After working in various positions and companies I can pretty much say I have done all the pathways to progress I ever considered at one time or another. starting from single person to Manager of QA, building up the groups overtime, or as individual contributer working on setting up processes, expanding existing testing or even automation I have done all the different aspects of what I have encountered. Not that this is all of them but in many posts through the SQA Forums, most people ask about progressing towards Automation or Management or stay where they are. Well here is what I have found.
As a Manager you will get away from the day to day testing, unless you are able to finagle some testing work into your schedule, and I always tried to do so for various reasons but its a good thing to do. Most importantly to keep your skills up, sure management skills are important but within QA its good to also be technically proficient, because you will deal with Developers at times its good to have the technical backing to either keep down a snowjob or to back up what you are saying when you just know something that you are being told will work, just won't. It's also good professionally, because you may end up leaving your job at some point, and if like me you enjoy the environment of start-ups, you will need to begin again and test so don't let the skills lack! I know someone who used to be an IT Manager and worked his way up to there, but then spent so much time managing that when he ended up looking for another job he was so far out of the current environment technically he felt he needed to take a lower level job to catch up. I say avoid that at all costs!
If you want to do Automation, then make sure you enjoy programming, know how to do it and want to make it your life. When every day is either spent debugging a test program so that it will work correctly, because the interfaces you want to test have changed in subtle ways, and are not well documented, then you have to enjoy that sort of life style. Knowing how to generate good frameworks that are well documented, easy for others to use and most importantly give clear and concise results is important. When you are the toolsmith, your goal should not be just to make any tool, but make one that is easy for others to use and implement in various ways, so you can move on to making the next and greatest tool, don't just think you can make something then let it go. See that its doing what you thought it was. In the case you leave one day, don't leave a bunch of tools lying around that not many people know how to use, and can't figure out because the code is not commented well because "it was only a test tool".
My preferred area is a nice middle ground, at least for now, I have done managing, and some automation work (makes me realize that I don't really like getting into coding too deep, I'll never be a hacked I know it but I can get by), but what I like is being the person that gets a project and runs with it. With my skills as a manager I can lead a project from the QA side, knowing how to diplomatically work with people, because I learned lots from some good HR people in the past, and I know enough about programming to be dangerous and take the time to work out the issues I find. Some developers love that, especially when you are eager to learn, and I find that is the most important thing for me, I like to keep learning and working on new stuff as well as learn more about what I am working on. There is so much out there, its almost inexhaustable, but its all good.
