A testing job market: MoT Weekly – Issue 490

What's going on with the testing job market right now? [MoT Weekly logo, featuring the Ministry of Testing logo and the text "mot weekly" on a purple background.]( Issue 490 | Monday 21st October 2024 | [View Online]( This newsletter is kindly supported by Signadot [Is your team struggling to keep up with microservices testing?]( Shift-left testing with Signadot—automate testing for every Pull Request without creating new environments. Support any test framework including Playwright, Cypress, Postman and others. Scale testing across teams effortlessly and catch integration issues before merging code! What's been happening in the testing, QA and quality engineering community? Let's go! 🏍️ I hope you have a great week. — Simon Tomes, Community Lead at Ministry of Testing Community Meetups are go! Head to the [Coventry Meetup]( on December 5th. Speaker: Stu Day. Hosted at Sainsbury's offices and sponsored by Xpertise Recruitment. And there are two new Meetup groups to join: [London]( and [Barcelona](. Plus, Rogério Castro and Nuno Ramos take over the rebranded [MoT Porto](. 🇬🇧 🇪🇸 🇵🇹 Via the MoT Slack, kudos to Nic Furniss and the Test Team at the Co-op. They delivered internal 99-second talks sharing key takeaways from TestBash. Bug congrats to Gabbi Trotter for [9 years at Searchability](. 🎂 Christine Pinto celebrates [another Epic Test Quest milestone](. Go Christine! [What's happening at The Testing Planet Episode 6: The Apprentice]( Register today for this free online event on Thursday the 24th of October. Learn about testing, interviews, and onboarding. 🪐 [Introduce or reintroduce yourself on this thread](. Say hi and connect with the community. [Rahul Parwal celebrates]( his MoT Community Certificate. 🤩 Career Growth New roles - [Philippa Jennings starts a new position]( as Chapter Lead QA at Admiral Group Plc. Bug congrats! 🏆 Now hiring - Maryam Umar and Booking.com are hiring a Test Engineer. Available on the [MoT Jobs Board](. [Are you open to work?]( Help us get a sense for the QA and software testing employment market. [How do you document your impact at work?]( asks Cassandra. [Software testing salaries are trending downwards](. 📉 Add to this The Club post. [Have job titles evolved over the years?]( [Sanne, Shey, Chris, Veerle and Hanna chat about the job market]( via 9 out of 10 testers. Automation Bug congrats to Panagiotis Megremis, Vu Duy Vu Manh, Ross Aubrey-Smith, James Perry and James Wadley for earning [MoT Certificates in Test Automation](. 🏆 [What do you use to verify you're on the correct page in an automated test?]( asks Nate Bosscher. Mike Harris encourages you to [make your Playwright tests run faster]( by using the Playwright API to wait by. 👋 Level up your software testing career with MoT Professional Membership. [Available for individuals and teams]( Accessibility [What makes an image viewer accessible?]( Key features for inclusive and user-friendly image viewers by Scout Burghardt. "I tried an amazing plugin for [accessibility testing in Cypress]( and it was unlike anything I’ve seen in my career. Accessibility testing is becoming more powerful and effective than ever before!" – Petros Plakogiannis. Models "People often use an older version of the [[Agile Testing] Quadrants](. My motivation for this post is to share the latest version, the one we included in our book [Agile Testing Condensed]( – Lisa Crispin. Systems Thinking [Practicing systems thinking to improve your software testing]( Konstantinos Konstantakopoulos. Discover how everyday systems thinking can be harnessed to improve your testing approach. Heuristics Here's [a handy list to cover the accented characters heuristic](. Thanks to Shey Crompton and Chris Kinofrost. Risk Stuart Thomas describes [how to prioritise based on risk](. I like this a lot. It's simple and effective. 👋 [New Course: Prompting for Testers]( As Generative AI continues to gain popularity, knowing how to use it effectively can make a big difference in your daily testing tasks and long-term career goals. A key skill in making the most of this technology is prompt engineering—the practice of designing and refining prompts to get the best results from large language models (LLMs). Reporting [What does your QA reporting matrix look like in an Agile setup?]( asks Rosanna Agustin. Quality Engineering [Is quality engineering just software engineering?]( 🌶️ Meetings [Four questions to review / have conversations with your team]( by Melissa Fisher. [Half of testers are not inviting themselves to meetings!]( Feedback [Quality Experience: Thoughts on Feedback]( by Judy Mosley. 📝 Bugs [What is the most frequent source of general system issues that look like defects in your product’s code?]( asks Rabi'a. Security [Chinese researchers break RSA encryption with a quantum computer](. "I found a community in the Ministry of Testing, a form of belonging which helped me grow personally and in my career." — Kim Knup [Upgrade your software testing career with Ministry of Testing]( Tech Debt "Not all tech debt is equally bad – some is unlikely to be a problem at all". [Tech debt as risk of friction]( by Bob Salmon. Coding [A short description of recursion]( by Madeline Caples. AI [Jarsto van Santen shared thoughts on AI]( via this Q&A TestBash video. Microservices Testing [Microservices Testing: Feature Flags vs. Preview Environments]( by Arjun Iyer. Just for fun Another test pyramid! We must [acknowledge the hierarchy of our needs](. 😉 [Close Ad Button](. 🙈 Were you part of TestBash Brighton? [Share a memory]( [Looking down on crowds of people gathered around displays from companies in the testing community. There appears to be lots going on. There is a small bug character and duck character immersed in the scene.]( 🗓️ Events New events are always added, so [keep checking the events page]( for up-to-date info. - [CypressConf 2024]( Tue 22 Oct - [Sheffield Meetup]( Wed 23 Oct - [Episode Six: The Apprentice]( Thu 24 Oct - [This Week in Testing]( Fri 25 Oct - [Building product-specific test strategies that go beyond “best practices”]( Wed 30 Oct - [Cincinnati Meetup]( Thu 31 Oct - [Tester Obsolescence: How to Compete in a Modern QA Job Market]( Tue 12 Nov - [Cincinnati Meetup]( Thu 28 Nov - [Coventry Meetup]( Thu 5 Dec - [TestBash Brighton 2025]( Wed 1 Oct 2025 🤩 🗞️ Industry News - [AI-driven test strategy and its impact on software quality]( by Mariana Santos - [Manual Testing vs Automated Testing: Key Differences]( by Hannah Son - [How the sunk cost fallacy is sinking your tool stack]( by Nick Moore ✏️ Continuous Call for Contributions Contributing to the testing community is a positive way to support your and everyone’s career growth. Unsure how to do it? There are [many ways for you to contribute]( and be rewarded. We are now accepting abstracts for talks and workshops for TestBash Brighton 2025. [Submit an idea](. On the MoT Slack? Look out for specific requests in the Help MoT channel. [A poll asking "Are you open to work?" with two options: "Yes" (81%) and "No" (19%).]( [Poll of the Week]( [Visit ministryoftesting.com]( [LinkedIn]( [YouTube]( [Instagram]( [Threads]( [Bluesky]( Copyright © 2024 Ministry of Testing, All rights reserved. You have opted to join this email list. Our mailing address is: Ministry of Testing 19 New RoadBrighton, East Sussex BN1 1UF United Kingdom [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.