The role of QAs and relationship w/ devs at Github

[ghost]

Hey @holman

How's Github work with their QAs? At the company I work at, devs write code, it get promoted to AccuRev shudder, and the QAs get the code, test it, and gets sent to a release manager.

Is it similar at Github? Where does the QA fit in if you're deploying multiple times all day? I wonder because the method at my org seems quite inefficient and since this is my first job out of college, I wonder if it could be done better.

Thanks for the ama!

[holman]

I don't know or care how GitHub does QA now, but my opinion is that QA is mostly bullshit. It should be on the developer to ensure that their code works, and the responsibility should ultimately be on the one owning and deploying the code to fix and operate that code.

[sharat]

@holman do you think tests are quite good enough to catch regression issues?

[holman]

It's hard to make a hard-and-fast rule, but I think generally it's reasonable to expect that tests can be comprehensive enough to rely upon for most of your expected failures. Once deployed, metrics are a good way to determine if your unknown failures are a problem or not.

[ghost]

I think if you are incrementally deploying things to production instead of large deploys every two weeks for example, then it's easy to test things in smaller parts and is less expensive if things go down.

I currently work for a bank (sigh) and they want to deploy much faster but then almost cite "compliance." UGH.

And thanks for the reply!

[dideler]

I currently work for a bank (sigh) and they want to deploy much faster but then almost cite "compliance."

@KJMoon I don't mean to pry, but how exactly does compliance slow down the deploy pipeline? I find this an interesting topic because I think, if done carefully, being compliant with regulations does not have to slow down developers (and could even speed them up at large orgs).

[ghost]

I haven't worked here very long but it seems to me that compliance entails extremely thorough testing (by a separate QA) and having someone in the compliance department read over any public facing content to make sure we aren't violating any laws.

Other times I think people just say compliance and how each bug could cost us "millions of dollars" as a trump card against any argument for speeding up deployment process.

[adepatie]

A problem I've been having is that It's really difficult to tell someone how to test your code unless they understand code to a certain degree. I end up spending more time trying to explain to someone what should and shouldn't be tested based on where development is, rather than actually moving development along.

There's nothing like having a CSS browser-prefix issue and suddenly your whole component has failed and QA is like 'WTH man! Now we have to test everything all over again!'

A developer tests my code and says 'Oh looks like someone didn't use -webkit-flex. Noob.'

@holman You are dead-on about developers needing to be responsible for their own code. You don't build a house and then let the client tell you if it's structurally to code.