>High quality QA people are worth their weight in gold.

They absolutely are, but I've only met a couple high quality QA people in my career.

daotoad 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That's because we don't value QA in the way that matters.

If you're a talented SDET, you're probably also, at least, a good SDE.

If you'll make more money and have more opportunity as an SDE, which career path will you follow?

Also, for most people passionate about software, they'd rather be building than testing, especially if pay is at least equal.

	▲	MoreQARespect 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Testing is probably my favorite topic in development and I kind of wish I could make it my "official" specialty but no way in hell am I taking a pay cut and joining the part of the org nobody listens to.

RHSeeger 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That, and this

> Many, but far from all, QA people are just not skilled

can also be said of developers.

	▲	anonzzzies 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I am going to say that outside the HN echo chamber, it is closer to all than on the other side. Have you been to fortune 1000 non software corps? If you would throw away 90% of their IT people, people would barely notice. Probably just miss John his cool weekend stories on Monday (which is basically almost weekend!). LLM drives this home, painfully; we come in these companies a lot and it is becoming very clear most can be replaced today with a 100$ claude code subscription. We see the skilled devs using claude code on their own dime as one of their tools, often illegally (not allowed yet by company legal) and the rest basically, as they always did, trying to get through week without getting caught snoring too loud.

I've also met about the same number of high quality developers in my career.

Most people are mid.

	▲	seattle_spring 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The average QA/SDET I've worked with are far, far less capable than the average SDE.