[virgilp]

qa has long ago merged with programming in "unified engineering". Also with SRE ("devops") and now the trend is to merge with CSE and product management too ("product mindset", forward-deployed engineers). So yeah, pretty much, that's the trend. What would you trust more - an engineer doing project management too - or a project manager doing the engineering job?

[ben_w]

The PMs and QAs I know would disagree with that assessment.

> What would you trust more - an engineer doing project management too - or a project manager doing the engineering job?

If one of the three, {PM, QA, coder}, was replaced by AI, as a customer I'd prefer to pick the team missing the coder. But for teams replacing two roles with AI, I'd rather keep the coder.

But a deeper problem now is, as a customer, perhaps I can skip the team entirely and do it all myself? That way, no game of telephone from me to the PM to the coder and QA and back to me saying "no" and having another expensive sprint.

[throwway120385]

If I'm managing a company of about 10 people to do something in the physical world, I'd probably skip the PM & QA and hire the engineer and have the engineer task the LLM with QA given a clear set of requirements and then manage the projects given a clear set of deadlines.A good SE can do a "good enough" job at QA and PM in a small company that you won't notice the PM & QA is missing. But the PM & QA can always be added or QA can be augmented with a specialist assuming you're LLM-driven.

Of course if none of your software projects are business-critical to the degree that downtime costs money pretty directly then you can skip it all and just manage it yourself.

The other thing you should probably understand is that the feedback cycle for an LLM is so fast that you don't need to think of it in terms of sprints or "development cycles" since in many cases if you're iterating on something your work to acceptance test what you're getting is actually the long pole, especially if you're multitasking.

[pdimitar]

> If one of the three, {PM, QA, coder}, was replaced by AI, as a customer I'd prefer to pick the team missing the coder.

I am curious: why? In all my years of career I've seen engineers take on extra responsibilities and doing anywhere from decent to fantastic job at it, while people who tend to start much more specialized (like QA / sysadmins / managers) I have historically observed struggling more -- obviously there are many and talented exceptions, they just never were the majority, is my anecdotal evidence.

In many situations I'd bet on the engineer becoming a T-shaped employee (wide area of surface-to-decent level of skills + a few where deep expertise exists).

[robertlagrant]

> The PMs and QAs I know would disagree with that assessment.

It just depends on the org structure and what the org calls different skills. In lots of places now PM (as in project, not product) is in no way a leadership role.

[_heimdall]

QA is still alive and well in many companies, including manual QA. I'm sure there's a wide range these days based on industry and scale, but you simply don't ship certain products without humans manually testing it against specs, especially if its a highly regulated industry.

I also wouldn't be so sure that programming is the hardest of the three roles for someone to learn. Each role requires a different skill set, and plenty of people will naturally be better at or more drawn to only one of those.

[chaboud]

From my experience with modern software and services, the actual practice of QA has plainly atrophied.

In my first gig (~30 years ago), QA could hold up a release even if our CTO and President were breathing down their necks, and every SDE bug-hunted hard throughout the programs.

Now QA (if they even exist) are forced to punt thousands of issues and live with inertial debt. Devs are hostile to QA and reject responsibility constantly.

Back to the OP, these things aren't calculable, but they'll kill businesses every time.

[Sevii]

Continuous delivery really killed QA.

[philk10]

that's not the role of QA to be a gatekeeper, they give the CTO and President information on the bugs and testing but it's a business decision to ship or not

[skydhash]

I’m not a native English speaker, but isn’t gatekeeping exactly that? Blocking suspicious entities unless they’re allowed through by someone higher in the hierarchy?

[wouldbecouldbe]

QA merged originally out of programming.

[paulryanrogers]

emerged?