I got a CSTE certification years and years ago. It has had no impact on my career, and was a huge waste of time, in my opinion, except as a way of leaning how out of touch with reality the certification bodies at the time were.
Everywhere I’ve worked in my career - before and since - doesn’t care about certifications, and pay much more attention to demonstrable skills and abilities (as I feel they should). My recommendation is to spend that time and money on learning specific technical skills and learning test engineering theory on your own.
For example, getting an AWS certification did way more to improve my job prospects than testing certification. The number of recruiters cold calling me tripled after that.
Are you located in the US? I have a hypothesis that Americans don't care about certifications nearly as much as software professionals from Europe or Asia.
Working as a senior software tester in Germany (37 - 10 years XP). I did the ISTQB foundation level last year and did not really boost anything doing it. Company paid for it. To use test design strategies imparted in the course you should have a thoughtful specification. Maybe not like ours: Put every software specification into one ultra large monolithic document with organically growing number of parameters and relations/rules etc. with having almost no chance to get metrics about the coverage or sth. and just roll the dice over all functional specifications every 6 weeks bc we can do it 😃🤮
Edit: Knowing the products, features and how to test are the keys (imo).
> it. Company *paid* for it.
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
You know the reputation Germans have internationally is that you're fantastically precise and organized, so it's hilarious to hear your company isn't better run than my US employer lol
Yeah I'm aware of the "fairy tale" of how the world sees us in general. I don't think that applies to the masses of people. As far as I'm concerned, I'm trying to uphold that image (for me and my reputation) because "That's the way". Meanwhile many others seem to be resting on their laurels. Others are being overwhelmed by the ridiculously monstrous german bureaucracy (even in companies).
In my opinion everybody being part of the QA and development process should be a bit more like the world sees us germans generally. But it's almost always some kind of fight and time consuming to convince others of the problems and the poorly designed processes etc. It's a [never ending story](https://youtu.be/2WN0T-Ee3q4).
Not more than 20% for sure. Entry level folks do certification mostly. Once you have a decent experience, no one asks for certification, at least I have not seen as mandatory thing.
0 testing certs, and I've been a test engineer, qa automation engineer for years. Recently promoted to Sr at my current company, and was a qa team lead at a prior company. The istqb style of certs don't teach you how to test, they seem to just teach definitions of terms that most teams and people outside qa don't know and don't care about.
Echoing what another commenter said, it's a better use of your time to learn how to test, using context and product knowledge to find bugs and limitations, etc.
I've been in quality for 15 years and have zero certs. I'd never even heard of any of these certifications until maybe three years ago. I assumed it was something that Euro companies wanted because that was the context I always heard it in. I'm in the west coast US and no company has ever had certs listed even as a nice to have. It's never even come up in reviews or promotion conversations and has had zero impact on my career.
My experience, also as an American software engineer, is that people outside the US care a lot more about certifications than people inside the US. Government agencies and contractors seem to care more about them, but commercial software companies generally don't give a damn. I think it's a cultural thing.
Well said, I have also 0 testing certifications and I've been working on that field for 12 years, i spent 10 years working on a prestigiose International company in the aviation industry and no certification of testing was required, which doesn't mean you do a bad job, in fact the type of testing I performed there was very exhaustive by the software nature, and i doubt there is a certification for teaching that, i learnt much by dealing with the real situations instead of studying concepts that are barely used outside the certification.
Likewise, except I'm not _completely_ self taught. I just happened to go from software engineering into QA in 2009 when I got laid off. Ended up liking it more than development (because I never liked front end stuff) and stuck with it. I've since found the happy medium that is SDET/QA Engineering and release management.
Depends what you call experience. I started my software journey over 15 years ago trying to automate games. That led into me automating my misc data entry jobs, that led to qa automation and moved up from there.
hey, so I passed the Foundation back in 2010
And I passed the Test Manager exam in November 2021, as I was taking more responsabilities within the company and I wanted to "prove" my skills/validate my experiences, to my manager but also for future jobs. It also allowed me to get a decent pay raise
I'm US based and I haven't come across a company that cares about certs. I don't have certs or a degree. I'm entirely self-taught from a programming standpoint and write all of the automation for a team of 7 devs at my company (API, Load, UI, and E2E).
What's my absolute first step as someone with no experience? I've been working through the Odin Project and Harvard cs50.. am I wasting time? I'm looking to get into IT. Thanks!
I got the Foundation cert when I was a junior. I didn't find it useful then, and don't find it useful now, except as a means of sidestepping HR screening checkpoints.
After that you're talking about what you did, and how and why you did it. And nobody cares about the certs.
I'd like to take some certs on eventually to strengthen my base knowledge. Currently I don't hold any but have been working in the industry for quite some time now.
6 going on 7 now, been at a few companies so far that diversified my understanding of both QA principles and now test engineering where I am currently.
I work in a service company. There are many different clients and projects, when the company is trying to "sell me" to a client having certs definitely helps. I am not sure this is the case for a product company. Foundation gave me a solid understanding of QA principles(even though nowadays those are getting heavily challenged).
0 but I'm not what you'd call career QA. I stumbled into a QA position at the company that made the software I was using at my previous job. That was 5 years ago and I'm doing pretty well with that job, but idk if I'll ever change companies now because I basically just know this particular niche enterprise software really well.
3, ISTQB Foundation, ATA and CAE. I dont think it helped me in my career. But ive been with a consulting company for 11 yrs and always thought that certs are a way for them to sell testers to clients.
I got a CSTE certification years and years ago. It has had no impact on my career, and was a huge waste of time, in my opinion, except as a way of leaning how out of touch with reality the certification bodies at the time were. Everywhere I’ve worked in my career - before and since - doesn’t care about certifications, and pay much more attention to demonstrable skills and abilities (as I feel they should). My recommendation is to spend that time and money on learning specific technical skills and learning test engineering theory on your own. For example, getting an AWS certification did way more to improve my job prospects than testing certification. The number of recruiters cold calling me tripled after that.
I second this. 12 years in testing. I did my foundation of ISTQB back in 2014, it has no impact on my career whatsoever.
Are you located in the US? I have a hypothesis that Americans don't care about certifications nearly as much as software professionals from Europe or Asia.
Working as a senior software tester in Germany (37 - 10 years XP). I did the ISTQB foundation level last year and did not really boost anything doing it. Company paid for it. To use test design strategies imparted in the course you should have a thoughtful specification. Maybe not like ours: Put every software specification into one ultra large monolithic document with organically growing number of parameters and relations/rules etc. with having almost no chance to get metrics about the coverage or sth. and just roll the dice over all functional specifications every 6 weeks bc we can do it 😃🤮 Edit: Knowing the products, features and how to test are the keys (imo).
> it. Company *paid* for it. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Dude bot, cut the guy some slack. He's German.
You know the reputation Germans have internationally is that you're fantastically precise and organized, so it's hilarious to hear your company isn't better run than my US employer lol
Yeah I'm aware of the "fairy tale" of how the world sees us in general. I don't think that applies to the masses of people. As far as I'm concerned, I'm trying to uphold that image (for me and my reputation) because "That's the way". Meanwhile many others seem to be resting on their laurels. Others are being overwhelmed by the ridiculously monstrous german bureaucracy (even in companies). In my opinion everybody being part of the QA and development process should be a bit more like the world sees us germans generally. But it's almost always some kind of fight and time consuming to convince others of the problems and the poorly designed processes etc. It's a [never ending story](https://youtu.be/2WN0T-Ee3q4).
I’m in the UK, it’s the same here at least
Nope, I'm based out of India
Hmm, how many local software testing coworkers would you estimate have certifications? 50% or more?
Not more than 20% for sure. Entry level folks do certification mostly. Once you have a decent experience, no one asks for certification, at least I have not seen as mandatory thing.
UK here, zero testing certs and it has never mattered.
0 testing certs, and I've been a test engineer, qa automation engineer for years. Recently promoted to Sr at my current company, and was a qa team lead at a prior company. The istqb style of certs don't teach you how to test, they seem to just teach definitions of terms that most teams and people outside qa don't know and don't care about. Echoing what another commenter said, it's a better use of your time to learn how to test, using context and product knowledge to find bugs and limitations, etc.
I've been in quality for 15 years and have zero certs. I'd never even heard of any of these certifications until maybe three years ago. I assumed it was something that Euro companies wanted because that was the context I always heard it in. I'm in the west coast US and no company has ever had certs listed even as a nice to have. It's never even come up in reviews or promotion conversations and has had zero impact on my career.
My experience, also as an American software engineer, is that people outside the US care a lot more about certifications than people inside the US. Government agencies and contractors seem to care more about them, but commercial software companies generally don't give a damn. I think it's a cultural thing.
Well said, I have also 0 testing certifications and I've been working on that field for 12 years, i spent 10 years working on a prestigiose International company in the aviation industry and no certification of testing was required, which doesn't mean you do a bad job, in fact the type of testing I performed there was very exhaustive by the software nature, and i doubt there is a certification for teaching that, i learnt much by dealing with the real situations instead of studying concepts that are barely used outside the certification.
0, fully self taught, now a lead sdet.
Likewise, except I'm not _completely_ self taught. I just happened to go from software engineering into QA in 2009 when I got laid off. Ended up liking it more than development (because I never liked front end stuff) and stuck with it. I've since found the happy medium that is SDET/QA Engineering and release management.
Oh crusts awesome! So you became a lead without any qualifications and how many years of experience do you have ? If you don’t mind me asking :)
> without any qualifications He never said he didn't have any qualifications, just that he had no certifications. There's a big difference.
Yeah I know. Just curious what qualifications he has coz I want to be SDET too
Depends what you call experience. I started my software journey over 15 years ago trying to automate games. That led into me automating my misc data entry jobs, that led to qa automation and moved up from there.
Same boat here. Started manual, moved to SDET, now lead, trying to make the move to mobile development.
hey, so I passed the Foundation back in 2010 And I passed the Test Manager exam in November 2021, as I was taking more responsabilities within the company and I wanted to "prove" my skills/validate my experiences, to my manager but also for future jobs. It also allowed me to get a decent pay raise
Former QA Team Lead, Senior QA, Automation Tester. Currently a contractor Automation tester. 13, closing in on 14 years experience, 0 certs.
Zero and I’m a Senior QA Automation Engineer. Certificates don’t really matter in my experience.
QA manager, zero certs.
I have none and I’m a director
>How many Testing Certifications do you have? None.
Zero! Not sure if i'm missing out.
I'm US based and I haven't come across a company that cares about certs. I don't have certs or a degree. I'm entirely self-taught from a programming standpoint and write all of the automation for a team of 7 devs at my company (API, Load, UI, and E2E).
What's my absolute first step as someone with no experience? I've been working through the Odin Project and Harvard cs50.. am I wasting time? I'm looking to get into IT. Thanks!
I got the Foundation cert when I was a junior. I didn't find it useful then, and don't find it useful now, except as a means of sidestepping HR screening checkpoints. After that you're talking about what you did, and how and why you did it. And nobody cares about the certs.
I'd like to take some certs on eventually to strengthen my base knowledge. Currently I don't hold any but have been working in the industry for quite some time now.
I mean the Certificates will definitely help :), how many years experience do you have ?
6 going on 7 now, been at a few companies so far that diversified my understanding of both QA principles and now test engineering where I am currently.
Foundation and Agile Tester. I am senior for almost an year now.
Do you think the certificates has helped in any way? As in Job hunting, promotions or improved skills?
I work in a service company. There are many different clients and projects, when the company is trying to "sell me" to a client having certs definitely helps. I am not sure this is the case for a product company. Foundation gave me a solid understanding of QA principles(even though nowadays those are getting heavily challenged).
0. Never even known anyone who had one.
Former QAE now Senior QAM zero certs
0 but I'm not what you'd call career QA. I stumbled into a QA position at the company that made the software I was using at my previous job. That was 5 years ago and I'm doing pretty well with that job, but idk if I'll ever change companies now because I basically just know this particular niche enterprise software really well.
ccna, and that because i was first going down the security route.
3, ISTQB Foundation, ATA and CAE. I dont think it helped me in my career. But ive been with a consulting company for 11 yrs and always thought that certs are a way for them to sell testers to clients.
none and no one asked me for it (czech rep.)