Tea China Computer Market Forecast Report 2008 has been released recently. It showed that in the first three quarters of 2007, China’s software industry posted sales revenue of $50 billion, 23.6% more than pcp, accounting for 10.95% of the sales revenue of the entire the electronics and computer industry. As the software market matures, people have higher and higher expectations for software features, quality, and reliability. In October 2005, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security formally listed computer software product tester (software test engineer) as one of the new professions. In just two years, software testing has become a powerful dark horse in the software industry.
Steadily rising status
“In the early 1990s, the software industry was still in its infancy in China. Most software projects were very simple, the entire code writing and development process could be handled by one person As competition in the industry intensified, software companies gradually evolved from “small boy band shops” to software engineering cooperations. Although the division of labor could improve the efficiency of software development and functional varieties, it also leads to an increasing number of bugs between modules and deterioration of qualities,” said Mr. Wang Yazhi of CONCEPT Information Technology Ltd., a major software development company in Beijing Quality deterioration would not only harm the competitiveness of a software company, but also could lead to massive economic loss for software users or even personal injury such as medical accidents.
As China’s software companies continue to prosper, software companies are also increasingly appreciating the importance of software testing. Many large and medium-sized software companies have started hiring professional staff to handle software testing. Ms. Ran Chunjuan, former test manager at Wuhan Superidea Technology Ltd, said, “At Superidea, the ratio of software testers to developers is 1:4. Although it is still far below the international best practice of 1:1 , it’s still a big improvement on the 1:8 from a few years ago.”
Industry experience appreciated
In addition to increasing the number of software testing staff, many companies are also demanding a higher quality of staff, especially in areas of professional testing expertise and thinking ability. “A tester without professional training may still develop 3-5 test methods, but not necessarily catch bugs. Even if bugs are discovered, they may not be able to express issues in the proper languages, which could increase the workload Those well Trained testers can build 10-20 test methods, such as boundary value analysis, equivalence classes, and cause-and-effect diagrams, to fully uncover any bugs Professional testers can also articulate test documents tests in standardized languages, which improves recovery rates from software problems,” said Liu Fei, a former Qualcomm test manager. Many companies in China now have established independent testing departments, working together with R&D departments.
As companies’ understanding of software testing deepens, the test staff’s scope of work expands from the system testing phase to the unit and integration testing phases. “This requires software testers to have in-depth knowledge about the businesses a product is involved in,” said a test manager at Founder Group, one of China’s largest software companies, “for example, when we test software for banking applications, we have to understand the specific users in the bank first. Some operators only use keyboards in the office, but if we don’t know about this and design it as a mouse-friendly control, banks won’t buy, no matter how good the software works.” Therefore, it could be predicted that the status of software testers possessing technical expertise and knowledge of customer demand will further improve.
a seller’s market
“The software testing industry is in a growth stage,” said Professor Zheng Renjie, an expert in software testing. The current large market for software testers is mainly due to the rapid development in the software industry itself, “businesses are demanding better quality software, which in turn has stimulated the demand for software testers. market demand , therefore, a shortage of talent.”
At present, China’s software testing talent shortage has exceeded 200,000 and is reaching the threshold of 300,000. According to statistics, the total supply of software testers from IT training institutions around the country is less than 10,000 per year, so it can be anticipated that the talent shortage for testing could last another 5 to 10 years. At the same time, the shortage of talent has served as a lever to test compensation. According to a 51Job.com compensation report in China, the starting salary for software testing engineers ranges from $400-$650 per month, and could rise to $1,200-$1,650 for engineers with 2-3 years of experience, a higher compensation to that of many developers with similar years of service. As the talent supply shortage continues in 2008, software tester pay is looking for more gains.
education and training
The shortage of software testers in China has not only raised pay levels, but has also created a boom for educational and training institutions. Even two years ago, several leading IT vocational training institutions realized the importance of software testing positions and organized some domestic and international software testing experts to jointly develop training courses, which have successfully cultivated many software testing talents in the last two years. years. Currently in China, in addition to overseas recruitment and internal company training, external vocational training is also an important channel for the production of software testers, amounting to 12% of the total talent supply. As companies pay more attention to controlling labor costs, more professional talents are expected to come from external training institutions.
While IT professional training is booming, tertiary education institutions have also started to test the water. In August 2007, various government offices and universities held the first software testing education forum in Shanghai, explicitly marking “software testing” as a core area in software engineering courses in China. But Dr. Chen Honggang, who has been involved in the development and testing of projects such as Windows 95, Internet Explorer 4.0/5.0, and SQL Server 2000, said that while universities can alleviate some pressures on software testing, educating talent is based on overseas experience, vocational training will continue to be the main channel for the supply of software testing talent.