I ran across this online ad today:
“What If I Could Show You How To Make up to $120 Dollars Per Hour Playing Video Games From Your Home… Would You Be Interested?”
That’s from this link: Video Game Tester Jobs – Gamer Testing Ground
It sounds like the perfect scam. Young adults think that software testing in the games industry would be a great career. What could be more fun than playing games all day to get paid for it? But in reality, it’s one of the worst paid, least steady, most notoriously overworked parts of the field.
I volunteered to participate in a local middle school’s “Career Day” a few years back. When I explained to the kids that I’m a software test engineer, they all – every single one of them, all day long – asked, “Cool, so you get to test game software?” It was funny. At the end of the day, I got a pretty good idea of the distorted view of the software industry inside the mind of a 13 year old boy. It’s about 80% games, 10% operating systems, and 10% web browsers, I think. They had a hard time understanding the idea that there’s software outside those areas. Spreadsheets? What’s that? Operating system? Huh? And the idea that I help build software that makes it so the phone company can provide phone service was like saying we build the software they use to make blue cheese to turn blue. (does not compute)
Anyhow, when I saw this ad I thought it sounds like the perfect scam for people who don’t really know anything about software testing or development or the industry. Because there are tons out there who want to believe, I’m sure.
For a reality check, here’s an article from a writer who actually tried being a contract game software tester: