Many times I have been confronted with this question. Many ask me what is the future of software testing. Does it pay you well, how can we grow in this field and where can it take up to. Since I am in software testing, I also asked myself h same question daily and even sometimes I also look for similar answers
Being a Software Tester
So you are a software tester now and you think that job is not as challenging as programming and it won't provide you good opportunites as programming would. But wait and think again, why the job even exists if it does give us good opportunites. Why can't the softwares be sold just after developing ? And this is where software testing comes in . As a software tester you are the one who makes sure that software is free of bugs and it will fufill what is required from the customer.
An example
Lets say you bought a post paid plan and the calling rate is around 2Rs/min for all STD calls. Now due to no proper testing of the billing software it is charging the rate of 5 Rs/min and at the end of the month you get a bill which obviously you are not expecting. This is just a basic example for a software not being tested properly. It will only take away the trust from the potential customer and the company will start loosing its integrity. Now this kind of example may not be a big business loss but think about software used in stock market , space programs and real estate. I bet you can see the difference now. Once there was a difference in the floating point value of a number which was not tested properly led to millions of loss of a space shuttle program and i hope you understand the difference
Organizations need Software Testing
So you can stay relaxed if you are in software testing because companies will need software testing department and this job profile is going to stay until the softwares are being developed and they are going to spend millions and billions in improving the quality of their products if they want the Business to succeed.
Type of Software Testing
They are mainly divided into two categories:
1. Manual
2. Automation
To be frank both are need for a good quality software development. If you are in automation testing you will be developing some scripts that either you or someone else will run as a part of sotware test. The problem is you can only automate something which is repetitive in nature. There is no point in automating a process which is hardly going to be used again. In testing terminology we do something callled regression testing in which after every certain interval we are required to do some test to make sure functionality is working which means a praticular set of test needs to be run to make sure your system is stable.
Why Manual
No matter what you say automation can never replace manual testing. With this ever changing dynamic environment we cannot automate all the flows and hence need manual work to get it done. It will take lot of time and effort to create automation script for totally new system, so manual tester is the rescue here.
What you need to know
If you are in testing field, business is your goal. You are the one who can make sure that business will never stop. Your job is to test the software in such a way that client gets the minimum loss out of it in case of issues. And so it is always said that a tester domain and business knowledge should always be best and intact and that is the only edge a tester can have over a developer.
Future
Since you will be learning more about the domain and the business there is an exciting and beautiful opportunities waiting for a tester which are of being a consultant, domain expert, solution architect. This is because you know the system and you can design it best and hence you will create the design for the organization which developer will implement with code and tester will verify. Although its a very challanging job but its one of the best in software market.
Conclusion
As you can see there are lot of opportunites being a tester so never feel low about this profile because you are one due to which the system is running.