[TRENCHES] Thursday, August 8, 2013 - Torment
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Torment
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/torment
The 7 steps of QA
AnonymousI’ve been working in this industry a little while, and have seen enough people go through these steps to be able to make note of them. Perhaps not everyone goes through all of these steps. Maybe they’re not as common as I think. I sure hope so.
1. You’re a goddamn VIDEO GAME tester! Holy shit! People are giving you money to play video games and it’s REAL money! Maybe you can even afford that new game system or computer upgrade or maybe you can even pay rent enough to move out of your parents basement.
2. Okay, this is sort of tedious. BUT HEY LOOK A BUG I FOUND A BUG. The older and wiser members of your team look on kindly and answer 109375937 questions about whether or not this or that is a bug and hey you found it first no one else can have it.
3. You’re really good at what you do, the best. You’ve climbed to the top of the energy drink swilling fast food consuming pile. It’s only a matter of time until you are promoted or given prizes for being so awesome. The newbs look at you with awe.
4. Time passes. That wave of excitement wears down. Your confidence that this is ever getting better is slowly being picked from your soul like vultures pick flesh from a desiccated corpse. Newbs ask you if this or that or this other thing is a bug. The people you asked are still there, if they haven’t gone on to more sensible jobs where they make you wear ties and slacks but where they get a real living wage for doing so.
5. You’re one of them now. They might make you a lead QA and not change your pay, but you’re reliable. You’re expected to stay longer than everyone else and clean up the really big messes and do the tasks no one else will do. They need you. You’re never going to move up in the company, you realize this now. You’re too important where you are.
6. Ennui.
7. This ends someday. Maybe you get fired, maybe you find another job somewhere else. Or maybe you’re professional QA and you become an immovable fixture, at least until your company gets bought up by an even bigger company who has no respect for the time, sweat and blood you’ve poured into this industry. Like an old cog in a machine, you are then replaced.
I’m sure there are other people with better experiences than this.Somewhere.
Posts
I dunno, Blizzard may not be so bad because they seem to be cool with dismissing people's stupid shit, rather than feeding them useless, "We appreciate your feedback and apologize!"
At least mods aren't usually confused for devs. Cryptic's current CM gets literally 9 or 10 threads a day asking why he's hosting PVP tournaments or dance parties on Risa when the Pegqu' heavy destroyer's nacelles don't properly animate. Players have a hard enough time wrapping their head around the idea that programmers generally aren't sufficiently skilled as artists or animators and vice versa. To suggest that somebody with a different colored forum name isn't even a dev? What madness is this?
However, I still believe Tube bathes in the tears of banned forumers and I'm fairly certain Geth uses their fat to grease his cold, unfeeling chassis.
I'll toss the SWTOR boards on to this list. Take Bioware fans and Star Wars fans (two mildly passionate fanbases). Add AAA expectations and mix in an MMO environment.
Barbossa approves.
I was good at what I did, but they never gave me a pay rise (the pay was shite) and I was never going off the zero hour contract I had.
I mean i was working regularly (4-6 day weeks) but I always knew the moment the projects quietened down I'd be gone without a seconds thought. I raised my concerns and was promptly told to deal with it or quit.
So I got the fuck out of there. Karl does not want to be stuck in a dead end job.
They of course kept calling to get me back. But with no change to my pay or contract so I never accepted.
The system will never change because I was replaceable and there was loads of people waiting to take my place.
I stopped getting calls because if you filter through enough crap you'll find another decent employee and they did eventually (I keep in contact with people still there).
Yes, people are lining up to be testers, because they only see steps one and two until they get the job. If the masses could be shown all the crap they have to deal with as a tester, it might thin the herd a bit.
Don't get me wrong, i did have some great times.
Crunch time for me once was getting paid to spend 3 weeks, 9-5 Mon-Fri play testing the multiplier component for HALO 3.
The code was fine, there were NO bugs. But we had to be sure.
I wouldn't be caught dead working for Cryptic.
With the founder's rule of non-involvement and the carte blanche he receives at acting on will with their full backup compounded by his tendency to toss bans at a glance in order to rapidly dismiss with issues I see not the former. Given the aforementioned, I could see the latter.
All forums are the same in terms of social mechanics. The only difference is in work volume; this being a rather large community so follows the load is heftier. It is upto one to manage own time and decide how much of it to dedicate to the BBS management and whether or not to hire additional staff to ease the load.
As for the story, given experience in varying industries I could say it is a commonality for any workplace in the Western Hemisphere that is conducted under a corporate rule.
CM is an unforgiving job. Although it appears Lum has came out of it alright...albeit less sane, but alright.