

Ask HN: Training/skills to become a good QA engineer - shicky

I&#x27;ve done a search on HN for similar questions before but it seems they get distracted by questions regarding if the op meant standard QA or test automation.<p>So for background I&#x27;m a CS grad who doesn&#x27;t seem to have a great ability to develop, at least not yet.  I went into finance and worked for two years in support&#x2F;development and got on very well, unfortunately my application got quite popular and therefore the team was heavily regulated, this meant I went to strictly support and low level so I wasn&#x27;t happy with the lack of complexity.<p>As a result I decided to try a different industry and have went back to technology and got a job as a QA engineer.  I am fully aware I cannot rely solely on my employer to provide the skills necessary to become a good QA Engineer.<p>Therefore I wish to firstly cement soft skills as a good QA tester which I believe I already have. i.e. an eye for detail, enjoy a good puzzle.  What technical skills do people feel are required to be a good &#x27;manual&#x27; tester?<p>Lastly the main reason I took this jump was to get into automated testing as I believe it will allow a jump in complexity and perhaps a side move to development when I&#x27;m good enough.  Where do I start in becoming good at automated testing?<p>The standard advice for a dev is to start developing personal projects?  What about a tester?  Is it the same so then you can test your project thoroughly?  I&#x27;ve often seen it said you should be testing OTHER peoples code mainly.  So how can I get this exposure?<p>Just for additional info, I&#x27;ve been researching a bit myself and have come across a few products like selenium to play with and reading the google testing blog.  On top of this I&#x27;ve started two udacity classes, one for software testing and one for debugging.  Any further suggestions?  Any decent books to help me feel a little less lost in my current situation?<p>Thanks for any advice you can provide
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jfe
become as good a programmer as you possibly can, and learn to write extremely
thorough test plans.

put another way, build quality in from the start. ensure that you don't need
to fix/update your code or test plan later. if that's unavoidable, at least
make doing so as quick and painless as possible.

~~~
shicky
good advice for automation/development I imagine but for QA this surely
doesn't apply as I won't be writing the code?

