Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

Re:Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job? by pcthrowaway on Thursday April 15, 2021 @11:00PM (#26828910)

Also, forgot to mention, I was recently working "QA" for 5 years. Transitioned into that from full-stack webdev and am back in webdev again. QA in my case was actually very technical, required deep knowledge of web application deployment mechanisms, occasional debugging of web app code, a variety of languages, and writing tons of bash and CI configuration, some tests, and automating cloud things.

I won't lie and say it was as fun as traditional programming. But QA means a lot of different things, and just because you had a really bad experience with it (and I've heard terrible things about EA in general, not just their QA department), you should definitely be looking at QA for job opportunities that will meet your needs. Realistically you're going to be better suited to a lot of QA jobs right now, and employers are going to be more open to taking a chance on you given your history.

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Re:Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job? by maccard on Friday April 16, 2021 @03:51AM (#26830849)

QA in video games is not an engineering role. It's usually a butts-in-seat role where you're expected to dilligently follow a task list without deviating in the slightest. You're expected to follow the checklist, on repeat. If you have initiative, save it for after work.

More senior qa roles will be designing test suites, maybe even developing them, but entry level game QA is not going to scratch a dev itch.

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Re:Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job? by pcthrowaway on Friday April 16, 2021 @06:43PM (#26839858)

I was only elaborating on this because I suggested QA as an entry point to software engineering, and OP seemed to write it off because they had a bad experience in a QA role that was very different from what I was suggesting.

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