The grift in the software testing business never ends…

I’ve spent a LOT of time lately reviewing docs, sitting through demos, listening to “experts”, and enduring the bombardment of AI slop being hurled from testing vendors and let me tell you – ain’t nothing new under the sun in our industry.

Testing hasn’t changed. Testing hasn’t fallen behind. Testing isn’t the bottleneck. Testing isn’t actually the problem.

**The problem is a vicious cycle of unsustainable rates of change requiring endless system #enshittification to meet the demands of an increasingly pervasive technology ecosystem run by bonus-driven caretaking management.**

But that hasn’t stopped the AI grift from going into overdrive – selling solutions that don’t exist for problems that aren’t real to people who are quite happily using that as cover to fire people they never should have hired in the first place.

If you work in software testing here’s my advice:

– Learn everything you can about AI and the language being bandied about to figure out your entry into that world to use the “right words”. A LOT of what I am seeing is just old concepts being renamed, redescribed, or just hijacked for marketing purposes. Old wine into new skins…

– Learn about test design, experimentation, exploratory testing, and how to TALK ABOUT RISK. These are the skills that have never gone out of demand and will be super important if any of this AI mess gets to production…

– Learn about the regulatory environment as despite my scepticism about enforcement, there are a whole bunch of new implications of what’s real, who’s at fault, and unasked questions about agency and pushing slop to production…

Every bubble bursts (or at least deflates a little) and as I’ve said before, I don’t think all these “early movers” have an advantage over people taking their time for some critical thinking. Frankly, the testing business doesn’t seem to have a clue right now anyway, so concentrate on core skills, learn the lingo, and watch the firings continue (I’m looking at you test automation engineers)…

Enjoy!