I was looking at their careers site, but I cannot see any Software QA openings... I searched with 'test' 'development in test' 'test' 'quality' 'qa' but nothing found...
Sadly, Microsoft laid them all off because of the Windows/Xbox Insider Programs and made it integrated into the SWEs role. Why pay someone to test your software when your consumers can do it for free?
Haha... your word is really dangerous... then why do your SDEs test their code? Just using FREE customers to test that.
The title doesn't exist but there are still some teams around that fulfill the old roles as "SDE" up to an extent. They will probably not be there forever though so I wouldn't bother looking. Externally you probably won't ever be able to apply to these dwindling positions.
We used to have SDET in addition to SDE and PM. SDET was software development engineer in test. I was there in 2014 when we had the massive layoffs. SDET was reorged into sde. A bunch of my SDET friends were laid off. It's really hard now. As a software engineer I have no desire to spend time being dedicated to quality. It was so great when we had an entire discipline dedicated to quality while the other discipline did the implementation. Now we're supposed to do both. There's a reason I refused to go into SDET
No time being dedicated to quality? So 'it compiled, good enough for me',or do I misunderstand you? I'm seeing code being shopped that has obviously never been tested because it doesn't work when executed even once.
I hope recent windows update quality was a good indicator for you đ
Ever since they merged the dev and test roles, all the former devs left. Qa = SDE
Microsoft still has a lot of vendors/contractors doing testing.
^This. Its a myth that QA is dead, its largely being outsources or done by SDETs. I dont think developers who test produce good software.
Was gonna say that... we get vendors from India breaking the crap out of accessibility localization and every thing else. Obviously they start on these areas after rigorously testing functionality. This might vary across teams but certainly true for any customer facing product.
Yes they do! The titles have changed though. Now we call them "Customers"
There are test teams inside the hardware organizations. They are called DVEs. Design Verification Engineers. They focus on hardware testing though. There are a lot of vendors doing testing too. Software testing is largely nonexistent in the company anymore, despite the fake news of combined engineering role of owning developing and testing. Some lucky teams have a few vendors locally or overseas, and we mostly relying on the selfhost programs. Outside of Microsoft, testing jobs are far and between, most of them are for test automation. My recommendation is to stay away from this career track if you still have many years before retirement. It is basically a thankless and dead-end job at most places.
I really appreciate your kind response! How about test automation engineer and DevOps? Not a traditional SQA engineer.
There are folks focus on test automation. They are most likely ex-testers. However, I know the engineer managers and the orgs as a whole value product code a lot more than test code. So, your review or promotions are at a big disadvantage comparing to the devs. I would not waste my energy to try to fight the uphill battle. You are much better of to go with the trend than trying to fight it by providing your work is important. I don't know any MS ex-testers who mainly do automation or sustaining engineering work are happy. If most the engineering managers are devs, how do you expect them to really understand what you do and value your impact. It would be too hard to get good reviews in dev dominated orgs, if your main job is testing, including writing automation.
There are many other companies in the area that still have SDETs, like Nordstrom, F5, Tableau...
Nope
Because all client SW are fully automated for testing?
Not even close :p New model is to have only SDEs who perform both functions. No dedicated testers (at least by title)