Think twice before you join a startup as a software tester/QA engineer
What’s best and not best in startups? A brief career guidance checklist for software testers
I have been walking on planet-IT for long enough, journeyed through various levels of roles, companies, processes, and culture, I witnessed people from various skillset ascending that career mountain, conquering its peak. And I’m sure all of us or at least most of us have that urge to touch the zenith.
However, career success is not directly proportional to your work on this planet, it’s impacted by multiple industry factors.
IT industry is democratic (or better to say, it appears to be democratic) Because that’s what all companies promise you in the first place, shout-out, that they will provide equality and equal opportunities to everyone irrespective of their skillsets (development, testing, infra, etc..,)
But within my experience as a software tester, I feel different, I believe there is certain discrimination shown towards software testers, especially while considering them for management roles(like project manager, people’s manager, Teamlead,etc.,)
And this is not breaking news, we see this from time to time on our promotion discussion meetings, the fellow developer gets more privilege than you because of his coding skills, you will be pushed back from management positions because you seemed to be a non-technical person. Even some of you might already have been victimized by it.
Nevertheless, we already mastered the art of ‘sleeping with the enemy’
Note: Partiality is the enemy I meant. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental :P
However, today’s IT startup culture inadvertently boosting this unfairness, marketing it as a brand new process, drawing an early finish line for software tester career growth and dragging us much farther from the management world.
What do I mean by ‘startups doing this inadvertently’? how tester career growth is impacted by startups?
Let’s do the case study of ‘Not a startup company’ first
If you consider any MNC/mid-sized company, their employee career roles stack can be briefly sliced into 3 levels: Technical, Management, and Top-level management.
The middle, management layer comprises traditional project managerial roles. What are ‘Traditional project managerial’ roles? they could be Team lead, project manager, head of delivery, resources manager, and the rest. These roles may or may not need technical experience, anyone from the bottom technical level (Developer, Tester, etc.,) is welcomed to grab these positions.
So, If you start your career at the base through any technical skillset (development, testing, DevOps, etc.,), shinned enough in your technical career and showcased the required skills to fulfill the requirements for a project manager role, you will be crowned for management positions, irrespective of which technical skillset you are from. And from there you can grow much further into top-level management or C level positions.
This way, well-established IT companies usually lay a base to summit path for each employee, giving everyone equal opportunity to excel to the highest levels.
It’s a cliché process across the industry, so-called the ‘IT Pyramid’
Whereas, the story of IT startups is quite different. Here the career excellence goes horizontal. This means your growth is always bounded within your functional skillset. So rather multiple technical careers getting merged into a common pool of management, here, people’s career expands only in their designated skillset
Look at the comparison between product, development, and testing skills. here there is no common management level on top, they are not merged anywhere. Each individual skill streams have their own technical, management and top-level management layers.
So here comes the million-dollar question, what’s the highest level in the testing? What’s your highest role?
There is no Chief of Quality assurance officer (CQO) role amigos !!
Startups are not bound to follow a particular strategy like established companies, in fact, they can’t, because employee strength wildly varies across each startup, it makes no sense in having a mountain of roles with a handful of people.
So most startups build there own customized career role stack, unique to each company, and many of them possess only technical and top-level/C level management teams, slicing out middle management layer and marking the traditional project management roles as ‘Not necessary’.
And this is where the uncertainty of ‘what’s next?’ created for certain skillsets like software testing
Due to the lack of traditional project management roles, at a certain point in time career growth might face limitations in startups.
Then isn't it a common problem for developers and testers?
Well, technically yes but actually no
Because very often there exists a CTO role waiting for them
And another reason would be the catchy work culture all startups nowadays drowned into, ‘cross-functional teams’
For faster development and delivery process, most startups adopt a combination of an incremental and cross-function team's work culture. What’s a cross-functional team? basically, it’s a mixture of people from various skillset’s working to deliver a particular product.
And it confuses us by designating both developers and testers as ‘The development team’, god knows why!
So this is the team where technically tester is a developer and also not a developer, who has to be the part of the team but will never be enough to lead the cross-functional team.
ya, that’s the catch!
Even though some companies have under top-level management positions to manage their multiple cross-functional teams, they will be mostly technical-management positions rather than pure management.
which means another no-trespassing sign for testers
Look at the below picture of career progression in a startup for a sec
If your company doesn’t possess the luxury of traditional project management roles, what is your next career goal after being QA lead?
But why is it so necessary for a tester to jump into a management role?
It’s not. Totally a personal choice. However, when tester contributing the same level of effort as the developer in product delivery, they should likewise be provided with the same opportunities for leadership roles as developers. That’s justice.
Seeking a management role is not for gaining the authority over people, it’s gaining authority to make the decisions over the product that we have been working for a sufficient amount of time.
So is it a bad choice to join a startup as a software tester or quality assurance engineer?
Absolutely not!
Not saying this to bring up a balanced view. startups are an absolutely great place to work. You will have freedom, flexibility, transparency. Their less structured way of working helps to grow your career at a much faster pace. While established companies work on mundane and rigid work culture, startups possess an aggressive, energetic way of working
Even if you look at the career growth in established companies, it’s like a marathon run track, long and paved with heavy competition. whereas startups have much much faster career excellence.
Then why am I criticizing the startup process?
Screaming in bold capital, “I'm NOT BLAMING STARTUPS”
As I’m still a mediocre writer, there are high chances you may not scroll down till the end, so let me spill the spoiler
The way the startups are living right now is perfect, that’s how their process and management is meant to be
It’s us, software testers, not to stroll, but tip toe to the right startup in good time with proper aspirations
So how to choose your next startup nest wisely?
Instead of painting a perfect picture, I will just lay out the flowers and thorns testers are most likely to come across in the startups, so you can decide what's’ best for you.
Combining my experience and the information that I gathered from various IT people around me, I managed to put up a 2-dimensional career progression chart defining the range and pace of software tester career growth across MNC, Mid-sized and startup companies.
Note: This is not standard. The career points listed in the below chart are entirely based on my opinions as an experienced software tester
Now let’s address the elephant in the room, the life of tester in a startup
I will compose this in 6 reasons why and 4 reasons why-not style
4 reasons why not?
- Performance overshadowed: Most Non-technical people's imagination of IT development is: lines of codes, databases, and webpages. Most of them are not aware of different other aspects of product development like software testing, due to which a certain under-appreciated kind of a feeling will emerge when you're directly reporting to them. Most startups don’t even have testers, even they have, they don’t use them to their full potential.
- You report to a technical manager: Due to the size of startups, they don’t always have a test manager role, So you may have to report to either a technical manager or engineering manager. These managers are responsible for both technicalities of the product and resource management. Even though QA is part of the cross-functional team, due to technical managers' developer history, they tend to interact more with the developers than a tester, which may create a left alone feeling and favoritism.
- You can’t be a technical manager: This is inevitable, to be a technical or product-engineering manager you definitely need to possess both technical and management skills. So, even though you are part of a cross-functional team and have management skills, dreaming to lead the team is forbidden for QA.
- What is your next role after QA lead?: Startups, following pure agile, don’t adopt traditional project management roles (project manager, Sr. project manager,..), on top-level they might have software development lead or CTO. But no company will desire their QA to fill this role. So your journey in QA is limited to a lead level in a startup, or else you need to change your skillset by switching to a product or business development roles to grow further in a startup.
6 reasons why ?
- Flexibility and Freedom: In established companies, you are bound to follow. but in startups, you have the freedom to give suggestions and choose processes and tools. This gives testers more power to learn, innovate and explore new things in software testing.
- Speed of flash: Do you how fast flash can move? that’s how fast you can grow in startups. Unlike the corporate giants, where you need to possess certain years of experience to get into the next role, a startup doesn’t have such limitations. If you have the necessary skills and talent they are always ready to award any role, disregarding your service years.
- You are the avengers: The product delivery timelines will be stringent, the work hours would be long and stressful, it’s the end game fight every day in startups, but at the end of the day when your little league delivers, and the feature is live, you will have that ‘Saving the day’ kinda feeling for sure.
- Opportunities to switch lanes: Skill switch is common among software testers, most of us tend to jump into the product or business development career lane in our current working companies. This kind of career switch is quite difficult in MNC and mid-sized companies, due to heavy competition and bureaucracy. While comparatively it easy and smooth in startups. If you have an interest and ability to switch to a new career skillset, startups provide you the best chances
- The entrepreneurial motivation: If you are working in a well-established company, tell me how many times you see or speak to your C level guy in a year? once or twice? or maybe never. But in startups, you will have this kind of interaction every day. If you have an aspiration to build your own company sometime in the future, trust me, the closer presence of C level people amplifies your motivation and helps you to learn a lot about building and managing a company.
- Steep learning curve: What you learn in an MNC is a piece of cake, and in startups, it’s the whole cake. And it’s super important for testers because the end to end understanding of the product(technical and business) helps us enhance our curriculum and brighten our chances to move to higher challenging roles.
That being said, Do I sound like a fence sitter?
I’m not. But let me summarize my point of view…
If you are looking for an aggressive, independent, Huge-learning and faster-growth in software testing career, then startups are for you. But if you want to work under a safe, well-established hood or looking to move to traditional project management roles (project manager, delivery head,etc.,), then MNC or mid-sized companies must be your choice.
Post credits: ‘5 Career lanes to switch from software testing’ coming soon, stay tuned !!