Transitioning from Software QA Engineering to UI/UX design
Any experience or advise or thoughts on transitioning field from QA engineer to UI/UX design? I have a master degree in computer science and have 6+ years experience as a QA engineer in NortonLifeLock, but I don’t see any growth on myself. Got laid off six months ago and still could not find a job. I take Google course for UX design and create 2 apps and 1 website for my portfolio. Any advise or thought helps. Thank you! #tech
It’s a very tough field to break into. You’ll be competing with master HCI students and undergrads with internships. The course is an ok intro but you’ll need to self teach and create a good enough portfolio which can take months to make as well. A lot of juniors have been struggling to break in. If you start switching now, I’d count yourself lucky if you can get a Junior UX role within 2 years.
Do you have experience? I got Google UX design certification in three months and could create two app and one website to add in my portfolio.
I’ve been a UX designer for 10 years and work at Apple as one. Also coach and have talked to a lot of career transitoners including many that have taken the cert. If you’ve already gotten it, it might not take 2 years. But it’s still going to take a while to create those portfolio pieces. The cert only teaches the steps. I feel like it does less in teaching why you might want to do something. The biggest thing it’s missing is actual professors and mentors that can help guide you and give crit. As well as foundational visual design skills you would need to break in. Your masters and past qa experience might help you stand out amongst a lot of the juniors but you’ll still need to create good work. And unless you had a design background it’s hard to get good at it except time and practice.
You're not going to have any better chances in UX. We have too many "I took a boot camp that taught me how to design a common sense login flow for my portfolio" idiots. The field is saturated with people who suck at the work and just want the money. Even the new grads from masters programs are terrible at it a lot of times. Their programs teach them academic theory and not real application.
Don’t, there are no jobs for entry level product designers
Is there a job for QA engineer? It’s being 6months that I got laid off and still no job!
Maybe dig deeper on why you can’t get a QA job. Jumping from one industry to another hard industry (now without school or past experience) isn’t going to make it easier.