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Ask HN: How do I become a world class automation engineer?
as titled really, or maybe a better question would be, are there examples of world class automation engineers and if so, who are they?
this has entered my head recently and has proved very hard to shake. I'm 28 and work a decent job in Ireland, given my expenses, although I don't have a house I reckon I could be financially independent in 10years.
I work as a software engineer in test and have a good reputation, currently working in the healthcare field. I previously worked in finance and technology but changed field to 'do good work.' Disappointingly, the reality has been it's the same sort of crap, just wrapped with a new bow.
I feel like chasing money would be foolish, I certainly don't NEED it. Considering beyond the next 10years I always expected to 'work' in some capacity, though not sure exactly what this will look like, especially given I'm a software engineer in test which doesn't seem like a role required outside huge corporations.
If I don't chase money and changing to a 'feel good' industry didn't work, what else is there? As I alluded to above, I'm not sure chasing mastery in test engineering is a useful endeavor either?
So what is everyone else out there chasing if it isn't money? Perhaps it is money to escape the rat race? After the escape what's the plan?
I've moved to the testing work recently enough from Dev/Support and have had a troublesome time attempting to find resources which will make me a better tester and a better software engineer in test. The one thing I found on hacker news other than hundreds of job postings was this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264223#up_3264286 - which is both very old and doesn't seem to contain great advice.
So HN, how do I become an awesome software engineer in test, clearly there are a lot of them out there based on job postings, so where are they? What skills do they have? Where do they go to learn new skills to become better?
Thanks!
So for background I'm a CS grad who doesn't seem to have a great ability to develop, at least not yet. I went into finance and worked for two years in support/development and got on very well, unfortunately my application got quite popular and therefore the team was heavily regulated, this meant I went to strictly support and low level so I wasn't happy with the lack of complexity.
As a result I decided to try a different industry and have went back to technology and got a job as a QA engineer. I am fully aware I cannot rely solely on my employer to provide the skills necessary to become a good QA Engineer.
Therefore I wish to firstly cement soft skills as a good QA tester which I believe I already have. i.e. an eye for detail, enjoy a good puzzle. What technical skills do people feel are required to be a good 'manual' tester?
Lastly the main reason I took this jump was to get into automated testing as I believe it will allow a jump in complexity and perhaps a side move to development when I'm good enough. Where do I start in becoming good at automated testing?
The standard advice for a dev is to start developing personal projects? What about a tester? Is it the same so then you can test your project thoroughly? I've often seen it said you should be testing OTHER peoples code mainly. So how can I get this exposure?
Just for additional info, I've been researching a bit myself and have come across a few products like selenium to play with and reading the google testing blog. On top of this I've started two udacity classes, one for software testing and one for debugging. Any further suggestions? Any decent books to help me feel a little less lost in my current situation?
Thanks for any advice you can provide