Testing or Development - Which IT Job You Should Choose?😕 (2024)

As a fresher, this question arises first in your mind - Whether we should opt for the Testing role or the Development role. I’ve worked as a Software Engineer for 5 years. Below I shared my knowledge and experience in both roles.

Developer - A developer understands the requirement first and then provides a solution through coding. Once the solution is developed for the requirement, they will do a small unit test too.

Tester - A tester also understands the requirement first and tests whether the developed functionality satisfies the requirement needed.

If you wonder which is best among these two, I would say the developer role is best. But for most people, a testing role suits more than a developing role.

Read the full article to know why and to know the career growth, salary growth, and future scope of these two roles.

What I’ve noticed recently is that it’s no anymore like developer and tester roles are two different ones. It’s becoming combined. All developers have testing knowledge and even all testers need partial knowledge of a developer. Because an automation tester also needs Html, CSS, and java script knowledge.

1. 💪 The biggest advantage of being a developer is when we switch from one company to another company, the developer role has some extra power and demand than the tester.
2. 📈The hierarchy of a developer is junior developer - senior developer - module leader - project leader - project manager. For testing, junior tester - senior tester - Test leader - project manager. The career growth for both roles is almost the same but the small problem is it takes a shorter amount of time for a developer to shift to new technology compared to a tester.
3. 💸Salary comparison - Sadly a tester receives less salary at the initial stage. But after crossing 7 or 8 years, the developer and the tester receive the same salary by considering how they’ve been improving in their career. I know a developer who receives 20 lakh/annum with 4 years of experience and a tester who also receives 20 lakh/annum with the same 4 years of experience. So it’s all up to an individual.
4. 🙋🏻♂️Who can opt for testing and who can opt for a developing role - Considering the educational background, a computer science background person can easily choose a developer role, and for a non-CS person, it’s better to choose a testing role. Because a person with a CS background has some basic skills for the development role. But if you think you can learn and pull off the developing role, you can go ahead.
5. 💻Workload - Compared to a tester, the workload for a developer is less. Because testers have more documentation work. A developer writes the code required to create the functionality and merges it. But a tester has to prepare a test case, test scenario, execute the test case, recognize whether it is a pass or fail, etc. A tester has more manual work than a developer.
6. 👌Choose according to your personality - If you like to build something, choose the development role but if you like to test and criticize the already created product, you can choose to be a tester.

Now I hope you have some kind of idea about which role is better for you among testing and development. If you are a tester/developer share your thoughts down below👇.