One of the "philosophers' stone" goals of the software industry is to completely replace human testing with automated testing. Basically, I think automated testing is a very good thing, and we should definitely try to do as much of it as possible. So we can clear the way for more useful and meaningful human testing. I've always thought that the engineers in QC should be just as skilled and qualified as the ones build…
>I've always thought that the engineers in QC should be just as skilled and qualified as the ones building the product. I agree, but then they need to be equally well payed... and I don't think it is possible to find a manager willing to pay them as much
In the US, having "Quality" in your title often means that you are in a dead-end job.
In that company, it meant that you were an elite, and that you had considerable power over Engineering.
It also meant that you were a completely anal-retentive S.O.B.
They had spreadsheets with 3,000 rows (each row was a test -usually "monkey" test).
If even one of those rows got a red "X," the whole shooting match would come to a screeching halt, with heads rolling around like foozballs.
It also meant that they double-checked every bug report six ways to Sunday. If they reported a bug, It. Was. A. Bug. No ifs, ands, or buts. If you questioned it, they would get quite huffy; which was not a good thing (see "power," above).
Management kept the QC organization quite separate from Engineering, and they often had an adversarial relationship; which was sometimes encouraged.
This led to engineering departments having some very large testing teams; often outnumbering the engineers. The engineering departments would be penalized for bugs found by the official QC organization, so having large in-house testing teams was worth it.
Their QC doesn't work especially well for software. They would get frowny faces, when I'd suggest automated testing, or process quality best practices.
Quality was always treated separately from construction. I could never quite agree with that, but it also meant that I was "on my own," if I wanted to try using modern quality engineering techniques.
Their [hardware] products are damn good, though. What many companies would consider minor quality issues are treated like Extinction-Level Events, at that company. They've been doing it for 100 years, so it's difficult to argue with them.