![\"Princess\"](\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/wlEmoticon-princess.png\")
. Given the perceived turnover rate in testing and the growth of the industry, if you are good at bringing new testers up to speed, you should have gainful employment for years to come.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve\u00a0 been thinking a lot lately about what\u2019s next in software testing. What are the new ideas in testing? What is our role in the future of quality software? How do we advance the state of the art in testing?<\/p>\n
But I worry.<\/p>\n
I think forward thinking will come from highly experienced testers with a breadth of knowledge and the ability to lead to help us define what\u2019s next.But testing still seems to be\u00a0 (for most) a job you do for a while until you do something else rather than a career.<\/p>\n
When I go to industry test conferences, someone often will ask the keynote audience how long they\u2019ve been testing. For as long as I\u2019ve been attending conferences, over 75% of the audience has been testing less than a year. Most of the people who have been testing longer are presenting at the conference or attending in some other \u201cofficial\u201d capacity (vendor tools, consulting opportunities, etc.).<\/p>\n
I think the obstacles to advancing testing are worse than the revolving door pattern of the career choice. The role of the experienced (or \u201cexpert\u201d) tester appears to be a role of helping the new testers get a handle on the basics. Now \u2013 don\u2019t get me wrong, I have said a million times that the role of an expert tester is to make their team and peers better, but it\u2019s a vicious circle when the career path of a tester ends at coaching and mentoring for the noobs. Then again, it\u2019s big money if you want to go into test consulting . Given the perceived turnover rate in testing and the growth of the industry, if you are good at bringing new testers up to speed, you should have gainful employment for years to come.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s good to coach, mentor, and guide new testers<\/em> \u2013 but it\u2019s not enough. There are a world of challenges out there in testing, but little exploration into advancements, let along game changing activities. I\u2019m approaching 20 years in software testing, and I still love it. But I think there\u2019s much more out there than most of us think.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s go find it.<\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve\u00a0 been thinking a lot lately about what\u2019s next in software testing. What are the new ideas in testing? What is our role in the future of quality software? How do we advance the state of the art in testing? But I worry. I think forward thinking will come from highly experienced testers with a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}