Testing, terminology and misperceptions
Yes, an interesting topic alright, “What do we call ourselves as testers?”. I’ve often used “Exploratory Tester” in place of manual tester but in general just using the title “Test/Quality Engineer” covers most of what we do. The terms SDET/SEIT can often be used to elevate the role, in terms of salary banding but if we use the same bandings across all engineers (Dev & Test) then this is no longer an issue and people will feel equally valued. Cutting code, using tools, building frameworks, managing pipelines etc. are all skills that we as testers have in our arsenal, to help us do our job better. So being a Quality Engineer should cover the diverse skills within our craft and as such we should all feel valued members of the team. And I definitely agree that “Quality is everyone’s responsibility”.
