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Ask HN: Test Engineer Interview

29 points by merbot ↗ HN
Hi, I am currently going for an interview for position as test engineer at software company. What should I prepare for the interview? since I am new to this position actually. Also, are there any resources to learn about test engineer?

14 comments

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InternetOfStuff
While I'm sceptical of the ISTQB certification as such (I'm certified, nobody ever cared), I agree with ahoka that the syllabus offers you a very useful guideline to understand the field of testing, especially the nuances and tradeoffs involved.

Go through it, and think about things like the seven testing principles.

If I were to interview you, I'd also throw a whiteboard-ish test at you: I'd pose a problem to you (say, I'd explain a function) and ask you to find test cases.

It's been my observation that this kind of exercise is pretty good at separating the wheat from the chaff: I could see who dares to ask questions, I could see who systematically walks the problem space, I could see who even thinks of testing not just the functional requirements, but also the non-functional ones. Most importantly, I could use this as a way into a discussion, and see how people carry themselves in such a (vaguely work-like) situation.

I suspect the interviews I conducted were on the more rigorous side, so you might be spared whiteboard tests, but in any case it can't hurt to to try and exercise actually creating and reasoning about test cases.

Also, it can't hurt to find out about the testing tools they use. Either you can find them outright, or you can at least make educated guesses about what they use based on the technologies they build their product on. Actually trying them out would be asking too much, but at least get a feel for what their purposes and limitations are.

merbot
Is there a standard in systematically walking problem space? or should doing it in my way?
InternetOfStuff
> Is there a standard in systematically walking problem space? or should doing it in my way?

Yes and no.

An important idea is to principally check corner cases, where potential errors lurk.

What the corner cases are depends on the system under test, of course.

There are a few rules of thumb, such as if there are limits to the input, check around the limits (e.g. if your function under test expects a month as its input, do the obvious thing of checking month 1, 12, 0, 13, Null, "foo"). Or if your function takes a list, use the (0, 1, infinity) rule: try with the empty list, a list with one entry, and a list with "infinite" (in practice: very very many) entries. Etc.

But you also should try to get an understanding for the SUT, to find corner cases that are less obvious or cookie-cutter.

And have opinions on how efficient/throrough your test suite should be: does the function under test just provide decoration, or does it make life-and-death decisions? The effort invested in testing them would certainly differ based on this assessment.

Again, the ISTQB syllabus provides helpful guidance.

gwbas1c
Test engineer: Basically, you're interviewing to perform QA. On the job, you may "engineer" a lot of automated tests.

(Sometimes this isn't clear, because at the beginning of our careers a lot of us want to be developers.)

ilikehurdles
Maybe there are still companies out there that do the defunct record-actions-and-replay approach to automation, but luckily my experience was just as heavy on the engineering side as any of the software engineering work I've done since I "switched". You just don't get as much respect from the software engineer crowd because building CRUD APIs using web frameworks is considered engineering and building an automation framework from scratch is considered QA.

Sorry if I came off on the offensive, just didn't like seeing "engineer" in quotes.

polotics
Word! The level of respect that a developer shows towards test and reliability engineering is also a great way to identify skill and experience.
paulie_a
QA needs much more respect. I work with some fantastic qa people and they are meticulous. And between manual and automation I wouldn't ship to production without them
ajeet_dhaliwal
It’s unclear whether this position is for a software engineer performing automation and test infrastructure /continuous delivery / build work / test scripts or if it’s a role limited to only writing tests but if it’s the former I’d agree. Writing great automation has been just as challenging if not more so than writing anything else in my experience. I’ve been involved with making games play themselves in the games industry and it’s challenging and yet the impact with respect to regression testing has been huge. We couldn’t have shipped as fast without it.
marxama
Agreed. I've worked for many years as a software engineer, and some of the most challenging stuff I've done has been building robust test automation frameworks. The amount of disrespect QA gets (both those focusing on automation as well as those focusing on manual testing) is disgusting.
ankitsoni
Test Engineer is a broad term. I would look at the job description and prepare accordingly. Here are some things you should look into: - Types of testing: white/black box, functional vs non-functional, API testing, browser-based testing - If you are asked to write test points for a function/form etc. make sure you cover positive, negative, edge cases, upper/lower limit etc.

Good luck!

merbot
I understand about white/black box testing, functional vs non functional. But I am confused on covering positive, negative, egde cases part, could you please explain this.
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