Need Advice in Role Switch

Question

I want to switch from QA to SDE role, and get into good PBC. I joined the company 3 months ago (on-campus offer) but haven't learned anything interesting, just filling up excel sheets and switching multiple screens to check if DDL is correct or not!!

I am from tier 3 college so didn't had that much exposure about what to do to get a good job. I know Beginner level DSA and have some knowledge on web development.

Please advice me on how to achieve my aim in switching this role. What all skills to acquire and include in resume? And resources to follow.

Thanks!

dNcwex8133 · Accepted Answer

This may be a weird comment but other engineers and managers will understand my point completely.

Take care of your health.

Physical, mental, and social. This really goes for everyone but especially younger professionals who get overly consumed by trying to "make it". Make exercise a habit, take time to relax with friends, and get enough sleep. Also please shower and brush your teeth every day. These little things have such a profound impact on your performance.

Ppo138 · Answer

QA can actually be a path to product owner roles in some cases.

raluk23 · Answer

What's a "good PBC" mean?

72damonte · Answer

I think college and prestige factor into it but what really matters is your ability to perform and perform consistently.

Do you have any awards or notable achievements you ca highlight so far? Especially any related to how you supported engineering and product teams in your role? It's important to never downplay your contribution to the effort. QA is an important role in delivering a solution to market.

As far as resources to make the switch:

a) grind leetcode. This is the foundation of your career as a swe https://leetcode.com/

b) find a community of swe to contribute to. reddit, HN, github, levels, blind, etc etc. I even see people writing on medium so follow those people and talk to them so you are learning from peers

c) 3 months is still too soon to make a decision to leave. In that time, the company is also gauging how well you perform. In the EU, probation in a new role is 6 months to a year. There is a lot of ramp up time before they give you unique or interesting things (unless you are at a startup). You need to slow down and focus on delivering consistently.

d) last point would be to speak to your manager and team about how you can contribute to the swe side of the house. Maybe there is someone who is willing to mentor you on a side project or maybe THEY need help and you can bring their idea to life. Never give up!

d13j80nYV · Answer

As a senior engineer who's worked in environments with everything from ZERO QA staff to domain-expert QA staff, good manual testers are irreplaceable because they cover things that automated testing can't (or shouldn't).

A good QA person:

- Makes judgement calls about usability and appearance

- Knows the business domain well enough to make higher-level judgements about things you would never think to cover in unit or integration tests

- Helps shape implementations to mesh better with future needs.

- Documents the system -- and because they're closer to users than to developers, their documentation is usually better quality than dev-written docs. This is undervalued tremendously.

- WILL catch bugs and flaws you'd never catch via unit tests or code review.

Basically: by all means write lots of unit tests, plus some solid integration and system tests, and that's usually good enough for adding a simple button here or a bugfix there. But for anything nontrivial, reserve a little time to put it in front of a real human for testing. Just don't waste their time testing things that unit tests could verify easily.

Need Advice in Role Switch

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