this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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Possibly stupid question: is automated testing actually a common practice? (self.ask_experienced_devs)
submitted 6 months ago by yournameplease to c/ask_experienced_devs
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Referring more to smaller places like my own - few hundred employees with ~20 person IT team (~10 developers).

I read enough about testing that it seems industry standard. But whenever I talk to coworkers and my EM, it's generally, "That would be nice, but it's not practical for our size and the business would allow us to slow down for that." We have ~5 manual testers, so things aren't considered "untested", but issues still frequently slip through. It's insurance software so at least bugs aren't killing people, but our quality still freaks me out a bit.

I try to write automated tests for my own code, since it seems valuable, but I avoid it whenever it's not straightforward. I've read books on testing, but they generally feel like either toy examples or far more effort than my company would be willing to spend. Over time I'm wondering if I'm just overly idealistic, and automated testing is more of a FAANG / bigger company thing.

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[–] yournameplease 2 points 6 months ago

Who’s sped up by your automated tests are your team members and you-in-three-months.

Definitely true. I am very thankful when I fail a test and know I broke something and need to clean up after myself. Also very nice as insurance against our more "chaotic" developer(s).

I've advocated for tests as a team effort. Problem is just that we don't really have any technical leadership, just a hands-off EM and hands-off CTO. Best I get from them is "Yes, you should test your code." ...Doesn't really help when some developers just aren't interested in testing. I am warming another developer on my team up to testing, so at least I may get another developer or two on the testing kick for a bit.

And as for management rating me... I don't really worry too much. As I mentioned, hands off management. Heck, we didn't even get performance reviews last year.