I'm a software test engineer, I test shit and find problems - and yea I also verify stuff works the way someone who matters says it should :). Over last 5+ years all I have heard is "Automate all the tests!". I've never been a programmer, and while I've tried a few times to 'teach myself' to code, each attempt ends with me knowing how to do the classic "Hello World" bullshit and never using anything like I learned at work - like ever. Yea I've done a little Java, fixing code that already existed, doing real simple shit that a high-schooler probably can do. Java, Python, Perl, Ruby - yea I've hello world the shit out of those...
Being a non-programmer used to not bother me, I'm wicked fucking good at what I do and no automation is going to replace that, period. With that said, people and organizations are actively looking for ways to eliminate people like me with automation. I may not be a programmer but I'm not dumb, I see the handwriting on the wall.... can I last another 15 years in this game without coding, without automating shit, or will I be automated out of my livelyhood? I lose sleep thinking about this shit, for real.
I saw someone close to me recently automated out of part of his part-time job, he went from working 3 days a week to 2. That shit really hit him hard, it hit me too.
So when I recently thought I was about to move into a new career direction, really going to be put in a position to learn programming from folks like +jay vyas who seem like they genuinely want to help me, as long as I put in the effort of course, shift my career to a more in-demand skill set - I was like HELL YEA!!!
I got to work on that new team for ONE full day, then I got pulled/pushed back to 'my day job', executing manual tests for a product launch with yet another tight deadline.
There's talk I'll be back, I'll be on the team, writing code and submitting PRs, ... and I'm trying to believe that shit's going to happen... but there's this voice in my head telling me something different...
Failure's not a motherfucking option...
As always, what I blog about are my views and opinions and only mine, and are never the views or opinions of my past | present | future employers.
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