1. The testing industry is changing
Driven by the new trends and requirements of the Internet, the testing industry has also undergone great changes unknowingly. From the ignorant development in the early years, everyone crossed the river by feeling the stones, and most colleges and universities set up software testing majors. In recent years, various test trainings have become popular. If the early software testing industry is still a hot spot, with the continuous influx of people changing careers and graduating college students into the software testing industry, the current "gap" in the software testing industry has been basically saturated, and the demand for the most basic functional testing positions has become more and more. less and less. The entry threshold for testing has also changed from a real zero foundation to the current requirement for professional computer skills (including not limited to programming skills). The importance of software testing in enterprises, especially in the Internet industry, has also changed from dispensable to dispensable. to indispensable.
2. The distribution of industry personnel presents a bipolar situation
The testing industry continues to develop, and the industry has shown a serious polarization trend. On the one hand, there are experienced testing experts who belong to the full-stack compound talents, but the proportion of personnel in this type of industry is relatively rare. One is due to industry reasons, strong coding ability, and those with experience in architecture are generally in the development department; the other is high requirements, senior test development engineers must not only be proficient in testing-related skills, but also be proficient in front-end design, server development, etc. Almost a full-stack engineer; while programmers are generally proficient in one or a few points, and fewer and fewer can learn everything from front to back. On the other side is the testing novice . Even though some have been in the testing industry for several years, there are still many testers who are still at this stage of only business function testing. As for this type of testing practitioners, except for some who are content with the status quo, most of them still want to study hard. Those who want to improve just don’t know the direction of learning, or they don’t know how to learn.
3. Enterprises need more high-end comprehensive talents
But no matter which one it belongs to, for enterprises, if they want to develop their business quickly, they must have a strong testing team to ensure quality, and promote quality through a series of quality assurance methods, such as introducing CI, CD and other means. Rapid iteration and delivery of projects. This requires relevant test engineers to be able to consider design and solve problems from multiple aspects, not only the implementation cost of the project, but also the personnel involved in testing, development, products and even users, and at the same time, they must be in touch with the company's development prospects and The direction fits and serves it well. Test talents who provide this kind of ability are more popular in the company. Only a few people will enter the talent market in the annual job hunting season, and they will find a job soon. This is also the direction of every tester's efforts. Only Only with the corresponding value strength can you be qualified to ask the company for the return you expect .
4. It is always difficult for enterprises to recruit people and the supply and demand of job seekers to match
Many students complained that why companies have higher and higher requirements for recruiting people. In addition to education (bachelor degree or above), age (within 35 years old) and project experience are also required, which is too difficult. In fact, companies are also quite distressed: it is too difficult to recruit a few suitable candidates. This is the so-called "supply and demand" imbalance. A large number of test practitioners cannot find jobs, and a large number of companies cannot find suitable candidates.
In the final analysis, the core problem that causes the mismatch and the imbalance between supply and demand is still focused on the mismatch of capability requirements .
So what are the core skills of testers or the core competitiveness of testers? Testers should think about this issue, and employers should also think about what kind of testers they need? I believe that everyone will have this feeling more or less when interviewing for a job. When recruiting, companies require the use of various frameworks, various programming languages, and various tools. After we have learned the use of testing technology and testing tools, what are the core competitiveness in the end?
5. What is your core competitiveness?
Speaking of the software testing industry, what is your core competitiveness? This is a very interesting topic, just like we often say "the value problem in the team", you often see the testers themselves thinking, where and what is our value? But we rarely see software developers or architects, or operation and maintenance teams ask such a question, to find their own value. This is because the testers are not sure about the value itself, so the uncertainty of the value itself will bring a series of problems.
In the early software industry, you will find that there is a common phenomenon. When some university graduates or graduate students go to interview for a job, they will find that the code ability of the interview may not be very good. In this case, the company will Are you willing to take the test? But with the changes of the current era, the current software test engineer, his knowledge, and the content he needs to master have far exceeded the previous ones. It can be said that his knowledge far exceeds that of development. For example, in some technical On the surface, and on the understanding of the product.
So in this case, let's talk about the core value of an excellent software test engineer. We can confidently say that test engineers are irreplaceable and a professionally segmented field. Like in the early years, we talked about testing, that is, software testing, and there is no market segment, but now you talk about testing, there are too many testing fields, in addition to the traditional test based on the business field, and then there is testing develop.
6. Why is the company unwilling to offer you a high salary?
Practitioners often ask me: "How to switch to a test development position? How to start a test development position? What does a test development position do? What knowledge do you need to master?"
In fact, when you ask these questions, you may not be suitable for this position. Or you just heard that the test development salary is high, and you come here for the salary, maybe you are not suitable at all.
With the current setting of test development posts in various companies, and test development posts generally bear the title of "high salary" (at least in the field of testing, the salary of test development is generally much higher than that of business manual testing), More and more manual testers are eager to transfer to test development, but they often just see the high salary of test development posts, but ignore the most important point (the efforts of those who get high salaries are also more than you)! Let's take a look at some of the comments below. (Have you ever thought so when you were reading the article?)
- Many test colleagues in the QQ group and WeChat group often complain that the test work is very hard on weekdays, with a lot of work and overtime, but the salary and bonus are less than those of other positions (such as development).
- I have been doing testing work for several years, but when I went outside to apply for a job, I repeatedly hit a wall and couldn't get a salary offer that I was satisfied with.
- Thinking that there is no "money" for the testing position, and the work content is meaningless, it is better to switch to development and products as soon as possible.
The reason why many practitioners in the industry have the above-mentioned aspirations is that the core problem is that the salary they get for their work does not match the return they hope to get. As Ma Yun said before, there are only two reasons why corporate employees leave their jobs: 1. Not enough money. 2. The platform is unable to display its talents and feels aggrieved .
I believe that the vast majority of people are "falling" on the first reason. Then why do the salaries offered by enterprises always fail to meet the requirements of "most employees"? Can't the business afford wages? But in the same company, why is there such a saying that "test development" and "development" have high salaries in other positions? This is obviously not because the company cannot afford the salary, but that the company believes that the value that TA can help the company is only worth so much.
7. Misconceptions about high-paying jobs
Whether it is "test development" or "development", against the common saying "high salary", most of them still misunderstand this statement, not the so-called "job salary theory", thinking that doing this job, There must be a high salary. Just imagine, there are also many developers, and those whose salary is missing are higher than those who are good at testing. And those who have "high-paying positions" are because their abilities and the value they can bring to the company are also higher. Therefore, `High salary! = post`, and **should be that the high salary should be equal to the matching ability and the equivalent value that can be brought to the enterprise**.
This point of view just responds to what was mentioned above, and now more and more manual testers want to switch to test development. But switching to test development is not the key. If the ability has not changed, but the title of the position has changed. Even if you are assigned a title of test development or development, but your ability is only doing some trivial work, then It is still impossible for companies to pay for you. The reason why all test development has a high salary is that the comprehensive ability of enterprises to test development is no less than that of development, and their technical ability and ability to solve business problems are even stronger than development in some aspects. Therefore, companies are willing to pay high salaries for these people in return.
I would like to say a word to those practitioners who want to change jobs or complain about their low wages: changing jobs is not the ultimate goal, and improving their own capabilities is the fundamental . If your ability is outstanding enough, and the value you can bring to your team and enterprise has exceeded what the test needs to provide, even if you only bear the title of business test, I believe that the enterprise will still pay you a corresponding high return.
8. How to build personal core competitiveness
Those students who want to get a high salary or want to transfer to test development, what they need to do should be to continuously improve their own capabilities and value points. These value points are based on the team and the company. There are nothing more than two types of capabilities: 1. Comprehensive technical capabilities, 2. Ability to help product business solve problems.
1. Improve comprehensive technical capabilities . When it comes to technology, the first level is the development language (whether it’s Python or Java, it really doesn’t matter, let’s understand one first).
First be able to independently develop a set of usable things. As for the high-performance and high-availability code you write, you can put it away first. But at least you have to pass the code to realize the needs of the business side, right?
Many test students asked, should I learn Python or Java? Half a year later, if you ask him how he is learning, he may still be struggling with the question: "Should I learn Python or Java?", and he has not started learning at all.
"Learning this matter, you understand the truth, but you lack action." Although this sentence seems like nonsense, it is the truth.
Many times, I look at those who: "I know that I have a problem with my ability, I want to learn something, I ask others what they should learn, and after getting the answer, I still haven't acted for half a year" (don't laugh, you who read the article, maybe it is).
Otherwise, how could it happen: In the market, it is so difficult to recruit some reliable practitioners. I saw that many companies failed to recruit suitable candidates after several months. Although there are reasons for the company, the incompetence of job seekers is a large part of the reason.
The industry is developing, and there are too many students who have been sticking to "their own business knowledge, testing process, and tools from a few years ago". Borrow the previous point of view, come out for interviews and chat regularly, and you will find that you can't find a suitable job at all.
If you are still struggling with what development language to learn, don't worry, start learning Python now, now.
Python is easy to learn, simple and easy to use. Moreover, if you don't do test development, you can also play with various automated tests through Python.
OK, the above content is some views on the core competitiveness of test (development) engineers. It is excerpted from part of the content in my official account and only represents personal views.
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