[cocktailpeanuts]

Agreed, in my case what ends up happening is I start out with no tests but soon the project becomes huge and i have to start writing tests if I want to push stuff without fear.

The thing is, most large companies have a QA team so this fear is not super tangible to many developers. And small startups are more focused on building stuff quickly (which they should be).

I think this is why this topic has been polarizing. Some people feel the need and some people do, depending on which role you're playing in your organization.

Nowadays interestingly, even the large companies are moving towards more testing because they can cut QA costs that way.

[spronkey]

Yeah... QA teams aren't really the norm anymore. Not to mention that classical QA isn't nearly as effective when developers aren't also performing their own QA.

Small startups that focus on quickly building stuff have to decide whether to take on more technical debt in order to get something small out the door quickly, or settle on a maintainable velocity over time. Some begin at the former and move quickly to the latter once their MVP is out the door. Some never get to move because they sink under the weight.

[justicezyx]

> most large companies have a QA team

Not sure what companies you are referring here. Google and Amazon does not have QA team for most of dev team.

I worked at Amazon and now work at Google.

[cocktailpeanuts]

There are many other large companies other than Amazon and Google.

Just because Google and Amazon don't have QA team doesn't mean the occupation doesn't exist.

[justicezyx]

I do not intend to say QA as an type of engineering position does not exist. What I was responding to is the parent's claim that "most large companies have a QA team so this fear is not super tangible to many developers"; that's not true in general.

[cocktailpeanuts]

It's kinda funny I'm even debating about this, I don't know where your confidence comes from.

You use the two most edge cases as an example (Amazon and Google). Most other "less techy" companies don't have the luxury to not run QA. Good for you that Google and Amazon doesn't have QA, but those are the exception, not the rule. Just go to glassdoor and search for QA and you'll see tons of QA job positions for large companies.

Since you mention Amazon, for example, WalMart has QA engineer positions.

[justicezyx]

I do not want to nit picking our discussion. But I seem failed to convey my ideas: 1. QA exists prevalently 2. In general software companies do not have dedicated QA team for every engineer team 3. Lack of testing is a real concern for maintainability in big companies, because developers need to write tests themselves.

I do not disagree with your examples, but they are orthogonal to my point #2 #3. Let's go back to your original comment:

""" The thing is, most large companies have a QA team so this fear is not super tangible to many developers. And small startups are more focused on building stuff quickly (which they should be). """

The comment was responding to: """ Once you release a product that will be used by many customers and developed by many people throughout its lifecycle, which come and go as the time passes, you won't be able to maintain/extend it without a proper testing suite. It's not only about complexity, but also about maintainability. Some tests will also rot in time. """

My understanding is that, you meant to say that the fear of lack of testing harms maintainability is not so relevant to developers in big companies, because they have dedicated QA team (writ tests for them).

My comment says, in general, big companies do not have dedicated QA teams for dev teams, so there is no dedicated QA team write tests for dev team. My examples are 2 of the largest software companies in the world. Among them, Google redefined how people access information, Amazon reinvented how developers access computing resources.

I think my examples support my intention to prove that your statement and what it implied, in general, is not true.

[bitL]

Google used to have SETs, likewise MS used to have SDETs, but they dumped them in favor of DevOps which are the new QAs.