Interesting. As a guy that have the experience my Nick indicates, starting my testing journey 1989 I might have another take. Take it as an alternative, another perspective.
Let’s start earlier. Like 1900. All my grandparents were poor rural Swedish people, 90% of us Swedes were poor. All my grandparents equally did excel in school, but well, only did get 6 ys since none of them (obviously in 2 cases) wasnt the Oldest Son, the only one the family could afford getting studies more that the mandatory school years. So they became butcher, mechanic, housewife, housewife. My parents generation, the silent generation was the first to study something else that blue collar, and my generation, well, if you were a guy and had a brain, engineer was the only option in my familjy and in my neighborhood. An engineer is a good, stable job with a good stable income. So I became an engineer even if all my interests were in humanities. And in tech school i took Computer Science since it was the least boring thing an engineer can do. I could and I can program. But its NOT what makes my boat rock.
I learned a lot of programming, but finishing tech school(Civ engineer in my country) I got a job. (A Job job is what my family does). I thought it was for programming but I ended up testing. And loved it. It was really NOT about bits and pieces (even if you have to handle them) but more like understanding a system. Understanding customers, understanding something kinda philosophy.
I got promoted, was in managerial positions, now and then coming back to test and now testing is my Icing of the cake of a career soon to be ended in retirement, having more fun at work than I ever had before.
I act as the troubleshooter for an organisation, I am the guy who knows how everything works together and can be helpful to end users as well as providing normal test and test leader activities.
And then Automation… It was a Buzz Word even when I started testing Big Telecom applications in the 90’s, even if it was CLI those days. It did not rock my boat. I can do it. But I don’t love it. Now, Chatgpt and AI has helped me setting up some automations for an organisation that really cannot afford test automation.
The intelligence of the AI, the one I also have but really don’t like, has become helpful.
But the thing I really want to say is that - automation is a programming activity. Sure you will have to know the system to set up good test cases. But still, my experience that the automation brain is a programming lover’s brain. And well, I dare say I have been useful to all the organisations I have been working for during many decades in the SW business without that kind of brain. I sincerely hope there are room for young people like me in the SW business going forward, and I see AI as a key player in making that possible. The AI just might get the more general testing competence - understanding the systems and the user requirements - but I don’t see that in the near future. While it excels in producing source code.
The importance of teamwork and collaboration in testing.