chebmeh said:
I'd test. I criticise everything I come across to some extent, why not get paid for it?
That was my original sentiment. I hate lots of things, and I enjoy point out faults in people and products. Its a gift, and I do it well.
However, one thing that testers usually don't know is the amount of disrespect you'll get from developers and producers. Since this is what I enjoy doing, I'll be happy to give you some of my famous examples.
Imagine, you are a hard working tester, you nit pick because you have respect for the game rather than the fact that the game you're testing is crap, and you're showing it clearly.
Developer who just got 30 bugs about his crappy game from you: Why don't you focus on some important issues. You're feeding us all sorts of unimportant crap, just because you're a fat loser with no friends, and not enough skill to be a developer yourself doesn't mean you can disrespect those of us who have a life and training.
Producer who was just informed that you found a release stopping bug: I took time out of my busy schedule to come down here and talk to you personally, its not that we don't value your imput, its simply that we feel the database could benefit from less of these types of bugs, and focus on issues that really matter (Note: the producer is a liar, this may be an important bug, but release delays look bad for producers.)
Both (they may say this directly, or communicate it through bug responses. The bug database can be a hostile place sometimes: Get a life you slovenly, fat, pizza-faced, loser and go back to school so you can be of some real use to the community, now, get your lard ass, pizza face, and sausage nipples out of that chair, out of your mom's basement, and get some education so you can be productive rather than criticizing other people's work.
Now, if you are prepared to put up with that every time you do something that you feel is beneficial to the production of the project, go ahead. Just a warning though, to people in the industry, testers are the lowest forms of life, they are on-par with the consumer in terms of the direction of the project, and should be ignored at all costs.
I am a sly fox, however, you can do this as well if you're good enough. Every time a certain developer came down off his high horse into the testing dungeon, I showed him the show-stoppers, and most jaw-dropping bugs I could. He told me to stop because I was going to make him cry, and we ended up having a good laugh at the devs. Pick a party to align with and play them against the other party, become a dev friend and play them against the prod, or vice versa.
