What’s Up With Qa?

by EdgeLink on October 6, 2005 in  Uncategorized

We have noticed a recent staffing “up-tick” in the area of software quality assurance. After such a long dryspell within this area, it appears that all the technology companies in Portland decided simultaneously that it’s time to start recruiting and hiring QA Engineers. Now, that’s great news if you’re a QA engineer and bad news if you’re seeking to hire a QA engineer. Unfortunately, it seems to me that QA is often one of the first things to “get the boot” when things get tough, and therefore puts more pressure on software engineers to develop “quality products.” This appears to be one of the many sacrifices that companies make when things get tough financially. Consequently does this mean that companies are beginning to make enough profits to justify pumping up their quality? The sudden surge of quality assurance engineers to be hired in the market appears to be a solid indicator in the optimism of the economy.

One of the challenges (as recruiters) we face is locating available QA engineers, and due to the fact there has been minimal hiring in QA over the past two to three years there hasn’t been much “draw” for people to get into the field, thus resulting in our current shortage of talent. I’m excited to see things picking up in this area, but how do we keep up with the recruiting!?

These are my thoughts and I’m curious to hear if anyone has any other thoughts or theories to the situation?