A Day In The Life of a QA Tester at a Software Development Company

The software development industry wouldn't be where it is without the need for QA testers. A Quality Assurance Tester, or QA Tester, plays a vital role in the development process of any software application. They are responsible for evaluating the quality and usability of features that have already been developed by programmers.
In short, it's their job to find bugs before it's too late!
Check out behind the scenes of a day in the life of QA Tester, Michael, working from the Silverchip office in Manchester, UK.

[@lorenzrosenthal119]

we have a guy on my team who did QA for a decade. He has a godly sense for the weirdest user paths in our app which lead to bugs. It is truly amazing! Also he is a truffle pig for finding causes of bugs even in code he neither wrote nor is his primary programming language. Invaluable team member!

[@Cat-vd4ju]

I sit and I eat all day. That's exactly the information I was wanting to learn about when I clicked this - what a total stranger likes to eat.

[@simondean9127]

introduced as someone who checks and finds bugs within code which has already been created. I paused it right there, already a very poor representation of what a QA does! for anyone who doesn't know, a QA is involved from the very beginning, all the way to the very end, and influences at every stage to advocate for quality. This means sense checking the idea and how it will fit with the application, it means ensuring the plan is aligned to the idea, ensuring the plan actually makes sense for someone to build and someone else to have tangible items to check it's right. then it's often about working with the developers, helping them get it right first time, ensuring any curveballs are figured out, being their link to the business and the customer. after all that... then we check it, raise bugs and retest ect. I would say the most important thing you can do in this role, is understand the work and people enough to ask the difficult questions early and ensure information and understanding is chased down before anyone tries to build anything. I hope this helps anyone looking at this as a career, it's a brilliant one and requires some real world skills.

[@licriss]

This is a should be case, a tonne of companies still don't have mature testing practices like this and are often dumped in well after a build is out

@simondean9127 You are totally right, but as @licriss already mentioned, many companies, especially start ups and small businesses, don't have the resources to the all the static testing and are always pushing the development without properly testing it and evaluating all the possible issues beforehand. That's just the sad reality for us QA people. After that you are stuck with more regression testing, reproducing and reporting bugs and working with the developers in general than working on the quality of the product with Product and Business team. The only way out is raising these issues with the company management, getting more testers involved or changing the project/job for a more "mature SDLC/TDLC" one :)

[@marklevy2092]

your video literally showed nothing . well done.

[@kiralighto2573]

I woulf love to see real world problems in software testing. Thanks !

[@greglismonjr1368]

I am in the process of beginning my courses to become a QA Tester. Looking forward to learning more about this field of work and eventually working in this industry. Thank you for the insight

[@SangBrian]

Sounds so good to be true 😂. Amazing video as always! 💯

[@goxyeagle8446]

Strange I didn't expect these kind of skills required for qa tester. One of the reasons for entering IT was chance to work from home withe less interaction with people as regular jobs..I guess I was wrong.

[@caekeherderofrabbits940]

There is a misconception of total isolation in IT but it is exceptionally collaborative BDD

[@swagnone619]

Dude literally talked more about what he eats than what he actually does. Most of these people either are under NDA and can't show what they do or their job is just not that hard and they're trying to make it seem like they do more. Most people watching this are probably in my shoes - thinking about a career in IT but not looking to be a developer. I can tell you after watching idk how many videos about qa that I still have no idea what a normal day in the life of a qa is.

[@ninjaxmen]

Depends on the company, usually you start with a daily standup meeting where someone asks you what did yesterday, what you’re doing today and if you’re going to have any blockers(problems). Then you can look at your ticket tracking software(most popular is jira) and then start writing your automation tests based on that. You could be doing some manual testing too. And that’s pretty much iy

[@swagnone619]

@@ninjaxmen Thank You! Took me like 40 seconds to read this yet the video is minutes long lol

[@licriss]

One of the biggest complaints I see from people getting from other IT fields into testing is either constant context switching or boring repetitive tasks depending on the workplace and the fact that suddenly noone understands what they do and doesn't believe that they can't work faster, unless you get more into automation then its just context switching and the ability to stop things before theyre done because most places cut the time for QA much more than the dev time. For manual testng basically at the lowest level you're trying to determine how to do certain actions in an app based on what someone (BA, PO or user) thinks they want to do with an app, and taking all possible interpretations of someones desired behaviour as well as finding different ways to do it, a good manual tester can figure out what the least clever, most clever and average users are likely to do to get to an end goal and script those sequences out and do those, essentially the goals of the most effective manual testers are once they've done the workflow normally they do it in a way that gets the devs to say "thats not how you're supposed to use it" or "no real user would do that" because those are the points that usually break in production and you'll pick up the other small or obvious bugs along the way. The hardest part for most at first is often trying to describe what you did or will do in a clear repeatable way or what you did yesterday because usually you have to take a risk based approach and as soon as you've worked through the key areas of one system workflow you should be switching to the next highest priority and you'll be often dealing with systems that are too broken to do some actions within good tims which then gets political because people never believe a slow process is actually slow until they try it themselves, also explaining convoluted processes to pissed of devs is a big part of the job, some devs get really aggressive with testers who are able to figure out the more irrational workflows especially ones that have worked at places that make high bug count a negative KPI Some places are more mature and give proper time to testing as well as time spent automating the most boring or tedious tests, in those places typically manual testing will just be about taking a user journey and doing it in both the most basic and most unusual ways to try and find bugs in a given area for an app, these places are somewhat rare though

[@maxminataylor5928]

I’m a junior QA tester. Obvs it depends what stage of testing, normally a typical day is writing test scripts, prepping data, and arranging for key users to come in and perform tests then guiding and assisting them through the tests (for user acceptance testing). You also submit defect reports, progress reports, help with aspects of the test plan etc. If you look at the ISTQB CTFL syllabus you may get a rough idea. Hope this helps :)

[@samoandoll]

😂😂omg 😂

[@SoftwareTestSolutions]

Thanks for the great video!

[@jotjakubjot]

What the actual fuck.First piece of remotely useful information is at 2:03 and it's only one sentence that gives any insight in tester's work. This entire video could have been one sentence. Well done.

[@chilldaadz9399]

@michaelclark09 do you have a real World roadmap as to how to become a QA tester? or anyone who can answer this question?

[@aaprimeteam6266]

I'm the QA for our team and slowly changing from Manual Tester to Automation Tester. It's definitely a journey.

[@youknowmehayes]

Automation testing makes manual testing harder but can save you a small amount of time if it works without fault

[@Annamarie84]

How did you get started?

[@mybinationallife9707]

@@Annamarie84 Primarily, networking. I met an IT Manager who noticed my interest in technology from our conversation. He invited me to a Hackathon event and there I was introduced to several IT Managers. One of them remembered me when an opportunity appeared on another manager’s team and recommended me to apply for the job.

[@XScapeScooterAdventure]

I love the work setup environment. thanks for sharing your video. I love my work as QA Tester as well for more than 13+ years now and love biking as well my hobby. thanks for sharing your video.

[@PerformanceY]

Is it possible to find a job as a manual QA?

[@XScapeScooterAdventure]

@@PerformanceY yes you do.

[@saulo9292]

hello storyahe, which tool do you use in work? I mean, as a QA automation do you use selenium or cypress?

[@kanewadel]

What test management are you using, please?

[@erikaslan]

I only know how to code in Turbo Pascal. I'm currently doing a bachelor in French Literature but i'm getting bored and i feel like it won't help me. I'm not a big fan of Coding and informatics in general bit QA tester got my eye and i'm wondering if i could attend lessons in order to learn it?

[@footballnew247]

there are manual tester which dont need coding but u should know basic, and there is automation coding which involve a lot of coding but got higher paid tho

[@zmoramonika]

The essential tools I would use (as QA) would be... "My laptop" is it.. really? och dear, I'm sorry for this video as of +15 years in QA

[@softwaretestinglearninghub]

great video! thank you!

[@user-ru7hj1ff8d]

Nice

[@user-ot4rk7my2z]

nice

[@TheManHimself06]

1:09 "Daily stand-up meetings on monday", aren't daily stand-up meetings daily? :)

[@michaelclark09]

Yeah that's my bad 😅 only reason I said Monday as that's the main day everyone is working in the office haha!

[@kkkchel]

🤣

[@kkkchel]

@@michaelclark09 thanks for the video, I am a new manual QA and wondering if any ISTQB qualifications/ any coding languages would be useful?

[@WhoShorts_]

@@kkkchel helpful but not required

[@samanthamarasca8864]

Ok, I’m in my mid 40’s and wanting to make this career change without pursuing a traditional college education. Can anyone recommend quality educational resources that can provide the proper training to break in to testing?

[@VuNguyen-pj1rw]

I think you should find a offline course in your location first. Then, you can learn by your own

[@JackD0ff]

To become a good software tester, you really do not need much. 90% of my success was spending my childhood and teenage years with technologies including Windows PC, laptop, dumb phones, smartphones, Android, iOS as a user, being curious, fiddling with the device / OS settings and not just what you see at first glance when using it. Being detail-oriented and a perfectionist, curious and organized helps a lot. You will learn mostly everything else within your first two months on a junior testing job position. My current position is a senior software tester and I've been doing it for less than 2 years and I'm good at it (according to my results on various projects), feel free to ask :) I've had many colleagues who just started in IT software testing while previously having no IT experience and they became valuable pretty quickly.

[@user-gt3ht8bn2n]

@@JackD0ff how much coding do you need?

[@JackD0ff]

@@user-gt3ht8bn2n depends on whether you want to do manual or automation testing. In manual testing, you don't need any. Having some knowledge about basic programming principles is an advantage, but you won't be coding at all as a manual tester

[@Savag31]

@@JackD0ff do you have a discord, can you be my mentor I’m starting a QA job soon

[@Erinspeedy]

Does anyone know how to really get an entry level role as a tester who doesn’t code. I am passionate like no other about getting into this field. Job titles may be QA tester, QA analyst, or Manual QA tester. I’m looking for real entry level where companies with provide on the job training or maybe even a paid apprenticeship. I’ve looked at some Udemy courses but I really feel I would benefit from learning on the job.

[@DG-gr2xy]

qa junior testor is the best start compared to the ease of coding. I went for front end web development course to find out i would not be best starting off. QA testing is easy compared to everything else whitebox testing involves knowledge in coding you can do automated or blackbox functional and non functional testing. white box is a little more on the advanced side but you could pull it off starting off as junior but ill leave it up to silverchip to answer this question better.

[@imperius1158]

@@DG-gr2xy white box is only hard for people that have no idea what the code is doing. So yes most testers would find white box difficult, but for most developers white box is easy

[@musawerpopal2279]

I can help you

[@Erinspeedy]

@@musawerpopal2279 what's your experience?

[@Platternem]

Also in the same boat here, applying for jobs endlessly but not getting interviews or next steps at entry level roles. I have completed a manual testing course and I am also ISTQB certified at foundation level. Just want to get my foot in the door and learn on the job but I just can't seem to get past the application stage.

[@user-rm1ez3ku3y]

It was interesting

[@jaym6655]

What are the main tools you use? JIRA, Testrail, SQL, Postman API?

[@michaelclark09]

As a software tester I mainly use Jira, Appcheck and TestProject :)

[@ettcnt3822]

@@michaelclark09 is it worth to get ISTQB certification?

[@Lange0716]

As a QA Engineer I mainly use Swagger, Postman, SQL, and C# for Automation. We also use Azure DevOps for our Scrum Boards in my company

[@gitanjali028]

Hi, interesting video. I'm presenting studying for software testing. Could be recommended me what kind of laptop I should invest in as QA tester

[@Vijay-lg1xs]

any laptop with at least 8 GB ram and 256 GB SSD.... recommend 16 GB ram if you can

[@michaelclark09]

As Vijay said, a laptop with 16GB ram and at least a 10th gen i5 (11th or 12th gen i5 would be better) and a decent sized SSD would do you good :) personally for testing I use a Macbook Pro though

[@rianskot]

this year I want to switch careers as a QA engineer!

[@gamerhunt7956]

Why you want to switch can you elaborate

[@ghettoghost2657]

Me too bro I've been studying this skill for about three months

[@PerformanceY]

Is there a jobs in this field?

[@ag21777]

@@ghettoghost2657 where u studying from and how u plan to get ur foot in door with no prior experience?

[@dagerry]

did you do it?

[@t.s.7440]

Is a degree in information science or computer engineering necessary to become an automation tester ?

[@keystolocks4072]

No

[@rickster7373]

Anyone can learn QA definitely go to a nice bootcamp or a program to learn more but a bootcamp they expect you to finish in 3 months or less depends on the bootcamp which a program you can take your time learning the skills that you need

[@shourovechowdhury8874]

is it possible to to be a QA manual/automation tester with out a bachlers degree?

[@linasom0305]

Yes

[@angelmary1]

It requires coding or not ?

[@0Moreno0]

@@angelmary1 Nope!

[@excellins]

100% yes.

[@excellins]

​@angelmary1 manual doesn't require coding, but automation requires coding. But Bro trust me it's not hard, just requires you getting used to it. don't feel discouraged.

[@cristiancost553]

hmmm

[@xensorica]

will Ai take tester job soon i need to know please? i just dont wanto to study somenthing wrong now

[@august5135]

im not a expert but i figure someone has to be the one asking the ai to run the tests, so probably no, the tasks will maybe differ in the future though

[@xensorica]

@@august5135 look like will be less jobs for sure

[@michaelfaelan5958]

Better get into UX then :)

[@kolmiqcz567]

I don't think so. I mean it can help you write some simple test cases, but something more advanced and you need to write it yourself. With automation I think it's the same thing. For desktop application testing, the AI don't see the elements, so it won't write it for you (same with website testing). But what I like to do is take my automation scripts and give to AI and ask for improvements (refactoring) and if I see anything good, chances are I will implement them.

[@caekeherderofrabbits940]

AI will be able to automate tests. However, many companies are bound by regulators who impose specific rules. We are the watch keepers for AI. The best way to future proof your role will be to learn as much as you can about AI so you can test around known weaknesses. Our world will change, if you do a qa job which can be automated you are already placed in the race of extinction. Skill up now! You will also find that qa devs certainly BAs will be at risk in the future.

[@Paragon_Reason]

Omg how do I get a job like that?

[@WhoShorts_]

google for jobs and then apply

[@Paragon_Reason]

@@WhoShorts_ says you gotta have 4 year degree in it. I already have a degree in something else.

@@Paragon_Reason If you know how to do a certain job properly, you are not required to have a degree in it. Especially in IT.

[@slaviiliev4175]

useless video. shows only your daily meal plan.

[@fonkeemonkeee]

This guy needs to learn english

[@emircs2442]

this guy seems he is native english speaker, what's the problem with his english?

[@rodrigocruz8548]

he speaks english not because its his only language but because its the only language you speak