Setting the Scene
In recent years, there’s been a notable shift in the hiring landscape for automation engineers. Traditionally, these roles have been filled by individuals with a keen understanding of coding and software testing principles, leveraging both skills to ensure software quality. However, an emerging trend in job interviews for these roles deviates from this balanced skill requirement. Instead of evaluating candidates’ ability to create and execute effective testing scenarios, the interviews have begun to mirror those conducted for software developers, primarily emphasizing coding capabilities.
This development is a concern for several reasons. Primarily, it’s leading to a scenario where automation engineers increasingly resemble software developers in their skill sets while their proficiency in actual software testing is being overlooked. It’s crucial to remember that while automation engineers do need a certain level of coding skills, they are not, at their core, software developers. They are testers who utilize code to automate the testing process and, thus, should be assessed for their ability to think like testers.
The failure to recognize this fundamental distinction is potentially harmful, leading to a dilution of the quality assurance process, ultimately reducing the quality of software produced. Automation engineers play a unique and critical role in the software development lifecycle, bridging the gap between code creation and user experience. By disregarding their testing acumen, companies risk fostering an environment where code is generated and executed but not adequately checked for robustness and edge cases.
Automation Engineers: Not Just Coders
An automation engineer’s role is unique, combining the rigors of software development with careful, skeptical testing scrutiny. The primary purpose of an automation engineer is to automate test cases to expedite the testing process and enable a more efficient and comprehensive evaluation of the software’s functionality. This involves coding but also requires a deep understanding of software testing methodologies and principles and the ability to anticipate the myriad ways software can malfunction.
Automation engineers must have a problem-solving mindset and a knack for looking at the bigger picture. They need to understand the code and the business requirements underpinning the software’s design and the potential ramifications of a failed test case. Their role is akin to that of a gatekeeper, ensuring that the software product is functionally sound, meets business requirements, and provides an optimal user experience.
This highlights the importance of these engineers in the software development lifecycle. The automation engineer can identify potential problems early in the development process and prevent bugs from being introduced into the codebase in the first place. By automatically testing the software against predefined criteria, they can ensure a level of quality control that goes beyond what manual testing can achieve.
In their role, automation engineers are not commonly tasked with developing complex, novel code. Instead, they frequently reuse and repurpose existing code scripts to build comprehensive automated tests. This requires a good understanding of code structures and functions but not necessarily the same depth of coding expertise expected of software developers continually innovating and architecting new solutions. This fundamental distinction underlines the importance of accurately assessing the skills of prospective automation engineers rather than assuming they need the same skillset as software developers.
Automation engineers need to be adept at applying existing code in new and creative ways to expose potential faults in software. This is a different kind of creativity from what software development requires. It is driven by a profound understanding of possible flaws and weaknesses in software and a determination to uncover these before the software reaches the end user. This underlines the importance of evaluating an automation engineer’s understanding of testing principles, ability to apply these principles effectively, and coding skills.
Quality Assurance: The Silent Victim
By focusing predominantly on a candidate’s coding skills, hiring processes inadvertently allow the erosion of the essential testing skills within automation engineering roles. By their very nature, developers are creators, innovators, and problem solvers. Testers, on the other hand, are detectives. They look for potential issues, areas of failure, and points of breakdown. Both roles are crucial for delivering quality software but are different.
Hiring software developers for roles that require a software testing mindset can lead to a significant decrease in software quality. Developers might be inclined to focus on whether the code executes and performs the required functions, overlooking the broader implications of how the software behaves under different scenarios. As the saying goes, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Developers turned automation engineers may not consider edge cases, performance under stress, usability, or the many other areas that dedicated testers would naturally scrutinize.
This shift could lead to more defects slipping through to production, increased cost and time for bug fixes, a decline in customer satisfaction, and a potential impact on the company’s reputation for quality. Real-world examples of this are relatively easy to find. A quick look at software failure studies reveals how costly it can be when testing is not adequately performed. From minor inconveniences to major catastrophes, the absence of a rigorous and dedicated testing process can lead to significant consequences.
Thus, by incorrectly interpreting the role of an automation engineer as that of a developer with some testing knowledge, organizations are risking not only the quality of their products but also their overall business performance and reputation.
Rethinking the Interview Process
Interview strategies must evolve to reflect the unique role of an automation engineer and, indeed, even software developers. The common practice of conducting live coding exercises during interviews has been debated. While they might offer some insight into a candidate’s problem-solving ability under pressure, they may only sometimes be the best indicator of their actual potential or the work they will do daily. Candidates often have access to resources, tools, and online help in their day-to-day work, and live coding under interview pressure may not truly reflect their skill set or capabilities.
Considering this, it becomes even more critical to reassess how we interview automation engineers. As their role is not to create complex new code but to apply existing code in creative and efficient ways to test software, their interviews should be structured differently from a typical developer interview.
The key lies in focusing on problem-solving ability and understanding software testing principles rather than on-the-spot coding ability. This could be achieved through scenario-based questions that demonstrate their proficiency in testing. For instance, posing questions like, “How would you approach testing this piece of software?” or “Describe a situation where automated testing significantly improved the project outcome?” would provide more relevant insights.
Discussing their familiarity with different testing tools, frameworks, and methodologies further illuminate their readiness for the role. Technical discussions around their past experiences, how they handle debugging, and their approach to testing design and maintenance could be more informative and less anxiety-inducing than live coding tests.
Reimagining the interview process in this way would enable companies to make more informed hiring decisions, choosing candidates with the requisite coding knowledge, a deep understanding of testing, and a keen problem-solving mindset.
Unleashing the Benefits of Balance
By rethinking the interview process and focusing on a candidate’s ability to apply testing principles and problem-solving skills, companies stand to gain considerably. This balanced hiring approach carries significant potential benefits for the quality of software products, the efficiency of development cycles, and the overall health of the tech industry.
Hiring automation engineers who have a deep understanding of testing principles, in addition to coding skills, is likely to improve the quality of software products. With their unique blend of skills, these professionals are ideally positioned to detect and prevent errors before they reach the end user. They can build robust automated tests that check software performance from every conceivable angle, significantly reducing the risk of bugs slipping through production.
Improved software quality, in turn, translates to better customer satisfaction. Users trust and rely on software that works as expected without unanticipated downtime or errors. By ensuring a high-quality standard, companies can foster stronger relationships with their users, enhancing their reputation and competitiveness in the market.
The balanced hiring approach also has implications for the efficiency of the development cycle. By catching potential issues early on, automation engineers can save teams from the costly and time-consuming process of fixing bugs later in the cycle or post-release. This makes the development process more efficient, enabling faster delivery times and potentially reducing costs.
On a broader scale, the shift could contribute to the overall health of the tech industry. Companies can create more balanced, effective teams by accurately recognizing and respecting the distinct roles within a tech team. It can help alleviate some of the skill gaps in the industry, leading to a better understanding and appreciation of the crucial role of testing in software development.
Wrapping Up: A Call to Rethink Hiring
In the rapidly evolving tech industry, hiring practices must evolve to align with the unique demands of each role. Recently, we’ve seen a concerning trend in the hiring process for automation engineers, wherein interviews have become heavily focused on coding abilities, mimicking those for software developers. However, treating automation engineers as software developers overlooks these individuals’ critical role in ensuring software quality.
Automation engineers are not just coders — they’re testers who code. They use their understanding of testing principles and coding skills to automate the testing process, ensuring the software is robust, reliable, and ready for use. Their role in the software development lifecycle is crucial and unique, and hiring practices should reflect this.
The current trend of focusing heavily on coding skills in automation engineer interviews is more than just misaligned with the role itself. Still, it’s also detrimental to the overall quality of software. It leads to a situation where code is created and executed but needs to be adequately tested for functionality, usability, and robustness.
We advocate for a balanced approach to automation engineer interviews to remedy this. Rather than emphasizing live coding problems, the focus should be on understanding testing principles and problem-solving skills. Scenario-based questions and technical discussions can provide a more comprehensive picture of a candidate’s capabilities as a tester.
Implementing this balanced approach can lead to significant benefits, including improved software quality, better customer satisfaction, more efficient development cycles, and a more accurate representation of the skills needed in the tech industry. By shifting the focus back to testing principles, we can ensure that the crucial role of automation engineers is respected, leading to a healthier, more robust tech industry.
We call upon hiring managers, HR professionals, and industry leaders to consider this shift for the betterment of their teams, their products, and the tech industry.