Developer or Tester?

In my opinion, these are the rumors spread by those who are totally clueless about both careers. They hear from equally clueless people and keep spreading incorrect things. In India, there are great prospects in both the fields. Let me present an overview of both these careers in the context of Indian IT -

What you should know about Indian IT Companies: Indian IT is majorly services based. Which means, the big IT companies like Infosys, TCS, WIPRO get projects from their clients and they execute it. This 'outsourced' work consists of 'coding' and 'testing' as well. Both types of work are equally in demand in the industry.

Career In Software Development: Overall, this involves knowledge of programming languages like Java, C, C++, .Net or others depending upon the nature of the project you'll work on. Note that most of the times, the software system's architecture will be developed by the client and the 'coding' part will be left to the developers. If you intend to work on hard-core technical stuff, you should look for select product-based companies or startups that do all their system designing in-house. The 'so called good programmers' are actually doing all the non-brainy coding job where most of the things are directed by their clients.

Career In Software Testing: No matter what people say about it, no software development will be complete without software testing. It's the responsibility of Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer to make sure that the software is production & deployment ready. The work can be classified into to major parts: Manual & Automation Testing. Manual testing could be boring but it's necessary to form the foundation of automation testing which is a perfect blend of coding + overall system knowledge + logic + real-life scenarios. I dare say a coder has a better understanding of the overall system than a developer responsible for specific module.

Which is better for you?

Since the typical 'development' career is chased by all the 'good programmers', I'd recommend a testing career for those with 'sound programming knowledge'. This combination is a sure-win in Indian IT for next 10 years at least. There is a huge demand of skilled testing engineers who can code and grasp the programming part (at par with any development job) and it's better to be one than fighting for a position the the 'development' field.

At the same time, you may opt for software development career if you've a passion for software development and really love programming.

Salary wise - Few companies pay lesser to software testing engineers (by a small margin) but that's only a trade-off for a quicker rise in corporate hierarchy.

Keep exploring!

Indeed a good question. There are a lot of rumors flying around and nobody gives a clear answer. Thank you Biggie for the quick response.

Hey,i got the answer which actually i was expecting and my view about both Developer and Tester is also cleared .Really want to Thank Biggie for giving such a systematic answer.😀