Tech firms hiring ASD people to test software

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I'm contracting for desktop & mobile testing in a startup at the moment; the pay's entry level but I'm fine with that at my age (19). Technological luxuries are cheap these days.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

I would assume to do testing/QA you would need at least a college degree. Some basic knowledge of the software development cycle, testing paradigms, and some high-level programming/computer engineering concepts at least.

...Unless you're getting told what the tests are from "up high", that is, and you are simply the automaton who executes them...

I'm doing QA/testing work now and there's definitely a specialized skill set. You can get a lot of the way with "horse sense" but at some point you need to know the technical details, especially if you are writing your own test plans.

With the price of college education I wonder if $15/hour is enough to pay for the cost of entry into this kind of market. You certainly couldn't live on your own in CA (definitely not in Silicon Valley, one of the most expensive regions of the entire world) and pay off your student loans on that kind of money. Seems kind of exploitative to me if they're hiring CS/math/engineering people, though if we're talking instead high school or community college grads then it seems a little more forgivable.

Damn, just realized this is an old thread *bumped* up again, but I wrote this, so why not post it...

Wrong. I've done my own QA work on development projects of my own and worked in build profiling and bug reporting in a strictly-QA W2 contract. Even in a tiny start up, I felt a bit like the automaton you mentioned, but never felt lacking in traditional education. I made $20USD/hour and liked it - even a bit after I was let go ahead of a release deadline. Look for mid-size firms with both room to grow and room to teach. Don't get stuck on a new OS in a tiny company, and contrived as it may seem, steer clear of closed-source tools/platforms like Xcode/iOS or Windows 8. If you plan on cutting college out of the loop, documentation is KEY.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos