No matter which industry you are in, core competitiveness is a topic that cannot be avoided. Improving core competitiveness is an important topic in our career.
So for testers, what is the core competitiveness of this position?
For me who was new to the workplace, it really confused me for a long time. When I first entered this industry, due to lack of experience, I would always be swayed by other people's words. Some people said that testing itself is a promising job, and there is a big gap in the market. But some people say that if you don't touch the code and only test a little bit, you will definitely be eliminated by the market.
At the beginning of employment, I really think that code is the core competitiveness of software testing. If a software tester can master the code freely, then he will definitely not be eliminated and replaced by the market. Functional testing and automated testing are just springboards. It's just one of those worthless outputs.
Today, I have been in this industry for 8 years. With more experience, the problems and phenomena I have seen are also different from those of the day. Or if you want to become a software test engineer, you can take a closer look at the views I shared. I think the core competitiveness of testers is mainly reflected in two aspects.
1. Ask questions
I think the first core competitiveness of a software test engineer is to be good at discovering problems that others cannot. Of course, many friends said that as a tester, this is where the job function lies, how can it be said to be the core competitiveness. Just because this is the main work content, we must be irreplaceable on key issues.
How to take finding problems as our core competitiveness, here are two main advantages, which can double your advantage in asking questions.
Advantage 1, early
The earlier the problem is found, the higher the value, and the lower the cost of solving the same problem. Often, the problem found before the demand has not been realized is the most valuable.
Advantage 2. Perceive what others cannot perceive
Some problems are difficult to find without certain skills and experience. If everyone can find a problem, then this can never be called your core competitiveness. Only when you can detect problems that others cannot. Only then can it show that you cannot be replaced.
Many students will think that the core skill of testing is to execute use cases. Of course, this is another core skill that cannot be ignored, but in my eyes, its priority will be later than identifying blind spots. Learning to identify blind spots is actually for organizing the entire The test lays a good foundation and can be reasonably assigned according to the content of the work.
For example, before developing unit tests, you can inform them of the problems that need attention in advance, which can help them avoid problems, or let test developers pay attention to which exceptions when doing interface-level automated tests. interface behavior, etc.
In the long run, the improvement of work efficiency will help you achieve irreplaceability in the group, which is what we call core competitiveness.
How to cultivate this core competitiveness? In addition to improving the basis of technology, the author thinks that there are the following ways:
1) Need to be familiar with the business enough
Those who can find problems that others cannot find must be the people who are most familiar with the business and products. Many testers have a misunderstanding that being familiar with the business should be the job of the product manager. However, product managers still have certain skills in terms of technology. If we are weak, we will not pay enough attention to some abnormal behaviors, so the tester is the person who is most capable of familiarizing with the product and system.
2) More experience
There is a lot of experience here and it can be called comprehensive cognition. After all, there are many experiences and many pitfalls that have been stepped on. Naturally, they also know where problems are prone to occur. Many old drivers have their own test methods to avoid stepping on. pit problem.
So to sum up, identifying blind spots can be one of the core competitiveness of testers. As the testing industry matures, the industry’s expectations for testing are getting higher and higher. Many companies will improve testing due to actual product needs and labor cost savings. Efficiency considerations. It can be seen that testing needs to find problems, but the sooner they are found, the higher the value.
2. Ability to learn and think quickly
Now many testers are focusing on the code, such as developing some code-level testing tools, such as coverage tools, code scanning tools, etc., including some high-end things through business contacts.
These things seem to be very powerful on the surface, high-grade, using automation to save time and effort, and just need to implement it after writing, but the actual situation is not the same as imagined, whether it is automatic code scanning or coverage Regardless of the statistical analysis of the rate, the quality of the final product after release is still reflected in the substantive results of the functional test.
That is, we will encounter various problems in the process. I often encountered such a situation at that time. The bug was not exposed through the early inspection of the code, and finally caused the client to crash abnormally. When there are many such situations , I can’t help but think to myself, is the code really that important to those in the testing industry, or is my direction wrong from the very beginning, and whether choosing code as the core competitiveness is too exaggerated? , actual results may often vary materially.
So in the final analysis, I think that as a software test engineer, you should not take code as your core competitiveness, but should take the ability to learn and think quickly, problem divergence, communication, coordination and summary as your core competitiveness. It can make us go further and longer on this road.
write at the end
Of course, no matter which one you choose as your core competitiveness, you must not let go of learning. Software testers with strong learning ability dare to experience and try new technologies boldly, so their technology stack is always constantly updated.
For software testers, reading documents is actually the fastest way to learn. For the technologies commonly used in your work, take the time to read all the official documents. In fact, there are not as many as you think, but you will definitely have unexpected The harvest, the premise of all core competitions needs to be created by continuous learning, and embracing technological upgrades and revolutions can keep you from being eliminated by the market.
Finally: In order to give back to the die-hard fans, I have compiled a complete software testing video learning tutorial for you. If you need it, you can get it for free【保证100%免费】
Software Testing Interview Documentation
We must study to find a high-paying job. The following interview questions are the latest interview materials from first-tier Internet companies such as Ali, Tencent, and Byte, and some Byte bosses have given authoritative answers. Finish this set The interview materials believe that everyone can find a satisfactory job.
