How I moved from QA to Dev
This is the story of how I changed my profile from QA to Dev. I am sure there are many testers out there wanting to change their profile. But not knowing where, how and when to start. Read on, maybe you and I have similar stories and this could help you get the kick start.
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Testing is a integral part of software development and can not be removed or replaced. It is atmost necessary to produce a reliable and functional software.Back in the days, I used to be a manual QA. Attending endless calls and meetings to understand requirements, gathering all data, writing test cases and scenarios in excel sheets( oohhhh! I used to hate this part😤 ) was my daily routine. This was followed by testing the application manually, clicking here and there, taking screenshots for proof that I did actually test it (seriously!). Logging the actual results against the expected one and executing the test case.
At the end of the day, I felt dissatisfied and empty, thinking that I spent the whole day testing something that someone else has developed. I was always good at solving problems, finding solutions and programming. And I was not doing any of it here. Soon my current profile looked very trivial to me. I wanted a change.
So, I moved to automation testing ( haha ! 🤣).
This was fun in the beginning. I was coding automated test scripts daily. But this did not fill the developer desire in me. I was still testing someone else’s work. The disappointed side of me started poking again.
Folks, it is a hard decision to give up your years of experience in something and start over and do something new. But no job is good enough if you are not enjoying it.
This thought pushed me to take the leap!
I started looking into technologies to switch to. Something that has a good scope in future and is easy to get started with.
Big data was something in the news everywhere, so I decided to give it a shot. Signed up for online training and quickly discovered that writing complicated queries on a black screen was not my thing. Money and time wasted!
Then I hopped on the blockchain train. God!! that train is fast. The pace with which new tools and tech came up every new day made me mad with choices. Something I was not ready to make at this time.
After a couple of more trials, I finally found the sweet spot in Javascript. If you are new to programming or have little experience or just out of college. I encourage you to pursue javascript. You will find it everywhere, right from the browser engines that render all the internet on your computer for you to backend servers doing heavy computations and analysis. It's fairly easy to understand and start with.
Here’s a couple of courses that I found useful
Web development is widely divided into Front end and Back end technologies. Once you get a fair idea of what they are, take a pick and get started. Online courses are great for a quick start. You will find loads of them on the internet. As you go on learning, start doing small projects to get hands-on experience. Nothing teaches you better than your own mistakes. Keep doing mistakes and correcting them. That's how I learned.
If you choose Front End development, practise Javascript, HTML5, CSS and then pick one or two frameworks for UI development like JQuery, Angular and ReactJs. Prepare a nice application to showcase in any of the technologies.
Once you have gained confidence in the technical part, practise your interview skills. Developer interviews are way tougher than QA interviews. Depending on your experience the interviewer will dive deep into development concepts and technologies. Don't lose heart if you fail in a few interviews. It's part of the journey ;-).
After many failed attempts I landed a good developer job. It’s been more than 4 years now that I have been working as a Front End Developer. I try to learn and get better every day. This journey is long and full of challenges and there is no one destination.
But…….. isn't the journey the best part :-)
Thank you for reading,
Lokesh Pathrabe