Over a month ago, we lost one tester. They do not intend on replacing him. I shall be departing in less than two weeks. They also do not plan on replacing me. Nor do they plan on replacing the young woman who will be following me out six weeks later. This effectively eliminates 30% of their testing team... and 60% of those who do the device-based testing.
Yet they are adding tests; both manual and semi-automated. Today they added over 40 and the official count will be in excess of 140. These will have been added and approved by the end of January. It makes no sense whatsoever to me to decrease manpower and increase the workload. It is NOT astable business model.
Things are already to a point where we are unable to meet the current deadlines for weekly test pass completion. They should be well aware of this fact, given that they have adequate records of the hours we're spending each day on the seperate tasks. Yet the more closely they monitor performance and throughput, the less realistic the demands becomes.
Since we have not been allowed to work overtime, except in extremely rare instances, I have been stacking my hours at the beginning of the week to facilitate completion of the manual test pass.
By "stacking" I'm working longer shifts: 10 to 12 hours per day on Mondays and Tuesdays in order to provide sufficient time to complete the tests by EOD Tuesday.
The test passes normally begin on Fridays... but by that time I'm already at the end of a full 40-hour work week and cannot add additional time. This actually puts me nearly a full day behind in completing my portion of the test pass.
This week I elected to put an end to this practice. It became obvious that doing this made it difficult to apply enough hours to investigate issues with other tests I am responsible for running. In addition to this... the practice was FUTILE! With the additional tests being added both to the manual test pass as well as the End-to-End tests that I run daily, there simply are not enough hours within the week to do proper follow up, bug investigation and reproduction steps.
At this point I realized it was rather pointless to rob myself of work hours from one day in a forlorn endeavor to accomplish the impossible. This... not so much because I have such a short time remaining... but because as my time winds down, the stress of this battle has made me reassess the relationship between we testers and our employer.
The uninspired, doing the unappreciated for the ungrateful.
I think I've ranted a few times about the attitudes of some of the more obtuse individuals that we're forced to deal with. It's getting worse. As the pressure mounts to solve critical bug and break issues, certain personnel on the development side are becomming more difficult to tolerate. Their abusive and disrespectful behavior is childish and shows me just how pathetic the average clown in this industry truly is.
I hate it more every day I'm here. True, I'll be gone soon and I have no interest in coming back. Still, though I have such a low level of esteem for the majority of these people and their pointless creations, I'm still committed to doing what is expected of me... to a point. That point... is 40-hours per week, at 8-hours per day. Not a minute more or less.
I can hardly be expected to singlehandedly churn out 500+ tests (though it's becomming obvious that I was getting the largest share of tests assigned as well as completed) and if by my not being present, the entire prospect becomes hopeless... then they aren't paying me enough.
No... I'm not going to rob my own, proivate schedule any longer ot meet their ridiculous demands. I'm not responsible for thier lack of capacity to manage their personnel. People earning three to four times what I do are... screwing the pooch and I do not intend on paying the consequences.
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