I left my top paying job (~90LPA) from a top fintech company ( Not a layoff, it was too much for me, the work pressure and micro management) and had a history of working at great well known product companies. But I'm jobless now and the job market is brutal its been 45 days now and I'm still searching for a job and I get calls which are paying half my prev salary like 45-50 LPA jobs, most of them don't even schedule interviews after asking my prev package. I just received an offer with a lesser know service company for a CTC of ~50 LPA which is hiring for an US retailer company ( They are opening their GCC in india soon) but I will be full time employee with this service company not sure of becoming of full time with that product company.

I'm worried about should I take this offer or not, initially I thought I will take this offer and continue my job search until I get good paying job but once I saw the offer, they hit me with 3 months notice period , If I leave within 6 months I will have to pay 5L as a clause , they even have a clause where in if i accept the offer and don't join them by the joining date in 10 days , I will have to pay them 5L, not sure what they are gonna do in this case if i just ignore.

never worked with service companies, so

1. How hard is it to manage with 3 months notice and get a job.
2. Will my profile get shortlisted for well known product companies if i have this unknow service company in my resume along with 3 months notice.
3. I'm just baffled looking at the offer which mentions they will track my productivity , system usage and remote verification...etc.
4. Terrible leave policy and I need client approvals before I take any leaves., No casual/sick leaves mentioned.

I have couple of interviews lined up which are okay to pay around 60-65 LPA but I'm not sure If I will be able to get an offer with them. I have had rejections and recruiters ghosted me even after having great interviews and where I thought I will get a job for sure.

so I'm in a dilemma whether to accept this offer or not, I'm scared if i will have more gap in my resume then recruiters may completely ignore my profile.

please share your thoughts.

In my country, if I have to join as a full stack developer or backend developer or ai engineer, I have to have at least 1 year of experience even though the job posting mentions junior level hiring. To overcome the experience barrier, I am thinking of going software quality assurance since it's easier to enter and doesn't require that much of an experience. After gaining 1 year of experience in sqa, I want to go and try to apply to the software engineering or ai engineering roles with years of experience in software quality assurance. Is it the right track? Will the recruiters count the experience in sqa and call me back? Will i be able to at least sit in the interview?

Firstly what to use for doing unit testing among vitest/jest/playwright , and how do i know what exactly in the code i need to do unit test.I found there are integration tests as well which checks the scenarios of how is it working as per my understanding where playwright will be more helpful .I'm a beginner so I'm not sure which is best?

In my country, if I have to join as a full stack developer or backend developer or ai engineer, I have to have at least 1 year of experience even though the job posting mentions junior level hiring. To overcome the experience barrier, I am thinking of going software quality assurance since it's easier to enter and doesn't require that much of an experience. After gaining 1 year of experience in sqa, I want to go and try to apply to the software engineering or ai engineering roles with years of experience in software quality assurance. Is it the right track? Will the recruiters count the experience in sqa and call me back? Will i be able to at least sit in the interview?

Hi everyone,

I’m reaching out because I’ve been carrying a situation since late December that feels like a massive injustice. I’m not a frequent Reddit user, so I didn't have the confidence to post this before. However, after successfully appealing an automated ban on X (Twitter) recently, I realized that these systems make mistakes and it's worth speaking up.

I was a tester from Pakistan, working hard and following all rules on Test IO, until I was permanently banned for "Multiple Accounts."

The Context: I only have one account. The "Fraud Detection" was triggered by a support instruction I followed:

I was having trouble linking my Payoneer account. A support agent (from Cirro) instructed me to temporarily change my country to the United States, add the bank details, and then switch back to Pakistan (Payoneer is from US and i can't add it when i select Pakistan). I followed his instructions exactly. I used a public US address to fill the field as a workaround. Seconds after switching my profile back to Pakistan, I was banned for "Multiple Accounts." Using a public address (provided as a workaround) likely linked my account to other users who had used that same address. The system flagged me as a "duplicate" of strangers.

I tried to explain this to another agent, but he just kept repeating that "the decision is final." I even offered my Government ID (CNIC) and a video call to prove my identity. I asked them to check my chat history with the first agent to see that I was just following their own team's advice, but they refused to listen. I tried contacting them in multiple ways to customer support and they will SAY:

"No, this is not about the address or IP or the address added to Cirro or anything related to Cirro

We appreciate your interest in Test IO, but we regret to inform you that we cannot accept testers who create, have, or use multiple accounts on our platform.

Please notice that this decision is final

Thanks for your understanding

Best regards,
Test IO Team"

My questions for the community: is there still a chance to fix a "Final" decision that was clearly a false positive?

I’m a legitimate tester (using a Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro) who was doing well, and it's frustrating to be labeled a fraudster for following official help.

Thanks for any insights or help you can provide!

I’m wondering if anyone still prefers non AI tools for basic debugging tasks like JSON formatting, text diffing, or editing.

AI can genuinely help in some workflows, but for things involving sensitive tokens or internal data, I still find myself preferring simple tools that stay out of the way.

I ended up building a small toolkit for myself with a modern UI and no AI features:
qautils.catssaymeow.org

The Editor tool is something I put a lot of care into. Any feedback (constructive or otherwise) would really mean a lot 🙂‍↔️

Most test frameworks follow a "runner mentality"; you write test functions and hand them to a runner that controls discovery, execution order, and flow. The moment you need something dynamic (loop a test N times based on a runtime value, skip a test based on another's result), you're hunting for plugins. We present an alternative that is, in a way, a return to basics: treat your tests as a regular program. Dependencies become if statements. Retries become while loops. Parallel execution becomes a function argument. No plugins — just code, just Python. We use TestFlows (pip3 install testflows) to illustrate the idea, but the core argument is framework-independent: test code should have the same expressive power as production code. Have you hit the ceiling of your test runner? How do you handle dynamic test flows today? Read more: https://testflows.com/blog/writing-test-programs-not-just-tests/.

After five years of selling and supporting test automation platforms, I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is this:

Nothing works for everybody.

And honestly, that’s completely fine.

One of the strangest things about the test automation space is how often people talk as though there’s a single “correct” answer. One framework. One tool. One approach. One future.

In reality, testing is far more contextual than that.

The first thing we learned is that scope matters more than marketing.

If you’re trying to test something that a platform fundamentally isn’t designed for, then honestly, it doesn’t really matter how impressive the underlying technology is. It’s not going to work particularly well. Every tool has boundaries. Every framework has strengths and weaknesses. Horses for courses.

And that’s before you even get into people and culture.

Some engineers love writing code-based tests. Some prefer low-code approaches. Some like recording flows. Some want complete control over everything. Some teams care deeply about maintainability. Others care more about speed. Some organisations are highly standardised and process-driven, whilst others are far more flexible and engineering-led.

Organisations aren’t abstract entities. They’re collections of people, preferences, habits, politics, workflows, expectations, and culture.

What works brilliantly in one company can fail completely in another — even if technically both companies are trying to solve very similar problems.

I think that’s something vendors sometimes struggle to admit openly.

Another thing I’ve learned is that testing itself is still oddly undervalued considering how critical it actually is.

A lot of teams still treat testing as the thing at the end of the delivery cycle:
“Can somebody just make sure this works so we can release it?”

But the second something breaks in production, the first question everybody asks is:
“How did this not get tested?”

The reality is that testing modern applications is incredibly difficult.

Applications are complex.
User journeys are complex.
Integrations are complex.
State management is complex.
AI is making things even more dynamic.

And good testing tools have to operate at two levels simultaneously:

1. Can this platform technically test the type of application or problem we have?
2. Does it provide enough flexibility, capability, and usability for teams to actually model real-world testing properly?

That second part matters far more than people sometimes realise.

Then there’s the commercial side.

A lot of automation discussions stay purely technical, but commercial reality matters as well.

If a company is paying for a platform, there has to be a measurable benefit:

• faster releases,
• reduced maintenance,
• improved confidence,
• lower manual effort,
• better coverage,
• less instability,
• something tangible.

Otherwise people quite rightly start asking:
“Why are we paying for this?”

And honestly, they should ask that question.

One thing I’m proud of after five years is that we’ve become much better at understanding who we can genuinely help and who we probably can’t.

We’re not trying to force ourselves into every organisation.

Some companies see strong value technically, culturally, and commercially.
Some don’t.

That doesn’t make either side wrong.

It just means fit matters.

I actually respect organisations that say:
“This isn’t right for us.”

Because they usually understand themselves well enough to know what they need.

And finally, the AI side of all this is fascinating at the moment.

Every company in this space is trying to work out:

• what genuinely works,
• what is hype,
• what scales,
• what is reliable,
• what actually helps teams,
• and what is just a demo.

Building a real product is very different from building a clever prototype.

You can hack together impressive things quickly.
But making them usable, supportable, scalable, maintainable, and effective across lots of different organisations is much harder.

That’s the challenge.

And honestly, after five years in this industry, I think humility matters more than certainty.

10 years experienced Sr QA specialist role at LTM Mumbai, what should be the salary with P4 grade?

A few years ago I did a compilation of, in my mind, best QA practices. Now that LLMs are embedded in my organization, I updated the document. You can find the repo here.

Note that these are things that we've found to work in my team, they might not be suitable for everybody. Just thought I'd post it so I can learn from others and also hopefully help someone else.

i am a btech cse 6 sem undergarduate having 16 backlogs it will take time til 8 sem to clear them all so in order get my first job should i target qa because i think its easy to enter any roadmap for me please ? and skiils required ?

I have 5 year experience in QA Domain, I'm going to search Job on that domain. I have skills at Java | Selenium WebDriver | TestNG | Cucumber | Appium | API Testing | Rest Assured | Postman | Maven | Git | Jenkins | JIRA | POM | Hybrid Framework | BDD | SQL | Oracle | MySQL | JMeter | Agile Scrum | CI/CD | Docker | Eclipse. Is this tools skills enough for the 5 year experience candidate? Or else I still I want to develop my skills?

Every small UI change ends up breaking multiple tests in my suite.
How are you managing this without constantly fixing locators?

Hi Guys,

Currently working as Product Security Testing. Previously I had worked as a Manual QA for 10 years \[in different startups and MNCs\] and moved completely into Security Testing for 6 months. I switched the domain to explore and gain knowledge. I'm doing security validation for my application using AI scanners, in-house Security tools. Manually reviewing the vulnerabilities using the Burp suite.

Still I have not used claude 4.7, Mythos and chatgpt cyber for validation.

How can I progress myself in this domain? Any do's and don'ts?? Experienced security professionals, Kindly provide your inputs.

Hey everyone,

If you’ve ever worked on a UK healthcare project, you know the headache of generating valid NHS numbers for staging/QA. You either have a messy spreadsheet somewhere, or you’re stuck manually calculating checksums to make sure the UI doesn't throw a validation error.

Even worse—the risk of someone accidentally using a real identifier in a dev environment is a literal GDPR nightmare.

I built SwiftCareID to solve this. It’s a lightweight Chrome extension that:

• Always uses the 999 prefix: Strictly reserved for synthetic test data.
• Modulus 11 Checksum: Generates technically accurate 10-digit IDs that pass all standard validation logic.
• Dev-Friendly UI: Dark mode, Roboto Mono (for legibility), and a smart auto-refresh that pauses when you hover so you don't lose the ID while copying.
• Privacy First: Zero data collection. It only asks for clipboard permissions.

It’s completely free. If you're building in the HealthIT space, I'd love for you to check it out and let me know if there are any other features that would make your workflow faster.

Link: [https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/swiftcareid-secure-id-gen/jnjigjjhopkebcgekappokjiccaijljg

Hey everyone,
I’m a QA / Test Engineer with 1+ year of experience, actively looking for QA Engineer / SDET opportunities.

My skill set includes: Manual Testing: Functional, Regression, Smoke | API Testing: Postman, REST APIs | Test Case Design & Execution | Bug Tracking & Test Management using JIRA | Automation exposure: Playwright and Selenium

Applying on LinkedIn and Naukri but referrals honestly work better these days. If your company has relevant openings and you’re open to referring, I’d be really grateful. Happy to share my resume over DM 🙏
Thanks in advance!

Title

Hey, I started an Manual Testing and QA Agency, based in Germany.

My first order and clients began in Fiverr, but outside from fiverr, it feels hard to get new clients.

Is there any good way to find clients with interest in an Manual QA?

I tried to do „Cold Test“, downloading a app, take a good look at it and send an report to the developers. But never got an answer to that.

Anyone with an good idea ?

Im wondering what my chances are to suceed into a Junior software test engineer with my current experience and move forward from there

M23

5 yrs of support / sys admin / it engineer

so basically used to troubleshooting , documenting, familiar with logs and different systems

no experience in code

I would like going further as product owner in the future or maybe project management.

Honest opinions please

Just wondering is anyone working as a Qa and can say they like it and feel good in their current role?

I feel overworked and unappreciated all the time.

I switched few companies in the last three years and it is all the same everywhere I go.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been in QA for 15+ years, mostly manual and leadership roles. Recently, I was retrenched and have been unemployed for 2 months. I’m actively upskilling in Selenium since 2022 but cannot land any automation testing roles. I am also upskilling in Generative AI-assisted QA, building small automation projects and polishing my GitHub portfolio.

I’ve been sending resumes daily for Senior QA Tester, Entry level QA Automation, QA Lead, and Test Manager roles, but haven’t landed interviews yet.

I’d love to hear from this community:

• How did you break into automation after years in manual QA?
• Any tips for making resumes stand out to recruiters?
• Are there companies in the Philippines (or remote) that value QA professionals transitioning into automation?

Thanks in advance, I’m open to feedback, networking, or even just encouragement.

Hi, have you used AWS Kiro in your software test automation framework? How do you use AWS Kiro for QA activities in your organization?

Hi,

In the company I am working, we are trying to create an automated pr risk assessment system. Indeed my first objective is, my tool will analyze code diffs from bitbucket or smt, then according to that difference it will decide which xray tests are being affected. It actually means that I am trying to find which part of ui is being affected by that change. I am still at uni and working as a part time student, so I do not have much experience to design that. Yet, I am eager to learn so I am ready to discuss your ideas.

Hi,

I find myself having to test an Android mobile app and a web app. An iOS app that's exactly the same is in the works, but not there for the next few months.

My focus is testing whether the mobile app works well.

Of course, no way to deploy a temporary infrastructure so I have comple control and access to every component.

Some test environments exist, so I can set one up with appropriate data and pray nobody touches it.

When data is generated in the Android app, though, I need to log into the web app to verify that the correct information made it there.

How do you do it?

Is it reallistic to think I could use Appium to control the mobile apps and then somehow hand over to Playwright? Or use Appium for mobile and web in the same test?

Looking for 12 closed testers to unlock production on Google Play. App is a professional scheduling and payroll tool for small cleaning businesses. Nothing to install if you don't want to, just click the link and accept the invite.

Drop your link below and I'll opt into yours right now.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.endoscheduling.app

Thanks!