At one point in Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe the main characters find themselves aboard a huge spaceship filled with frozen bodies.
The ship's captain tells them that his planet, Golgafrincham, was facing impending doom and that the decision was made to evacuate on three huge Ark ships.
'A' Ark would carry all the best thinkers and artists, 'C' Ark all the workers - those who actually make and do practical things.
The ship they are now on - 'B' Ark - carried all the others ... the "middlemen".
Ark B was sent off first, and although they've never heard from them they assume that Arks A and C are following on behind somewhere.
Of course, what the Captain is unable to recognise is that Arks A and C never left, and the remaining Golgafrinchans simply wanted to rid themselves of the third of their population they regarded as "useless".
Periodically - and somewhat bizarrely - being a tester reminds me of this story. Because I can feel a bit like I'm on 'B' Ark. Unable to convince others of my value, and seemingly with little future.
Of course, it's a personal view and I wouldn't want to claim that it's true of testers generally.
What makes testers valuable?
Some of the skills that attracted me to testing several years ago don't seem to be as valuable anymore. Things like communication skills; business-knowledge; customer empathy; critical thinking; ability - and desire - to learn
Value in a tester - at least if you want to get hired - now seems to lie mainly in ready-made automation and tool use ability.
Arguably this is right - those skills are definitely important and useful, and they are certainly in demand. Personally I'm always impressed by testers with deep technical skills and always striving to improve my own.
"Experience" is good if it means knowledge of the right technologies/tools. (And the right ones vary.)
But "experience" is bad if it means you've been around a few years and you're in your 40s.
In the wider context of software development some hold the view that dedicated testers aren't needed anymore anyway. Testing might be - but that can be automated, can't it?
Or informed by actual users after going live. And then fixed quickly via a Continuous Deployment / DevOps pipeline. (As an aside: for a craft that is at its best context-driven, there seems to be little recognition in testing these days of a software world that's outside of web or mobile.)
Within the testing community, particuarly on Twitter, the impression sometimes given is that the testers with the most value are those who are able to go to, and especially speak at, conferences.
Conveying value
Of course in Adams' story the punchline is that included among those the Golgafrinchans have cut adrift (in a ship programmed to crash-land) were all their Telephone Sanitisers.
Which leads eventually to the two-thirds who stayed behind being wiped out by an epidemic which starts from a dirty telephone.
I doubt that the neglect of some testing skills will lead to any problems quite that dramatic.
But maybe there's something in the notion that actual value is not always recognised. And that conveying one's value - always a challenge - is harder when the prevailing opinions differ.
The ship's captain tells them that his planet, Golgafrincham, was facing impending doom and that the decision was made to evacuate on three huge Ark ships.
'A' Ark would carry all the best thinkers and artists, 'C' Ark all the workers - those who actually make and do practical things.
The ship they are now on - 'B' Ark - carried all the others ... the "middlemen".
Ark B was sent off first, and although they've never heard from them they assume that Arks A and C are following on behind somewhere.
Of course, what the Captain is unable to recognise is that Arks A and C never left, and the remaining Golgafrinchans simply wanted to rid themselves of the third of their population they regarded as "useless".
Periodically - and somewhat bizarrely - being a tester reminds me of this story. Because I can feel a bit like I'm on 'B' Ark. Unable to convince others of my value, and seemingly with little future.
Of course, it's a personal view and I wouldn't want to claim that it's true of testers generally.
What makes testers valuable?
Some of the skills that attracted me to testing several years ago don't seem to be as valuable anymore. Things like communication skills; business-knowledge; customer empathy; critical thinking; ability - and desire - to learn
Value in a tester - at least if you want to get hired - now seems to lie mainly in ready-made automation and tool use ability.
Arguably this is right - those skills are definitely important and useful, and they are certainly in demand. Personally I'm always impressed by testers with deep technical skills and always striving to improve my own.
"Experience" is good if it means knowledge of the right technologies/tools. (And the right ones vary.)
But "experience" is bad if it means you've been around a few years and you're in your 40s.
In the wider context of software development some hold the view that dedicated testers aren't needed anymore anyway. Testing might be - but that can be automated, can't it?
Or informed by actual users after going live. And then fixed quickly via a Continuous Deployment / DevOps pipeline. (As an aside: for a craft that is at its best context-driven, there seems to be little recognition in testing these days of a software world that's outside of web or mobile.)
Within the testing community, particuarly on Twitter, the impression sometimes given is that the testers with the most value are those who are able to go to, and especially speak at, conferences.
Conveying value
Of course in Adams' story the punchline is that included among those the Golgafrinchans have cut adrift (in a ship programmed to crash-land) were all their Telephone Sanitisers.
Which leads eventually to the two-thirds who stayed behind being wiped out by an epidemic which starts from a dirty telephone.
I doubt that the neglect of some testing skills will lead to any problems quite that dramatic.
But maybe there's something in the notion that actual value is not always recognised. And that conveying one's value - always a challenge - is harder when the prevailing opinions differ.
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