Startup backend dev VS FANG level SDET
I spent close to 3 yrs of my experiences with developing test automation and I was lucky enough to change my role to Backend developer recently. Now I enjoy it very much and having fun time developing. However, I feel like I can easily get into FANG company with testing role. If that happens then I would get much higher TC then right now. What would be better? Should I just take easy short cut to get into FANG and become sdet? Or just stay as a backend dev at a startup and practice leetcode hard and shoot for dev role way later in my life?
In Microsoft and Amazon, the process to move from SDET to SDE is pretty easy and has same salary. Amazon also has QAE which you should avoid.
SDET? Not sure if it is still a thing at FANGs.... If you prefer Backend Dev role, then stick to it. Try FANG (if that's what you want) as a Backend Dev whenever you are ready.
Stay as backend dev. If you go to SDET at faang you’ll pigeon hole yourself for the rest of your life
I felt the same way. I felt like if I move to fang testing, then I would not be able to escape testing forever
In my opinion and experience 10 years as SDET. I feel SDET is on a downward trend. - Frequent re orgs, SDET to productivity to tools to SWE including FAANG - After transition to SWE from SDET due to change in company org structure the new SWEs are not given real Dev work more like GDPR and stuff devs don't want to do. - Simplified tools and frameworks make it easier for Dev to write their own tests (they don't write them which is a different story) - With the bar being lower for SDET they are asking for an array of skills machine learning to camera to hardware to speech recognition. You will end up being a jack of all and master of none. - No scope for growth as there don't have quality manager and director in org anymore and your will be treated as a step child by Dev manager. - More political due to low bar. I'd we happy to start of as a Dev and eventually learn and grow.
Im SDET. In decent org as a SDET role you have a lot of autonomy. In my previous company I was more like a assistant dedicated for the dev team. I learned foundation of functional programming in Haskell (application was purely written in H language) - steep learn curve but that was fun as well. I had a chance to deeply develop more advanced testing concepts like property based testing or advocate port-adapters approach to level up unit testing. On the other hand if you, as a SDET, are responsible for writing another Selenium/REST API/Integration test suits - better go to dev. TL:DR Unpopular opinion: It depends.
I would never be a SDET. God I would be so miserable coming into work and just writing test cases
Not saying what you stated isn't right. Take into consideration the same one could say about: * writing CSS and playing around JS crazy world * build next CRUD based backend application as a database cover
Any tips on moving from SDET to backend is appreciated. Other than leetcode and system design what else did you focus on to transition to Dev role?
Internal transfer is the best way. And startup company is the right choice to do internal transfer. If you go to big company, it's hard to change from testing to dev cuz they already got their structure.
OP : didn’t you just answered your own question 😂