128
votes
Accepted
Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
I would push back hard on this question.
An interview question is a machine designed to extract a signal from a candidate. Let's examine the parts of this machine.
"The most" has already been ...
- 1,273
26
votes
Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
To be honest, I wouldn't be able to come up with any defect in particular.
If I were you, I'd rephrase my questions as situations, for example:
What actions would you take if you had to reopen a ...
- 5,894
22
votes
Accepted
Is testing position only for young specialists?
TL;DR: No, also it is not true for programmers.
Young programmers and testers are probably worth less than experienced people. Learning how to make adaptable software is something that comes with ...
- 32.6k
20
votes
Why do many jobs describe automation but then require extensive manual testing?
Following the Skeptics SE guidelines I would expect a question like yours to be accompanied by sources, otherwise it's just a collection of anecdotes.
To answer your question my own experience and ...
- 7,099
19
votes
How to convince project managers that onboarding a tester early is important?
In this situation - unfortunately - your best option is the slow and painful method. I've used it as a general tester, and for test automation.
The way I approach this is to use these techniques:
...
- 31.5k
18
votes
Why do many jobs describe automation but then require extensive manual testing?
What I observe is that it is hard to hire good programmers who specialize in automation and the particular set of skills needed for it.
The result is that you end up with either manual testers or ...
- 25.2k
15
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Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
I am terrible at recalling names, places, restaurants, and... bugs I have investigated. I usually ask my girlfriend or my friend to give me a name of a place we have been together or an actress in a ...
- 10.5k
12
votes
Is testing position only for young specialists?
The short answer: No
The longer version: Younger testers and younger developers are not more valuable than older testers and developers. The person who said that developers age badly is probably ...
- 31.5k
12
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Why do many jobs describe automation but then require extensive manual testing?
I can give an example from our company which is nearly the same what you desribed. Let me shortly explain how we worked. We got two departments, one was the IT-department - which had testers (manual ...
- 1,183
11
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Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
I was asked a question like this at my last interview, and it took me a bit of time to think back and come up with a good answer. This was partly due to a dearth of experience - at that time I had ...
- 593
10
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Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
I would say such a question might spotlight how deep the candidate understands the technologies, analyze the root-causes and is able to troubleshoot issues.
As per my experience I can remember ...
- 11.6k
10
votes
Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
I don't know if I'm just too literal, but when I get asked these sort of questions, I get hung up on the word "most". It's not too hard to come with a bug, but making sure that I've never seen any ...
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10
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Why do many jobs describe automation but then require extensive manual testing?
I am just rearranging the order of your questions so that this could be answered more clearly:
Is this trend specific to companies?
The answer would be more product-specific, and test level-...
- 11.1k
9
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How do I get an automation testing job without experience?
Here is a set of things I would do:
even though you said your current position is purely manual, I would still look for things that can be automated - this may be some types of tests, or tests for ...
- 11.4k
9
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Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
I think it's an excellent question. I think it's likely to help you understand:
(a) what kind of technical challenges the interviewee is accustomed to dealing with. (Do they choose a programming ...
- 568
9
votes
Accepted
What is the advantage of choosing testing as compared to other career paths in Software Industry?
If you want to earn the most, do what earns the most, probably it is not testing, nor developing.
Pursue what you like to be and enjoy. Some testers become great Directors of Quality, some become ...
- 32.6k
8
votes
Remote work as a tester?
Yeah, it is possible. In theory, software engineers (including QA) can work from home.
All we need is a PC terminal, an online chat tool and internet access.
But there are several considerations to ...
- 9,942
7
votes
Accepted
What can a candidate tester do to blow up an interview?
Oh boy! There is an interesting one.
Well apart from checking all the technical skills and blah blah, I always make sure to ask or observe two things about a candidate I am about to interview. And ...
- 3,532
7
votes
Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
If you aren't getting good answers, then perhaps you can modify the question slightly to help the interviewee. The word "interesting" can be interpreted in so many different ways, and perhaps that is ...
- 171
7
votes
Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
It's a great question because it separates code copiers/script kiddies from actual software engineers.
Example:
A well-known, very expensive piece of analytical software owned by a large company (I ...
7
votes
What is the advantage of choosing testing as compared to other career paths in Software Industry?
Generally yes, Quality Assurance folks are paid less and have less prestigious jobs. There are definitely exceptions and usually the key today is to be as technical as possible. I know more than one ...
- 25.2k
7
votes
Can I get freelance QA (QA Lead or QA Manager) role through my sqa.stackexchange.com reputation?
It depends on what you mean by "through" - obviously, this is not a job board. A quick check of Stack Overflow Jobs shows that companies are hiring people for QA roles though the network, and they'd ...
- 7,092
6
votes
Remote work as a tester?
Try Utest.com https://www.utest.com/ or there is another that I cannot think of off the top of my head.
I wouldnt rely on it for my sole income - but you are in England so might get more payable test ...
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6
votes
Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
I think it is an appropriate question to ask in an interview. I would restructure the question as what is the most interesting bug that you or your team found and what's the lesson learned? That way ...
- 69
6
votes
Is testing position only for young specialists?
Everyone will have to stop playing sooner or later. The younger a specialist is the more effective they can follow changing technologies just because of physiological aspect.
On the other side "old" ...
- 11.6k
6
votes
Why do many jobs describe automation but then require extensive manual testing?
I can think of several issues:
Test automation fails if the test automation engineers are too far separated from the software engineers.
In a perfect world, fully automated tests allow continuous ...
- 450
5
votes
Should I offer my client free code maintenance?
Assuming this decision is up to you, if you think you can easily maintain the existing scripts in the short term, 'free' might be reasonable to help build the relationship with this client. However, ...
- 476
5
votes
Should I offer my client free code maintenance?
Does your competitor offer something similar and if not, why not?
Really in business nothing is free.
Charge extra upfront during develop to cover the costs longterm
Offer a subscription on ...
- 32.6k
5
votes
Multiple product-specific QA teams vs a single generic QA team
Neither, QA should be part of the Agile delivery teams. I mean that the QA/Testers should sit with the developers and help them deliver tested features during their iterations.
Read some Agile ...
- 32.6k
5
votes
Is asking about "The most interesting bug in your career" a good interview question?
I've had a long enough career that I've seen and fixed many defects. It takes a real whopper these days to pique any genuine interest beyond that appropriate for efficiently characterizing and ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible