5 Health Hazards of Being a Tester
When I started working as a tester I never thought how dangerous it can be for my health. Seriously — you might not be hit by a truck (well, unless you are testing autonomous cars), but it can still add up to developing some interesting chronic issues. Here are some I am definitely struggling with:
Post-Release Stress Disorder (PRSD)
Do you know that anxious feeling you have as a feature you tested is being released? Did you just get a tiny shiver only from thinking about it? It seems like you are re-living an unfortunate release which introduced a critical bug. In severe cases, you might even wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat screaming: No! Stop that release!
We all have been there — releasing gives us tough times and there is nothing to be ashamed of when you feel like screaming and running in panic around office. If you think you need a further advice, seek your closest senior tester and ask about best routes. They will know.
Obsessive-Compulsive Testing (OCT)
Another unpleasant disease testers often develop is OCT. Affected testers cannot prevent themselves from thinking about or doing a specific action. QA as a job requires keen eyes, thinking outside of box, technical skills, high quality standards, patience, curiosity etc. It sounds like a great set of traits until you try to switch it off. You just can’t. It is like what has been seen, cannot be unseen.
These are most common situations you might be struggling at:
- You try to break any app, just to see how much it can handle.
- You always file a report when finding a bug in services you use (and you feel a great deal of satisfaction from doing so)
- You smell a low quality product from a mile away and can‘t keep it to yourself.
If you suffer from uncontrollable testing, there isn’t much to do but you can be sure quality standards around you will get higher. Similarly for paranoia, the worst it gets, the more bugs you find.
Tester’s Paranoia
Paranoid thoughts make a person overly suspicious, even to believe they are a victim of conspiracy. Especially from developers. Never trust them.
If you answer Yes to following questions you might suffer from paranoia specific for QA professionals:
- You have been told that a new code should not cause any changes in application’s behavior but a voice in your head goes like: “Yeah, let me see about that…”?
- You have tested a feature thoroughly but when your team lead asks you if everything is functioning OK, you can’t stop thinking about what you forgot to check and if he found something you didn’t?
- You let an obscure bug slip into production and it got fixed but you still check it from time to time, even when it is covered with automation tests?
Doubting everything now? Fine. It keeps you vigilant and a vigilant tester is a good tester. Or is it not?
Chronic Remorse
As a tester, you may often face difficult choices — mainly to release or not to release — and with decisions comes a great responsibility. Success of your work is crucial for overall perception of the product and if you bear with clients when they need you. No pressure.
It might had started when you had a bad gut feeling about something and it became true. Now you torture yourself for not thinking about everything. You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you feel nauseous…
Only known remedy here is to give up your perfectionism and accept you just can’t test everything. Treat yourself well for all those (almost) flawless releases instead. Moreover, being too harsh on yourself might add up to developing more issues, like tics.
Tic Disorders
Some conditions are more visible than the others. When it comes to tics, you can notice repetitive movements which start as a tension in particular body part. There are different types of them, but testers might be prone to some of these:
- Blinking — might become more pronounced while looking at a changelog of just released tasks and noticing you haven’t tested some of them
- Wrinkling the nose — you experienced a bug for a brief moment, but you cannot replicate it anymore
- Banging the head — you found a bug and thought it won’t be an issue for the end user, but it resulted in hot fix and lots of complaining users
- Clicking the fingers — a new feature is available for the first round of exploratory testing and your fingers feel a great urge to give it a good QA feedback
- Unintentional keyboard touching — when opening any website (even if not work related), you open developer tools with a specific shortcut without even noticing it
Testing is an amazing job, but it will change you. Grin and bear it.
Did you develop a different condition? Let me know how you cope with it. We can start a support group or something.
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Disclaimer: It is highly probable that none of before mentioned problems require a professional help, it only means you care about the product quality a lot.
