State of Testing survey

A shiny new State of Testing survey is now running on Joel Montvelisky’s excellent QA Intelligence blog; I must confess I’d not actually read any of it until recently, but I’ve skimmed through a couple of several articles and it is now officially on my “to-read” list of blogs and articles related to QA and Software Testing.   The survey itself is a collaboration between the guys at Tea Time With Testers (a monthly e-magazine also well worth reading) and QA Intelligence.

I’ll be extremely interested to see the results of this survey, but that hopeful statement comes with a caveat.  Survey results are only as good as the final data set.  The more Testers and QAs who answer this survey honestly from more countries and companies of all shapes and sizes, the better a picture those crunching the numbers will be able to provide.  So, if you work as a  Software Tester/QA/Grand High Poo-Bah of Bugs[1] then please do fill this out.  Admittedly, there are issues around a self-selecting survey sample, but I’m assuming that whoever ends up doing the data analysis and commenting on the survey results will be taking that factor – amongst many others – into account.

If you want to help make the survey a success, do take heed of the suggestions already made by Joel, which can be summed up as blog about it, mention it to all of your tester friends and colleagues and generally plug it all over whatever flavours of social media take your fancy.

In a similar vein, Cole Henley has been running a survey for the last three years with a focus on Developers rather than testers, focusing on freelancer rates.  An excellent breakdown and analysis of the 2012 results are on Cole’s blog here.   The results on the 2013 survey are on the Mud Blog, which covers how freelancers work as well as how they charge what their rates are.  I hope that the State of Testing survey will be as thorough in its approach.

The State of Testing survey can be taken right here.

[1] Delete as applicable.

Got out the wrong side of bed?

Well, that may be more than “just an expression” according to a study commissioned by the Premier Inn hotel chain who surveyed 3000 people.  Their press release states that those who sleep on the left are generally more cheerful, more positive and “capable of tackling heavy workloads and a stressful day ahead.”  They say that over a quarter of left siders (compared to 18% of right siders) “have a really positive outlook on life in general.”

This was picked up by the Boston Globe  and the Globe and Mail the latter of which has a non-scientific poll which shows left-side-of-the-bed sleepers outnumber right siders roughly three-to-two (43% to 30% as I type this).   This, of course, means that cheery people outnumber grumpy ones, which just makes us grumpy folk more grumpy anyway… perhaps that’s really why I’m grumpy in the mornings?