Easy Makes It Hard

Last week I started a discussion on the STC about whether it "was too easy to find bugs ?" ( prompted by reading the HWTSAM book )

At the same time Ben Simo ( aka Quality Frog ) has started a new blog Is There A Problem Here? with problems in the wild and I've been on a roll this week and already submitted two

So maybe that answers my first question - it is too easy to find bugs - and this led to me trying to connect up other discussions that have been happening this week

Again on the STC site, Anna Baik started a discussion about Would you recognise your job description in a careers advice guide? and how it was made to sound boring and dull. I found an article to add to it that basically said the only qualification a tester needed was a pulse...

On StickyMinds Fiona Charles had an article "Not Wanted on the Voyage" about the negative perceptions about testers and testing.

Now I'll try and put it all together...

Developers produce poor quality code
This makes it easy to find bugs - anyone can click around and find something wrong
This can give managers the perception that testing is easy
Testing is seen as something anyone can do and as a stepping stone to other careers, the job is made to seem boring and doesn't attract high quality candidates
The people that end up doing the testing don't really have a clue about how to do the job but are able to find bugs so it seems they are doing something
But they fail to find all the bugs - or the crucial ones
The customers find them
Managers think testing is a waste of time and money
Return to the start and do not collect £200 for passing Go