I’ve been a Senior QA in a small company for 4 months and I’m the only QA in the team.
I handle test processes, manual testing, release support, and some automation using ai tools as an aid(mostly manual overall).
What’s the realistic career path in this situation? Is 4 months too early to think about progression, or should I already be shaping the direction (automation, leadership, etc.)?
I know they recruit more developers but I don’t think they’ll recruit more QA. Currently like 1 to 5 QA to dev ratio
Firstly, its never too early to think about progression. But to understand what the reality of your progression will be will be a voyage of discovery. 3 common career paths to progression will be leadership, specialism, or career change. You may think right now leadership is where you want to go, but usually people imagine the cool scenarios like mentoring, influencing positive change and having a louder voice for your ideas. Whilst I can tell you thats true and very rewarding, there is also the mundane tasks, the challenges of keeping a team together, managing losing staff, budget cuts, redundancies, conflict etc that can make you feel that maybe you were wrong. To progress, you have to be prepared for the bad as well as the immense good it will do for any progression path.
I think in the organisation you have described, you have to think bigger than your role. You are the conduit for quality, the communicator of risk - not just the tester in the team. How good is your product? How well is the team collaborating? Are there opportunities to be faster, better and cheaper? To progress and be seen, you have to talk about areas where you can influence bigger change as well as nail your testing. Do that and you’ll be seen as someone who can progress. If your organisation doesn’t respond in that way, you will be adding to your professional value and you may to face that your route to progression lies elsewhere.
wrt timing, consider your company’s ceremonies and appraisal plans. there might be events in place to align with for your path to advancing. Consider pitching advancements 3 months before promotion rounds etc and yearly reviews.
For you to move elsewhere consider what will replace you in your current role. Have you trained a new person or enabled dev teams to embed quality practices?
perhaps there is a fourth option, compared to @ghawkes ‘s above, depending on company availability - the principal/staff level. You continue as IC but you grows into a role where you can influence at scale - that’s what I’m looking at myself.
The product we make are for cryptocasino so slot games and crypto games. The crypto games are doing well and the slot games the previous I worked on when I joined are doing really well.
They recently changed the process because of a critical bug that was found. As QA I few the work I do comes at the end and it’s a scramble to make the product a good quality.
Some of the games recently I looked at automation and AI. AI to make the script and to start automating as much I can.
Almost nothing in life goes to plan. I am a solo software tester like you.
Today it’s sunny in the East of England, or at least it was for the grand total of 10 minutes, it then rained. As it let up, the guy in the team who tests and fixes the hardware, put on coats and got out for a walk, just then it started raining again, I swear I could see the sky. I’m sitting here in very damp trousers and the sun is blinding me.
If it was me, I would decide what I really want, and aim for that, but know that what I have now is a chance to prove I am worth it to ,who-ever voted with their gut alone to hire me over some other poor soul. My role is likely to change a lot, like yours is, and so we have to have a plan, but a very flexible plan.
Thinking about career growth anything less than 6 months in indicates to me at least, that you are not enjoying your job, or the job did not match the job-description. If it’s the latter, then definitely try to get that changed. If this job was just a way to get a foot in the door, then be careful whose toes you step on next. But as for management, it’s never been my thing, software people often struggle to be happy people managers.
I would say I enjoy the role. I was mainly thinking in terms of the career aspect. It was my first role as a sole QA.
I know in smaller companies the role only goes up to senior which can also include lead responsibilities. Maybe I would have enjoyed a bit of mentoring junior qas with experience I have. But I don’t enjoy much the management responsibilities.
Not so used to having a WhatsApp group were we mentioned about work issues outside of working hours. I feel that’s the red flag
Some of my colleagues I’ve previously worked with them before so it’s been good so far
