online courses that teach automation. Topics I want to learn

- Programming

- Web fundamentals enough to be able to learn to automate and understand what is going on

- Selenium

If I want to learn to automate user actions do I need to learn anything else.

So i been wanting to get into QA. Been applying since March. I have 11 years of beta testing iOS (since 2015)
Beta tested apps like PayPal, Snapchat, Google Chrome, ChatGPT(Android) Copilot(Android) and learning Swift Fundamentals through Swift Playgrounds and some gaming Betas(consoles) as well(these are considered projects on my LinkedIn and the gaming betas are listed as one project not individually)
I would like to believe I’m more manual QA, i do have a certificate for Intro to Software Quality Assurance, and i do have at-least a badge for Postman Api basics(just decided to wake up one day and learn API)
I have no automation skills whatsoever (but always curious and eager to learn)
Been well worried that what I’m doing isn’t actual QA work(however i did have someone on my LinkedIn who is a Senior QA engineer tell me that i knew what i was doing and wished me good luck)
I only had one job offer and then they filled it before i got to interview, i had 2 jobs tell me not right now 1 job i rejected because it was literally work for free and i bring in clients, and 6 rejections out of now 58 job applications.
I know the job market sucks right now and feel late to the party but i think i have a shot with QA… and if anyone has any advice that would be great

Currently the sole qa in the team I’m in. Due to AI, devs have been able to be efficient with products and they are a lot more things to test. I’m starting to feel like a bottleneck.

There are discussions about hiring another QA to the team. But they currently looking to see how things go with AI and integrating it with QA.

If there is a QA that ends up joining our team, would it be good to discuss with my manager about getting a job title change and also a pay increase? They mentioned if another QA joins the team, I would be leading them. I am currently a senior qa within the team.