Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Should QA exist?

rubick.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 160 posts

Re: Should QA exist?

#21

Post by LatencyKills »

ottoflux wrote: post #15

100% and I’m a software developer and have been for ~30 years. Good QA people know how to find regression and bugs _that you didn’t think about_ which is the whole reason why it shouldn’t be under “engineering” and that it should exist. One of the QA people I work with currently is one of my favorite people. They don’t always make me happy (in the moment) with their bugs or with how they decide to break the software,…

Exactly. I spent 20 years split between MS and Apple. Some of the best people I ever worked with were in QA. One guy in particular was an extremely talented engineer who simply didn't enjoy the canonical "coding" role; what he did enjoy was finding bugs and breaking things. ;-)

Re: Should QA exist?

#22

Post by baal80spam »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #9

If your product is used by humans, then it needs to be tested by humans - this cannot be automated. Those humans can be your QA people, or your customers. Perhaps your customers are happy to be testers, perhaps not. Unit tests are very expensive and return little value. Conversely, a (manual?) 'smoke test' is very cheap and returns great value - the first thing you do when updating a server for example is to check it…

> Unit tests are very expensive and return little value

Why are unit tests very expensive? This goes against everything I know.

Re: Should QA exist?

#23

Post by stingraycharles »

ottoflux wrote: post #15

100% and I’m a software developer and have been for ~30 years. Good QA people know how to find regression and bugs _that you didn’t think about_ which is the whole reason why it shouldn’t be under “engineering” and that it should exist. One of the QA people I work with currently is one of my favorite people. They don’t always make me happy (in the moment) with their bugs or with how they decide to break the software,…

> Good QA people know how to find regression and bugs _that you didn’t think about_ which is the whole reason why it shouldn’t be under “engineering”

I don’t understand the reasoning here why QA shouldn’t be engineering.

Re: Should QA exist?

#24

Post by itmitica »

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

If engineering owns quality, then engineering own all, up the chain. No need for anything and anybody.

Which is the AI pipe dream, really.

You are, in fact, with using AI, QA or coding or otherwise, externalizing services in hope the services will improve and costs will drop.

Let me know how that goes without HITLs.

Re: Should QA exist?

#25

Post by Juliate »

darkerside wrote: post #6
andrewstuart wrote: post #5

Hard to believe people are asking this question in 2026. Quality is something that takes dedicated focus and lots of work. Therefore it’s a job, not an afterthought or latest priority for someone whose primary focus is not quality.

So why would you outsource it to another team that isn't doing the actual work?

QA is actual work. Building the thing is actual work. Each is not "the" work, which is the task of the whole company.

QA perspective and focus is just different from the one of the team building the thing. It's precisely because of their detached perspective that they can do their work properly.

Re: Should QA exist?

#26

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

> Have engineering own quality

The moment that happens it will either be re-outsourced to QA anyways or quality will become a question of licensing and bonding of professional engineers

Re: Should QA exist?

#28

Post by almostdeadguy »

I think the unstated (but highly prevalent) view among executives in large swathes of this industry is that they don't really care to spend any time or money on user testing or quality assurance, and if this role exists at companies it is usually under-compensated and straddles both these functions to have some party be accountable. It is sometimes a check on product teams and vision-driven executive teams who don't prototype/test their ideas (or empower their teams to do so), and sometimes a check on engineers and engineering managers who don't want to be accountable to gaps in quality.

Re: Should QA exist?

#29

Post by canpan »

ottoflux wrote: post #15

100% and I’m a software developer and have been for ~30 years. Good QA people know how to find regression and bugs _that you didn’t think about_ which is the whole reason why it shouldn’t be under “engineering” and that it should exist. One of the QA people I work with currently is one of my favorite people. They don’t always make me happy (in the moment) with their bugs or with how they decide to break the software,…

Yes, QA is important. My code will always "work" in that everything I tested is bug free. But having someone other test, especially someone who knows the service is gold.

But there is also bad QA: The most worthless QA I was forced to work with, was an external company, where I, as developer, had to write the test sheet and they just tested that. Obviously they could not find bugs as I tested everything on the sheet.

My most impressive QA experience where when I helped out a famous Japanese gaming company. They tested things like press multiple buttons in the same frame and see my code crash.

Re: Should QA exist?

#30

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc »

stingraycharles wrote: post #23
ottoflux wrote: post #15

100% and I’m a software developer and have been for ~30 years. Good QA people know how to find regression and bugs _that you didn’t think about_ which is the whole reason why it shouldn’t be under “engineering” and that it should exist. One of the QA people I work with currently is one of my favorite people. They don’t always make me happy (in the moment) with their bugs or with how they decide to break the software,…

> Good QA people know how to find regression and bugs _that you didn’t think about_ which is the whole reason why it shouldn’t be under “engineering” I don’t understand the reasoning here why QA shouldn’t be engineering.

> I don’t understand the reasoning here why QA shouldn’t be engineering.

Who watches the watcher, right?

That aside, the core idea is the same as the principles of independent audit, peer review, or even simply just specialization.

Red team / Blue team?

Post reply on HN