career-switchtesting

Switched from manual QA to dev after two years and I wish I'd done it sooner

Anonymous18 Jul 2026

Spent two years in manual QA feeling like I was watching everyone else build things. Started fixing tiny bugs in the test tooling, then automating checks, then one day a dev asked if I wanted to pick up a real ticket. Six months later I moved teams as a junior.

The QA background turned out to be a cheat code. I write way more defensive code and I actually think about edge cases before the reviewer does. If you're stuck in a testing or support role and eyeing dev, the path is shorter than it looks. Happy to answer questions.

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Anonymous18 Jul 2026
Needed to read this today. I'm in QA and keep talking myself out of it because I think I missed the window. The bit about fixing tooling first is smart, it gives you actual commits to point at when you make the case.
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Anonymous18 Jul 2026
This is basically my exact path except support instead of QA. The edge-case instinct is so underrated, half my team ships the happy path and moves on. How did you handle the pay conversation when you switched internally?
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