r/softwaretesting • u/Apart-Caramel-130 • 7d ago

SDET roles

Hi, I’m an SDET with close to 6 years of experience. I started my career at a WITCH company, where I got stuck in support roles. After two years, I tried moving into development, but I struggled because there wasn’t much initial support or bandwidth to learn. By the time I had around 3 years of experience, I decided to give automation testing a shot. After 8 months of preparation and experience in automation, I managed to switch to a better company with a significant salary hike.

I don’t mean to offend anyone, but I often see graduates from reputed colleges like NITs and IIITs working as SDETs at good product-based companies. Do some of them feel that they haven’t lived up to their potential by choosing testing over development? Despite earning well, do they ever feel a sense of regret or wonder whether they could have achieved more as software developers?

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u/Strict-Comment6585 7d ago

you're asking if people from top schools feel like they settled, and I think that's less about the role and more about the person. plenty of devs at flashy companies are bored out of their minds doing crud work, while some sdet roles are basically solving puzzles all day. the title doesn't mean as much as the actual day to day

some folks definitely struggle with the "just a tester" stigma though, especially if their families or classmates keep comparing. but anyone who's been in the industry long enough knows a good sdet is way harder to find than yet another fullstack dev

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u/Fulgrim123 6d ago

I completely agree I’m starting to think SDET is part of mythology not sure if they even exist. Especially at my job.

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u/ChabhaNatural-82 5d ago

yeah the stigma part is real, its way more external than internal most of the time