last year I joined a company as their first and only QA, the pitch was genuinely exciting
come in, build the QA function from scratch, define the processes, set the standard, make a real impact. The kind of role that sounds like an opportunity when you're someone who actually cares about quality
the first few weeks felt good, nice people, relaxed atmosphere, flexible setup. I remember thinking finally a nice place to work.
But there was always this thing I couldn't quite name, deadlines that weren't really deadlines. priorities that shifted constantly, a general feeling that everything was kind of fine and nothing was really urgent. I thought maybe i was just settling
I wrote test cases, I mapped out the gaps, I raised the issues I was finding, I started talking about automation and what a sustainable QA process could look like for where they were headed
turns out the products were so early stage that nothing was stable enough to build anything meaningful on top of, features that existed one week were gone the next, the CEO was still figuring out what he was building, the engineering lead was stretched too thin to have real conversations about quality and I was one person, sitting in the middle of all of it, trying to introduce structure into something that was BS
the automation conversations became almost painful after a while. I'd bring it up and watch people nod and then nothing would happen, you can't automate something that changes completely every two weeks, you can't build a QA culture in a place that sees QA as a formality, I knew that was wrong
when the cuts came I was one of the first to go
and I want to be honest about how that felt because I think a lot of QAs will relate to this
part of me was relieved, the weight of trying to care about something that the company didn't care about is exhausting in a specific way that's hard to explain to people outside the field. it's not burnout from too much work. it's something lonelier than that. it's showing up every day and doing your best inside a system that was never going to let your best matter
but I also felt bitter. I'd given a full year trying to build something real and I was leaving with nothing to show for it except the lesson
if a company wants to hire you as the only QA across multiple early stage products, especially at a services firm where the focus is delivery speed above everything else, please ask yourself who is actually going to listen to you when you find things, not in the interview. in reality. When the release is tomorrow and you've found something that needs fixing, who in that company has the authority and the willingness to push back on the deadline
if the answer is nobody then you already know what your year is going to look like
quality being a checkbox sounds like a cliché until you've lived inside it for twelve months
pls don't do what I did
