The secret fifth level of testing

The following drawing was the inspiration for my Testing RPG talk. Excuse its quality, I have never left the "drawing people as figure sticks like a toddler"-stage.

I have contemplated recording the Testing RPG talk and putting it out there for everyone to see, but I share some, let's say, not so nice stories about a certain company in the talk and I don't feel comfortable putting that on the internet. So, either you were one of the lucky few who have heard it live at the Agile Testing Days (2023) or TestIt (2024), or you have to be content with this drawing. The drawing still conveys the essence of the talk, let that be a small comfort.

I'm not going to repeat the whole gaming metaphor of the talk here, as I want to quickly get to the point of my story, which is the secret 5th level of testing.

Level 1: Testing = following a process

Basically, when you are a junior tester (or dev, doesn't matter), you are first and foremost focused on learning the rules of the game. In a testing context, that usually means getting your ISTQB certification and following the process, as you were taught, from A to Z. This is your reality because you don't know any better.

Level 2: Spice up the process

Then, after gaining some experience, you learn that it's silly to just follow a process and that you get better test results if you spice it up. You learn about exploratory testing, you start thinking out-of-the-box while testing software. This is a very nice phase, as you break free of dogmatic process-only thinking, and you feel like a detective (that was how this phase in my career felt to me, I loved chasing down bugs in systems and really get to the bottom of things!).

Level 3: Testing is a team activity

After a while, you start to see your limitations as an individual. On this third level, you learn that you need the efforts from your team to do this testing thing well. Developers can test too, and often test pretty well! Sometimes you find bugs that are caused by other teams, and I also consider this part of the third level: you learn how to communicate with other teams and get them to fix code on their side, so issues on your side are fixed. You become a diplomat, a negotiator, a networker. You realize that tech is a first and foremost a social profession, not a technical one.

Level 4: the organization structure is preventing us from making good software

Then, on the fourth level, the final boss awaits. You realize that whatever your team tries to do to make good software, it's not enough. Your testing efforts might indicate that there are big problems that need to be solved, but management overrules you anyway. Your concerns are swept under the table with the deadly words "this is an edge case".

I split the main concerns in this fourth level of testing in the following three key points:

• technical decisions from the past come back to haunt you (referring to crappy testability, preventing good software from being made, making the tasks of testers a daily living hell.)
• politics (referring to management playing political games over worrying about the state of the software. The sadline must be made, can't let the KPI that ensures their bonus get in danger!)
• C-level shenanigans (referring to people at C-level not talking to each other, while they have conflicting interests, which can lead to projects that are almost complete being scrapped. Yes, this has happened to me in the past.)

I thought this fourth level was the bottom. But no, we can go one level deeper! There's not just an end of level boss of software testing, there is a World Boss!

The secret fifth level

I'm laughing when I write this down because I know I'll lose a couple readers here. But, the World Boss is: capitalism in its current form.

This is the secret fifth level of testing that we, as individuals, have no influence over. Maybe you don't see the connection between "software testing" and "capitalism" yet, so read on before you file me away as a crazy person. If, at the end of this post, you are still not convinced, feel free to file me away like that.

The only concern for big (tech) companies and billionaires right now is short-term profit and growth, no matter what it costs the world as a whole. No matter that more and more people can't afford to live a normal life. No matter that the climate gets worse every year and spawns more disasters that impact more and more people. Everything Big Tech is doing right now is destructive for the earth, aimed at short term profit that makes the billionaires even richer.

In this timeline, OpenAI would rather destroy the climate, so everyone can generate pictures and text with ChatGPT. Doesn't matter how much water and electricity is needed. Doesn't matter that colonialism is still at play here, by having people in Kenia train the LLM model for two bucks an hour. These people had to help filter out violent and harmful content. Artificial Intelligence, my ass.

Softbank and OpenAI are going to spend 500 billion dollar on a freaking data center. That is an eye watering sum of money. You could give a lot of people a UBI for the rest of their lives, but that won't make a billionaire richer, so of course we will not. It's maddening to me that businesses can gobble up money like it's nothing, while more and more people cannot afford to live a normal life. Why do we find that acceptable, while my standpoint of giving people free money is deemed "radical"? You tell me because I don't understand the world anymore.

In this timeline, lots of companies and governments are moving their software over to the Cloud, so Microsoft and Amazon can get richer, and we all depend on those companies more and more. How bad can the sunken cost fallacy get? Pretty bad! No company that moves their shit to the cloud seems to care about the long term effects of these decisions. As Ed Zitron writes:

"This is the devil's deal of the three-trillion-dollar Software-As-A-Service market. While the convenience of not having to build your own distinct software run on its own distinct hardware is great, or having to pay ungodly sums upfront for software licenses, you are also effectively outsourcing your entire organization's functionality to another company. With every new integration, every new seat, every new add-on their sales team makes you pay for and every new product they graciously train your staff to use, your organization becomes more burdened by the beast of SaaS." (emphasis mine)

Do you start to see the connection between testing and the current state of capitalism? You probably have to test shit that is running in the cloud. On-prem infra is getting rarer and rarer these days. Maybe the CEO of your company has drunk the Kool-Aid and wants to integrate "AI" in the software you are making. Or perhaps you drank the Kool-Aid yourself; you feel it's a great idea to use "AI" at work (probably not, or you wouldn't read this blog. I'm pretty open about the fact that I despise all things "AI").

Personally, I feel more like a goose that is destined to be pâté, with how I'm being force-fed this AI crap in software I (have to) use. I also don't think I'll ever get an IT assignment again where on-prem infra is used. The enshittification of things seems to be almost complete.

The huge problem is that we cannot break free from this hyper-capitalist system, even if we want to. I have to be an active participant, or I won't have a house to live in. I need money to stay alive. You cannot say to people that they should "just avoid tech". Without a smartphone, I can't do my banking. I can't complete user flows for government websites. And if I can't do that, I'll get into trouble with the bank and government. And then, I'll be well and truly fucked.

I'm guessing for you, it's no different. You also need to eat. You need money. So you stay silent, and implement a new feature with your team that you secretly hate. I don't blame you, at all. I'm not mad at you.

No, I'm extremely mad at the system, and at humanity as a whole. We've had so many choices, so many options, to create a reality that doesn't SUCK SO MUCH for the majority of people. Yet here we are, in tech bro dystopia.

Now what?

So now you know what I mean with the secret fifth level of testing, and that I feel very much powerless to do anything about it on a systemic level.

That doesn't mean there can't be a rebellion! These are my acts of rebellion regarding technology and software enshittification:

I am restricting time spent on algorithm based apps. The apps designed to suck away your attention, you know which ones I mean. With the time I save, I create more. That's why my writing has increased so much in quantity. I hope you enjoy the quality of it as well, but I'm under no illusion that I'm a good writer yet. That's what practice is for! (It would be a hell of a lot easier if you all could read Dutch, JFC.)

On top of that, it's still my mission to help more people live healthier lives. I find no meaning in working in tech, so I have to look for it somewhere else. It's still my mission to get more folks into the gym, and I want to help more people with their lifestyle as a whole. That's why I'll focus on Healthy Living for Desk Dwellers in the coming time (starting February). The whole initiative is still in its emergent state, and I can't wait to see how it'll unfold. I want to build in public, so if you sign up, your feedback is very much wanted and appreciated. I want it to be useful for people, in the first place. It would be great if I can get a couple of coaching clients from it, or even live off of it, but that is a pipe dream for now. The whole thing will of course be privacy-friendly, no ads, IndieWeb based.

These are my two acts of tech rebellion for now. One small, and one....pretty huge project.

How are you rebelling?