Dreams...Imagination... and Inspiration

Though a developer , sometimes while at work I wonder what would be life like if I was a tester. Well, the reason for such a thought is that most of our college placements lands a fresher in a testing/maintenance job.

Nowadays, these recruiters have a formula that students, fresh out of college should be exposed to testing job first, gain experience and later may/may not be suitable for development projects. I had a shocking revelation when I heard from one of my friend who turns out to be a HR(recruitment) in a consulting company about 'how they recruit and categorize students'. Their funda is colleges are divided into different categories, top one consists of all IIT's and premier institutes. Next comes NIT's and some prominent colleges across India. The last one being rest of the colleges.The top category students are without doubt put into projects of their choice, middle ones are split into development and maintenance(but mostly development), and last categorized students land mostly into maintenance jobs.

Well I have nothing against testing/maintenance job , but only drawback of this procedure is that some talented people in Tier 2 and 3 land up in departments where they don't even have slightest interest to work.
The least they could do is clarify the job position/description during the interview and ask the student what field they might be interested in and if it is OK with them if put into testing. But that is done only by few companies.

Enough said about development jobs, hell... this post is about a group of testers. Testing jobs are fun too, and I have even seen people from Tier 1 and 2 demanding those jobs. Yes! people that has happened. These people don't criticize about their jobs but rather find enjoyment in finding faults(trivial/complex) inside codes written by top and most praised developers. They would then meet up just to laugh at the kind of bugs they encountered and mock those developers who "can't even write a standard code" :D ... 

"There are two ways to write code: write code so simple there are obviously no bugs in it, or write code so complex that there are no obvious bugs in it."
                                                                                          -- C.A.R. Hoare


This post is dedicated to those talented testers who spend nights and days trying to detect and  fix problem others have created; some of them who are my close friends :D. The story below is about the IBM's most feared group of testers.... "The Black Team".

Today's programming knowledge box is so huge that every software comes with bugs. But back In 60's software with bugs were considered defective. With software titled defective, no customer would buy such product. Such was the problem faced by IBM and they had to find a solution and fast....

The entire story is here :
http://www.t3.org/tangledwebs/07/tw0706.html

Please go through that article before reading any further.

Now, if you are a dedicated tester you must be filled with adrenaline rush by now :D . Personally I feel developer or tester , if you are having fun doing your job, well none can stop your progress. In fact, some testers are even paid more than a developer (again... in few companies).
I hope this post has boosted your morale :) ..... If you are still looking for more excitement please read the below article :

http://www.penzba.co.uk/GreybeardStories/TheBlackTeam.html

Though the author of this article doesn't guarantee the genuineness of the story, It's satisfying to think that it is true :D ....

Cheers & Happy Coding :)