Manual Software Testing vs IT Support - Which one is easier and less stressful?

MaxPayneXL

I would like to know which one is easier and less stressful to work - Manual Software Testing or IT Support. Also which one is more paid and have career growth prospects?

Any help greatly appreciated.

fergald

Hi,

I have worked in development / test / support for the past 20 years. In general support is considered bottom end of the IT scale, salaries can be a lot lower and grief from customers/managers etc etc etc, the managers i have came across in these roles are usually what we call production line managers (numbers game over quality, training, learning). Testing can pay as much as development and you can get into automated testing, development support etc, the pay scale can be quiet similar to development.

So i would go for testing, more career opportunities for up skilling, however some support jobs can be really good, depends on the company.

Hope this helps my view point.

Kind Regards
Fergal.

MaxPayneXL

Thanks fergald, I am not interested (better to say not skilled) in coding. So prefer Manual Testing.

bennyineire

MaxPayneXL wrote: »

Thanks fergald, I am not interested (better to say not skilled) in coding. So prefer Manual Testing.

Mmm you would need coding skills and an interest in coding for testing though.

IT Support can have very good prospects so not sure why fergald thinks it does not, sure your first job will be at the bottom and the pay won't be great but the same can be said for coding/testing.

Senior microsoft support can earn up to 60-80k, same goes for loads more companys. (VMWARE,Citrix etc.)

Staring of in IT support will also open up system admin, IT Manager, server field engineer etc.

If you don'y like coding I would go with IT Support, you can easily get up to 40K withing 3 to 4 years

TrustedApple

Me I work in IT support myself and i would be a OK coder but i would not work full time in coding but it does help depending on the role to understand how to write in bash if your dealing with UNIX systems. The one thing i wished in college is that i would have done UNIX and if you dont have good exp in it start learning as i find once you have the ins and outs it will lead you to a lot of roles.

If your willing to learn the ins and outs of support i find it a very rewording job and its a very skill full area as there is really two kinds of support.

Help Desk this can lead to sys admin roles
Software product support like VM ware and the likes can lead to management you name it from here.

Both you will start at the bottom and the LV1 roles do pay poor but work your ass off and you be on 40k in 3 years just like in software dev.

Then before you know it there is tech lead, Lv3 roles and so on. My brother in Law works in it as well and so does his brother in law and we all love the area and have became really skilled in the products that we support.

People you would have to be a lot more of a people person in support based roles and know how to speak to someone screaming at you. The best training i got in that was in my time in apple and i think that was thought me how to be blunt the right way and give the best support i can give to people by playing 20 questions with them to see what the issue is.

MaxPayneXL

I am bit old school in taking initiative and learning new technologies, software etc that comes and goes fast in the market. This is in regard to new server class operating systems, configuring switches and routers etc.

I think in this regard manual software testing scores as there is no need for the above, but just learn business process and check and see whether it works. In case there is some thing that doesnt work, just flag it to the software engineers who would rectify the issue.

This is what i think. Please correct me if I am wrong.

bennyineire

MaxPayneXL wrote: »

I am bit old school in taking initiative and learning new technologies, software etc that comes and goes fast in the market. This is in regard to new server class operating systems, configuring switches and routers etc.

I think in this regard manual software testing scores as there is no need for the above, but just learn business process and check and see whether it works. In case there is some thing that doesnt work, just flag it to the software engineers who would rectify the issue.

This is what i think. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Maybe but where do you progress to after that if your not interested in coding ?

LincolnHawk

Manual testing is the bottom rung of the ladder.
It will never pay you a decent wage.
If you're interested in being a tester you will need to learn how to write automated tests. Webdriver/selenium tests, rational integration testing...etc.