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Ask HN: Why is there no API for testers on demand?

2 points by james-revisoai ↗ HN
Many times I would get $100 of value out of a 30 minute test from a tester - and would love to be around to just email or text a service to initiate a test to whoever is available.

Is there some legal, psychological or other reason that this doesn't exist?

7 comments

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james-revisoai
(and to anticipate the answer of Amazon MTurk - I don't think you can easily do it task specifically to each individual or start a task through an API/email?)
mtmail
I've seen platforms that will review your website and record a video of it. It's not realtime. I think for realtime, always available it would cost more than $100.

https://userbob.com/

https://www.userfeel.com/

https://www.fiverr.com/romanruzin/review-your-website-and-re...

james-revisoai
Problem is they don't reliably get back to you within a short time frame, sometimes you have a deadline or multiple features and just want that reliability of getting a response same day you can get with an internal test team, you know.

hhm. I feel like vercel etc will make such things easier in the future. it feels like a micro version of the uber-taxi unreliability problem

gregjor
What does on-demand QA have to do with an API? You want a service, not an interface for programs to communicate.

Useful QA generally requires testers who participate in the team and development project. If you just want someone to go through an application or web site and bang on it without understanding the underlying requirements try Upwork or Fiverr.

james-revisoai
QA at a software company is a bit far from what I'm thinking of here - I'm not looking at finesse or QA for a product facing a large audience; more security against regressions.

Think small side projects, one off mom-n-pop sites, shopifies or wordpress or drupal with extensions or plugins that can clash.

Fiverr and Upwork both deliver too unpredictably, can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a day. If you have 5 changes to get tested it's a nightmare doing it with those services. With scale you can hire a tester but if your work is come-and-go it's not sensible and sometimes you want fresh eyes on each new version.

With tools like vercel I am surprised there's no way to programmatically include paying a tester - like a CI - to give you the human-touch manual all clear, without having to hire somebody.

gregjor
Just like programming, testing has significant context required, and switching contexts takes time. For anything less trivial than FizzBuzz the person testing will need more than 15 or 30 minutes just to switch contexts. I can't see how a professional tester could make money on 30 minute slices of their time when they will need 30 minutes just to understand the problem, get access to or download the code, get set up to run it, and figure out the test cases. If I offered on-demand testing I would want at least four hours minimum. Once I get set up I could go through multiple test cases. At some point the setup time and context switch become a small part of the overall time. You can't expect someone standing by 24/7 ready to run your specific tests when you need them to, unless you pay them for that time.

So to answer your question, the service you wish for doesn't exist because no one competent could make money with 30 minute chunks of testing, and the incompetent who would take the gig won't add any value.