What if, as a testing community, we’ve been hung up about the wrong thing all this time

Does 2025 Maaike agree with what 2021 Maaike wrote? I found the following in my Apple Notes just now. Read it, and then I'll tell you whether I still agree with my thoughts from 4 years prior. Spoiler: it gets very real! Lots of curse words! I'm not sparing anyone, including myself.

2021 Maaike wrote: What if, as a testing community, we’ve been hung up about the wrong thing all this time?

We keep talking about quality and making the case that testing is directly related to improving quality, but by doing that we’ve made ourselves “the bad guys”. We are the ones who keep whining about quality, while other roles like developers and managers just want to get working software released.

We have separated ourselves as a different species, almost. Pretending like you need a tester or else you won’t get quality, while at the same time whining that we don’t have enough influence. We are making it hard for ourselves!

If we align ourselves with working software as the main goal, perhaps we can achieve a lot more. It's a lot easier to agree on what "working software" means than it is to ever agree on a workable and actionable definition of “quality”.

My definition of working software: It's software that runs in production, is in the hands of real users, and is gathering feedback (automated feedback or personal feedback). The feedback provides tangible points for improvement. Taking action based on these feedback loops has an added benefit of possibly making the users more satisfied when you roll out fixes that demonstrate you listened to them (quality improvements). This cycle can be endless and iterative. Quality is not unimportant at all, but it's not the primary focus.

Furthermore, when it comes to working software, testing doesn’t magically end when stuff is in production (remember the feedback loop I just mentioned!). However, how often do testers care what happens to the software when it’s in production? Or, even worse, are we even allowed to look in the production servers? Are we up for taking on the Ops role? Can we look in the logs? Can we deploy new releases? Are we required to do standby shifts? Do we really have skin in the game? If not, is that by choice or because we are not taken seriously?

As testers, we need to have skin in the game, and I think we can better achieve that by letting go of this wrongful notion that we influence quality (that's extremely hard to prove) and get onboard the working software train.

Hello, this is 2025 Maaike speaking.

Whew, this was tough to read because I feel like my current day concerns are completely different from what I wrote back in 2021.

What I still agree with:

• completely fed up with the endless bitching about quality that has happened and is still happening in the testing community. Just now on LinkedIn I read someone saying "if everybody owns quality, then nobody owns quality!" and honestly, I instantly feel like I need a long nap when I read shit like that. How can anyone "own" quality? What does it mean to own something you can't point to? I swear, it's easier to achieve world peace than it is to agree on what quality in the context of software development means. That is to say: we are chasing a fucking rainbow over here. Let it go. Let's go to the realm of the practical, which is: working software.

My current problem:

• about that working software thing, yeah, I've got bad news. Most companies don't give a damn about that anymore. I mean, sure, they want to have a good uptime, but what is actually up and running can be utter garbage. The software can be designed to keep users "engaged" (longer time spent in the product), by being confusing and enraging on purpose. Everything is aimed at short-term profitability. Chances are high that, if you have worked or are working at a big company, you have been involved in creating software that made the user experience worse.
• Ironically, even though I just said that we can't ever agree on what quality is, I don't think I'm crazy when I say that quality in software as a whole is declining.
• I don't think us testers can influence this for the better. We are collectively failing to do so. We are not the one with the deciding power.
• I think, on a micro level, we have influence. We can make sure that we use test techniques, that we write beautiful code for our automated tests, that we do extensive exploratory testing, all that jazz. However, if we do all that work to implement something that makes the users' life worse, then we are losing sight of what truly matters (the macro level, the big picture, the future of software).
• This focus on micro influence is a form of copium that I wish every tester (and dev!) would wake up from. Many testers (and devs) are like violin players on the Titanic, only they don't realize they are on the Titanic. Some of y'all think you're on a cruise to the Bahamas, as in, you think you are doing good shit in the name of quality and testing whereas, in reality, that boat has sunk. As I wrote in my last post, I have been there and got the t-shirt.
• I still think testers need to have skin in the game, but this goes waaaaay beyond taking on Ops work in production.
• My utopian vision for the test community is that we all realize that software is becoming worse. We stop focusing on the micro level and stop patting ourselves on the back for implementing yet another test framework that runs in CI/CD. Instead, we focus on the macro level.
• How? By being more honest, if you have the privilege to do so. If you can't afford to speak up in fear of losing your job, and you need that €€, then by all means, don't. Get that bread. If you have the privilege of being able to criticize the current state of (big) tech, though, fucking DO IT. Let's stop pretending everything is trending in the right direction.
• Speak up at work if you see another initiative that would definitely make the user experience worse. Find allies, speak up as a team. Don't just sit there and say yes and amen to management if their ideas objectively suck (note: privilege thingy I mentioned earlier still counts here).
• If you can, work at a place where no evil software is being made. Something for a public cause. Still be mindful of dark patterns because they can happen anywhere.
• Join the Indieweb and learn about its principles. Become less reliant on algorithm-driven big tech products.

I hate this timeline, with examples.

To illustrate my point, consider these examples. Tech people have coded and tested this, hopefully against their will.

Hulu ad forced interaction

Sure, this person has the free Hulu plan, but how fucking dystopian is it that they have to answer a multiple choice question about an ad??!! Interactive ads, get outta here with this bullshit.

Netflix movies are made for being played, not being watched

Many people play something on Netflix, but aren't watching. It's just background noise, which is fine. What is less fine, is that this is now the main business model for Netflix and has made movies worse. Enshittification of software has widespread ramifications. A very interesting essay, although it has a 45-minute read time, which, in 2025 is a bridge too far for many people's attention span.

You use Netflix as background noise, I use black metal, we are not the same.

Casual Viewing | Will Tavlin

A decade before Airbnb persuaded homeowners to transform their homes into hotels, Netflix convinced its users to turn theirs into mini Netflix warehouses. Customers who held onto their DVDs for longer meant fewer shipping costs for Netflix, and fewer DVDs for the company to manage and store. Netflix tracked heavy users of its service — labeling them internally as “pigs” — and secretly throttled their deliveries. It didn’t matter if Netflix rented fewer DVDs than Blockbuster, because the company would keep collecting its monthly fee. The difference between Blockbuster and Netflix was this: Blockbuster punished customers for being forgetful; Netflix rewarded them for being mindless.

n+1Subscribe

Big tech is no longer hiding that they want to lick Trump's butthole

The gloves have come off, and big tech is now openly aligning with whatever the biggest clown in the world is going to do the next four years (or longer because I think democracy in the US has already died), aided by that other clown who bought his way into power.

Meta's support for LGBTQ+ rights? Yep, it was indeed a farce all along. The DEI programs? Fuck those, tech needs more masculine energy, according to Zuck. Excuse me while I cackle like a crazy witch. Having worked in tech as a woman for 14 years now, I can tell you that the masculine energy has been alive and kicking all this time. I have left a job over it.

I've talked about quality in the context of software development so far, but what about the quality of life as a non-white non-male tech worker? Now that fucking sucks. And it's going to get worse. I have felt like I had to defend my existence in tech teams at times, and I don't imagine it's going to become a more friendly environment. This timeline truly sucks if you're not a mediocre white man*. If you got offended by that last sentence, take a hard look in the mirror.

The Slop Society

In the last week we’ve seen the emergence of the true Meta — and the true Mark Zuckerberg — as the company ended its fact-checking program, claiming that (and I quote) “fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created” on both Instagram and Facebook, the

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed AtEdward Zitron

Pick a side.

You can probably tell I'm pretty pissed off.

To me, it feels crazy that people can still be enthusiastic about new test frameworks, let's say. Tech optimism in this day and age almost feels....naive to me. And so does my bitching about the quality versus working software argument, that I made up myself, in 2021. Bigger things are at stake now, and I am feeling a lot of trepidation as to what will happen.

Please share this post with people if you found it valuable, thanks.

*PS: not all white men, but too fucking many. Feels like I should put this disclaimer here, but if you are a good white man, you won't be offended when I lament that fact that it's a bad time for anyone who is not a mediocre white man. Mediocre being the keyword here. The newest thought experiment is not "the bear or the man", but "you have to enter an elevator with 3 men, which men would you trust?". If you take longer than 10 seconds to find a good answer, you might see the problem.