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How Google Tests Software - A Brief Interlude

| Wednesday, March 9, 2011
These posts have garnered a number of interesting comments. I want to address two of the negative ones in this post. Both are of the same general opinion that I am abandoning testers and that Google is not a nice place to ply this trade. I am puzzled by these comments because nothing could be further from the truth. One such negative comment I can take as a one-off but two smart people (hey they are reading this blog, right?) having this impression requires a rebuttal. Here are the comments:

"A sad day for testers around the world. Our own spokesman has turned his back on us. What happened to 'devs can't test'?" by Gengodo

"I am a test engineer and Google has been one of my dream companies. Reading your blog I feel that Testers are so unimportant at Google and can be easily laid off. It's sad." by Maggi

First of all, I don't know of any tester or developer for that matter being laid off from Google. We're hiring at a rapid pace right now. However, we do change projects a lot so perhaps you read 'taken off a project' to mean something far worse than the reality of just moving to another project. A tester here may move every couple of years or so and it is a badge of honor to get to the point where you've worked yourself out of a job by building robust test frameworks for others to contribute tests to or to pass off what you've done to a junior tester and move on to a bigger challenge. Maggi, please keep the dream alive. If Google was a hostile place for testers, I would be working somewhere else. 

Second, I am going to dodge the negative undertones of the developer vs tester debate. Whether developers can test or testers can code seems downright combative. Both types of engineers share the common goal of shipping a product that will be successful. There is enough negativity in this world and testers hating developers seems so 2001.

Read more: Google test blog

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