16 April, 2008

Software Quality Assurance -- SQA

This posting is aimed at you individuals whose career velocity brought them to a career in SQA:

Your job is a joke....your career a farce...your respect undeserved and absent. No one outside your department respects your job nor opinion.

I say this not to hurt, nor instigate a rebuttal but to point out the large gray elephant in the room, the one no one talks about. Think of me as your mother...tearing off the bandage to let the healing begin.

Some of the nicest people I know work in SQA. That doesn't change my opinion on the matter, it only pushes it to a region where no one talks about it. The fact of the matter is that the majority of the people working in SQA are genuinely nice people, intelligent people, and all around good fellas (in a unisex means). They aren't what I would call motivated people, or driven individuals. No, SQA groupies are typically 9-5'ers....9-3'ers when they can get away with it, 9-5'ers with long lunches when they can't.

I've been involved in professional software engineering going on 11 years now. SQA has had a role in each program that I've been involved in, so I have a working knowledge of their impact on the development process. The fact of the matter is that it has no positive impact on the process. It never has a positive impact. It has yet in 10 years proved to identify a relevant issue or flaw. The little known fact is that SQA is informally responsible for hampering the development process in a form of white-collar unemployment. We literally pay the entire department to push paper, author obsolete processes that don't even casually reflect reality. Only monolithic programs like defense contractors can even afford to employ such wastefulness, sadly because it is your money to burn and not theirs.

So if, my fair reader, you find yourself currently employed in SQA rise above it, grab a firm grip on your bootstraps and give a good yank. Retrain yourself, motivate yourself, do whatever it takes to get out of your career purgatory. You may find a career as an escort (read that as hooker) commands more respect...at least you'll be providing someone a service.

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