COMPARISON Between SOFTWARE TESTING AND SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AS A CAREER

The Indian IT industry basically depends on mostly two types of jobs: Software Development and Software Testing (QA). There are other firms too but here we will discuss on these two types of jobs.

•  Software development and testing are not different and both are equally important. The job of a software tester starts as a project begins. But the work of a developer starts much later than that.

•  Undoubtedly it can be said that a software tester has better knowledge of the entire functioning of the systems he is working on. On the other hand software development is the most essential part because without it nothing gets developed.

• Skill of a software developer is determined by the nature of the project and the technology decided by the architects. Developers are selected on the basis of the project. If architects want that a combination of Java, Ruby, and Python would be in the project then the candidates who are trained with these programming languages are preferred. But Software tester requires completely different skill that is a mix of Java, Ruby, and Python along with software manual and automation tools coupled with the scripting language.

• Software developers get promoted to module lead, team lead, project lead, project manager and ultimately rely on the company hierarchy. Likewise Software testers have similar pathways of career growth.

• It is true that some companies offer lesser salary to testers as compared to developers at the beginning of the career. But after getting experienced a tester draws more salary than a developer with same tenure of experience.