Pros and Cons of being an automated tester
There are more pros than cons for becoming an automation tester.
The number 1 con is that part of your leisure time will be used for learning new things.
The pros are all about expanding your skills.
A metaphor is needed.
Think about a musician who plays the guitar well.
He sings guitar songs.
He composes songs for guitar.
The songs are simple since one instrument is used.
He would like to add more sounds and harmonies to his songs.
Which the guitar cannot create.
So the musician decides to learn new instruments, the flute and trumpet.
He can play now songs for 3 instruments.
He can create better songs than before, for 3 instruments instead of 1.
Since the musician diversified his skills and knowledge, he is not only more versatile and more creative but also more in demand.
He can now wear multiple “musical” hats depending on the songs he has to play:
- “guitar player” hat
- “flute player” hat
- “trumpet player” hat
- “the guitar, flute and trumpet player” hat
Or the composer hat.
Going back to the pros of becoming an automation tester.
So we have a manual tester that does testing.
There comes a time when he aims at doing more, being more productive and having more fun.
He decides to learn automation (example: web test automation with Selenium) and everything that is involved in this.
What does he get from it?
He learns programming.
He learns talking the same language as the developers.
He learns reading code.
He learns using code created by other people.
He learns also many other useful things such as:
- using a proxy
- using a web inspector (firebug)
- how web protocols work
- how servers work
- HTML, CSS, XPATH
- unit testing
- build management
- continuous integration
These are the pros.
In conclusion, the tester’s skills become diverse.
He no longer has one hat to wear.
Depending on the work assigned to him, he can wear now:
- “the programmer” hat
- “test automation engineer” hat
- “the technical tester” hat
- “the tester that can do automation and programming” hat
FMG Insurance | Guidewire Cloud | Passionate Automation Test Analyst | Driving Quality & Efficiency in Technology
5 年This is amazing !