Genislab TechnologiesOne of our readers sent us this question. After he completed the technical rounds, he had a round of interview with the hiring manager. He answered a couple of interview questions comfortably when the hiring manager asked him the following question – Should software testers be paid the same / equal salary as software developers? He was asked to justify the reason behind his choice.
Most people would like their salaries to be equal, if not higher and our reader also also felt the same way.
However, he wanted to know what the rest of the testing community thought about it. So we decided to post the same question to our audience. Many people said that good software testers should be paid the same salary as developers. Some disagreed.
Among the respondents in higher management roles like QA Leads, QA Managers, QA Head etc about 79% said that software tester salaries should be same as developers, while 21% felt that developers should be paid more.
77% of Software Testers and Senior Software Testers who responded to our questions said that testers should be paid as much as developers, which 23% said that developers deserve higher pay than testers.
Some of the response from the community are given below.
- No, because Devs work harder to gain the knowledge.
- YES IF THEY ARE able to do automation testing.
But in case of manual testing testers should be paid for eg if developer is having salary 40k then manual tester should have salary 35k. - yes, testing is also an important phase of SDLC,without testing we can’t provide a quality product.
- Of course they should. They find mistakes the developers make and then have to deal with their egos when pointing them out.
- No, ratio is 3:1 obviously developer take a more than tester, I m also tester
- Yes, as detecting/reporting failures within company is cost saving which means avoiding the huge costs which the company may have to pay if the bugs slip through the software and found by end user……which could be fatal depending upon application like – Airplane/Car/ etc…
- No it should not be the case as software developers are the ones with the major ideas behind the software. Meanwhile those testing the software are merely using the finished products,which is not really a big deal. In conclusion software testing can be done by just any focused person while Software development can be done by particular people who took out time to learn the skills.
- Depend of complexity and the project
- The effort spent by the tester in finding the defects is the same effort as the developer take. Tester is like a client and more appropriately, logical and creative thinking is what a tester does and its the same as developer.., so, testers should be paid as much as Developers
- No they have an easier job
- Yes, When a Software Tester who is doing Manual and Automation Testing then that candidate has a good knowledge of Manual as well as Technical Concepts.
Basically candidate should be paid based on their skill set not on some other parameter. - No, they are only testing it. They haven’t created anything.
- Their salaries should be very close. Many companies, the Testers are more senior than the Developers, since they have knowledge of the entire system, whereas Developers tend to know just one area they code.
- No, they don’t have to work as much or as hard as a software developer, and their job only creates more work for the developer
- I think developer just develop the component but tester is the person who validate that it meets client requirements or not. Is there any bugs in the system and function should not break.
According to these parameters we gain client confidence so Tester should get as much as developer because tester is the responsible to meet all these criteria. - yes, because they should be able to find developers’ mistake so they knowledge about business and techniques and software engineering should be more than developer
- No, i think they should be paid less, but only slightly less. They have to do very rigorous tests but they arent as difficult as developing software
- If the problems aren’t found, then how can they fix them? Both roles work hand in hand, and should be considered equal in my opinion. It takes a long time to upskill a tester and get the correct accreditation just like a developer so they both should be seen as prestigious and highly paid roles.
- I think they both should be paid equal amount as both played equal role and responsibility to deliver a project
- Yes. Software testing and development both are important for good software.so work done by developer and tester is having same importance and value.
- Yes, since quality is important to all projects.
- yes software tester should be paid as much as developer because without tester none software project can be launched ,so developer and tester both are equal.
- Yes, because the system will not be as good as it can if the testers didn’t have to go over it a lot of times.
- yes. Because without QA software is nothing. User will not use if QA is not done.
- Yes, The amount of work is same as the developers. And we need to ensure that the product go to production with less bugs.
- yes, a tester tests the working code and finds a bug. A single bug makes a huge loss to the company. So even the tester should me paid well.
- Yes. Because they have deal with their applications. (Joke) But still answer Yes.
- yes Testers should be paid equally because Correct Bug free Software delivery is equally important.Plus Testers also work hard in validating and testing the software
- Software tester should paid much lesser as compare to developer.
- i don’t know. i think its depends on knowledge of the tester as well as developer.
- Testers should be paid more than Developers because testers are responsible for the quality of the product
- yes I think testers should be paid as developers as per their effort
- Yes, Because testers are the one’s who corrects the code. If the code is not tested it may not meet the customer specifications and the end result.
- Yes definitely, because QA person is doing double effort to track out the issues with different scenarios. It’s quite a creative job so tester should be paid same as developers.
- Software tester should not be paid as much as developers
- Yes, Because testers role is also important in as much as developers.
Testers also playing crucial role in product delivery. - Yes, crucial part of development. But education/skill should also be considered
- yes because to test they have to go through whole code which is written by others..Its quite difficult to check other program 😀
- Yes. Because an untested product’s proclaimed and real (actual) attributes can’t be ascertained without testing. Thus the value of testers matches that of developers.
- yes – because they have the same skillset
- yes, off course, they check the work from the developers so …
- Yes because for successful software to be release in market testing also play an important role
- yes.because of automation testing
- Yes,because they are more responsible for the product accuracy
What is your opinion?
Do you feel testers should be paid the same salary as developers?
Do you see this parity in your organization?
Share your experience in the comments below.
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Matt Rasmussen says
Testers ARE developers. If you want to make a distinction among team members: programmers write code, testers test code. Both are essential to a working, Agile development team.
Yusof says
Salary should be in line with responsibility and value of the tester.
Some tester (usually junior) do minor validation while some experienced tester carry the responsibility of making sure the product match the requirement and additionally, foresee future problem of the implementation or the requirement itself.
What happen when you pay a tester low salary or they are treated like outsiders (most testers are being contracted and treated like their effort are less meaningful to the company), they will be less dedicated in the QA effort.
The bare minimum is achieving the requirement but we the experienced tester know the BA and developer are human and human can’t avoid from making mistake. Hence the experienced tester will be able to tell whether the outcome should satisfy the end user and we are able to advise BA or developers to make some correction before it reach the end user. This not only resulting in better customer/user experience while also reducing effort to fix issues since most of the fixes was done at earlier stage.
But what usually happen is, experienced tester are not treated well even though they do the extra mile of making sure the product not only meet business requirement but also achieve customer’s satisfaction.
So should tester be paid the same as developers or not?
Please start with learning how to appreciate and value your tester’s work and then only you can answer the question.
Mark says
Yes and no.
In my experience both the tester and the developer are responsible for developing good software. Best developers are testing and best testers are coding themselves as well especially successful in BDD. Seeing software development done by different roles (Developer, Tester, Business Analyst, Information Analyst, Data Architects, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Administrators and others) is missing the point of good software development today: everyone is responsible for developing good software based on their skills. The willingness to help other team members despite it might not be the fastest way to achieve the sprint goals this week is key to progress as a team in the long run.
Nebojsa Zakic says
Yes, I wish qa was paid as much as development. So I can get overpaid for doing easier and dumber job.
Teresa Raj says
Yes, a tester should be paid equally to a developer cos the testers are the persons who work/think from the perspective of an end-user and consider all positive and negative scenarios of the product whereas the developer does not need to work on those areas. Basic quality of a tester is logical skills, creativity, innovative ideas, out-of-box thinking and suggestions to make the product better, even the client requirement used to change when testers provide their suggestions. The goodwill of the company is valued only when the product is error-free, easy to access, looks attractive, quick to respond and available for all users and the testers’ works on all these areas to make the product a successful one.
Gayatri says
Strong and Responsible developer deserves a high salary, as a skilled developer is doing the perfect unit testing before the code goes to production. it’s a huge responsibility. Coding does by qualified skilled developers in most companies.
The tester’s job is to make sure the code does the required functionality without errors.
Joy Kemper says
A developer should be getting paid higher then the tester. Without the developer, you would not have anything to test. They developed the product and should be getting paid higher than someone who just test it. A developer would want his product to run smoothly and will worry if it didnt. If the product didnt run right then he would have to go back and fix the problems before it goes out to the public.
Emmanuel Nshimiyimana says
Yes and/or not. It depends! I deliver below 5 cases.
1. If the tester is the boss of the developer or former developer (senior developer), tester should deserves more salary than developer.
2. If tester and developer are employees of the same institution, they should gain the same salary.
3. Salaries are influenced by skills, experiences, age, economic policy, employer and employees mentality etc.
4. If a developer is not serious, needs pressure from tester, he deserves a low salary.
Otherwise: a strong developer merits a high salary compared to his peers in software development domain, because a right, well skilled developer is the right tester, the right reviewer. He has all keys of the running system. He is the one who don’t sleep while something is wrong. While a good tester can be any conscious end-user without any knowledge in coding.
Akshita says
Yes, a tester should get more pay. the tester belongs to the quality assurance team and his role & responsibility directly affected on the goodwill of the company. If the company provides products with errorless work then it would be the invisible marketing of company.