When asked by TechBeacon what the state of the QA Industry is like, I must have been in a real foul mood

When I was asked a few months ago by Mitch Pronschinske, Managing Editor of TechBeacon, I must have been in a real foul mood. In Mitch's article, 7 DevOps trends to watch in 2017, dated January 12, 2017:

"Testers will learn to code or perish

"TJ Maher, an automation developer and TechBeacon contributor, spent the last two years updating his skills to move from manual tester to automation developer to software engineer in test. In those same two years, he’s seen many of his former QA testing colleagues lose their jobs due to the major changes going on in the testing industry right now.

“Continuous integration and continuous delivery turned the big splash of Selenium WebDriver into a tsunami that washed away almost all of the software testing industry, drowning many of the manual testers and eroding their base of employability.” —TJ Maher

"For many testing engineers, 2016's motto was 'learn to code or perish.' Testing is now focused at the web services level, with tremendous demand for RESTful APIs, and Selenium wrappers, he says".

... Surely it can't be as bleak as I thought! 

Do you have a cheery story about manual testers getting the recognition they deserve, and being appreciated? Leave a story in the comments section below. 

Come help cheer me up! :) 

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"