So, I’ve been looking for quality assurance work for over a year now, so I guess I have a little room for a bit of a cri de cœur about it.
As I have mentioned, my job search in 2025 was:
- I “applied” for 1,035 jobs this year, of which I received…
- 26 responses requesting more information, assessments, or scheduling screener interviews, wherein…
- I talked to actual people at 9 companies, mostly screeners, but…
- 2 times I went deep into the interview process and got…
- 1 job offer in February, contingent on contract award in April. Given how the times have a-changed, there’s no telling if that contract was awarded. I liked my chances elsewhere, though, although this seems to have been an overly optimistic view of the market and/or my salability.
So far, almost a month into 2026, it is:
- 94 jobs applied for. Probably more by the publication of this blog post.
- 1 response then ghosting because the job was in the Czech Republic but that was not clear from the job posting.
- 1 recruiter who reached out to me then ghosted me; this agency has a history of that behavior, and its recruiters lead with “You talked with Jackie last week” when “last week” is April 2025. Who am I to judge with my values for “recently” and “was just,” but the ghosting is unprofessional.
- 1 call with a staffing company CEO who was doing it as a favor for my beautiful wife who clearly made non-verbal indicators in our fifteen minute call that he did not want to be there and finally told me the pay rate he was looking for which was what I made 20 years ago. Which I might have to settle for sometime soon, but not now.
- 1 “fill out this Google doc first” response.
You know, I remember when I was but a young buck, Director of Quality Assurance for an interactive marketing agency, that, during the company’s open house announcing its new space downtown, the wife of the president of the local American Society for Quality (ASQ) became intoxicated and exhorted that all of our jobs were going overseas. We were all a little embarrassed for him and didn’t believe–didn’t want to believe–it was true. Twenty years later, it really hasn’t worked out quite like that, but we have imported a number of overseas workers for tech work.
And the “testing is dead” thing has been around for a long time, too. But in 2026, the testing jobs do seem to be few and far between. The real jobs, anyway. The industry is rumored to be rife with ghost jobs, jobs posted to satisfy the minimum requirements to hire an H1-B, or scams of various sorts.
Take a look at this at the top of a job posting:
Oh, it’s a ghost job. Because if you cannot find someone in six months, you’re not really trying. I applied anyway; although I had applied with this company before, it has been for two different job titles. My latest job application was on January 2. I see that the company has started advertising for the other job titles again. So either it’s posting to keep a rolling candidate pool, it’s having trouble finding candidates in the maelstrom of application it gets, or something more sinister.
Is testing dead? Well, a bug recently cost me health insurance, so that’s a bad thing. And judging by bugs in job postings for QA positions, probably so.
Missing value in Page title:
Missing space in Edit Box label:
Value marked both optional and required:
Undefined as the default in a drop-down list:
Not to mention the typos or cut-and-paste errors resulting in the job title title and job title in description not matching, etc.
My previous employer got absorbed into its parent, and the parent company did not have dedicated QA (but, at the time, 250 developers–although they have quietly reduced over the last year in various ways–I understand few developers from my company remain). Because, and this is probably another curmudgeon or crank rant for a later time, Agile software development has conditioned companies that it’s okay to release bug-ridden software and has convinced users that it’s okay. So the mantra that “Quality is everyone’s responsibility” has really taken hold in a lot of places, but it’s probably not distinctly on many people’s annual goal sheets.
To be honest, I’m trying to be a little picky yet about the jobs I apply for. I’m not applying for jobs in the gambling or pot industries, for example, even though the sportsbook companies post a lot of jobs. I’m also not eager to return to government contracts because they’re slow, diffused responsibility, and burdened by lots of regulations (like timesheets? In my last government contract role, I had to fill out three separate timesheets.) I’m also staying away from subcontracting roles if I can and roles in companies like this:
I’ve worked for companies like this, where the goal is to shake every last nickel out of the clients. There’s some overlap with the subcontracting and government contract where the real goal is to do the minimum required in the contract and to get the contract extended or expanded.
I am too much of an old idealist from the 1900s. I want to work somewhere where the goal is to make something that makes the users’ life better and to make money doing that. In that order.
And…. I have 28 years in IT. And I have not turned that into a management position or vice presidency. Most of my last 20 years of work has been as a consultant, which is just a step above not working for some 23-year-old talent professionals or their LLMs. So I am both old–ageism in tech exists, you know–and with a questionable resume. Maybe I’m mistaken, but the whole process and system is opaque on purpose from this side. On the phone call I had with the CEO, he mentioned reviewing a tech assessment I’d done with the company when doing an over-the-transom application, and when I asked for the full feedback for the assessment, he said he would send it to me. But he hasn’t.
So what is a poor boy to do when he cannot sing for a rock-and-roll band?
I’ve been “upskilling” by building twee Flutter apps which I’ve released on the Apple Store. Getting them onto the Google Play store is more cumbersome–I need to have 12 testers “test” the apps for two weeks before I can submit them for publication. I’ve used AI a bunch for them, so the amount of Dart (the programming language) that I have learned might be minimal. I’ve re-started some work on the JavaScript path at FreeCodeCamp, but it’s awful tedious even as I’m speedrunning it because I know most of it. I’ve made sure my credentials at TryHackMe still work to sharpen up on cybersecurity in case I need to pivot to some other niche in IT, but….
Well, I’m not sure how eager companies will be to hire a junior developer with 28 years of experience, either.
So, basically, every day is a bit of a choose-your-adventure where each decision on a blank page leads me to a blank page. I can keep pressing the button for a pellet, a successful job application, but let’s be honest: In the eleven years that my spreadsheet tracks my online job applications following the end of a long-term contract, I’ve gotten, what, five or six job offers? Three actual engagements: A job, a part-time (and diminishing amount of time now) contract, and an “equity only” part-time thing that didn’t amount to anything. One other contract in all my time on the boards (which have changed over the years, ainna?). But it’s easy to do, to click Apply, especially if you’re not following the advice to tailor your resume to each job. Me, I spend a couple of minutes on each application. Probably more time than the “careful review” my resume gets when fed into the Applicant Tracking System machines.
So what am I going to do? That’s the question I ask myself, often at 2am. Well, I have started explicitly looking for technical writer work, but as most of my recent positions have been in QA, those rejections come, when they come, quicker. I spend maybe thirty minutes or an hour trolling for work in the mornings, and I have to get away from pushing the button for pellets all day long.
I’ve also got to get out into the community more to try to make contacts with other tech people locally. Most of what I’ve been doing has been with an entrepreneur group, which is a good chance to talk to, sometimes, people with unrelated startups that present and a hella lotta coaches, consultants, realtors, insurance agents, bank people, and others who sell to entrepreneurs. Or the local tech group which is more about IT services like networks and managed services of various stripes and less about developers (much less plucky developers working on their own things–most of the developers there work for the Big Three in town). Maybe volunteer with one of the two local development groups.
It’s kind of funny: I think of myself where I was those 30 years ago. What can I do now? Retail, light industrial, food service…. The same kinds of things I thought I could get when I had a fresh English degree. Although I’m sure those kinds of employers would also look askew at a, erm, middle-aged man trying to get those sorts of jobs. I guess I say I retired, which is almost true if I’ve been retired.
Eh, I dunno. All it takes is one interview, and I’ll be back on top o’ the world, Ma.
In the mean time, I guess, I’ll make to-do lists and strike things off of them. Whether it’s doing any good is TBD.
