The majority of voices in the #testing community are trashing automation. Fine but then then stop complaining when no one wants to hire you. — Noah Sussman (@noahsussman) June 14, 2016

Listen. I’m your friend so I have to be the one to tell you that you’re freaking out a lot of people at this party.

I’ve read your blog posts and I’ve been to your talks and talked to you after the talks too. And here’s what I want to know: if you love automation so much how come all you can do is warn me about how not to use it?

Here’s ten tired trends I’d like to see go away:

Dire warnings about what happens if you try to completely replace all your humans with automated solutions. This trend is so tired. Lisanne Bainbridge got there before all of you, in like the last century. “Test Automation” articles that are just a big list of things that can go wrong with automation. I already read up on all the things that can go wrong long before I got to your particular article, oh and it’s because I’m a software tester for a living by the way. Even-more-dire warnings about underestimating the complexity of automation. I’m building software for money. I understand that adding more automation anywhere on a project results in a commensurate trade-off in comprehensibility and cost. That’s like, Systems Engineering 101. Never writing about Selenium. Come on. We all use that shit right? Every article should be a little bit about Selenium at this point. If you work on mobile substitute your GUI automation tool’s name for Selenium in the previous sentence. I don’t know what your tool is called because you never write about it. Mega-dire prognostications about how Continuous Delivery might still turn out to be a total fail. Amazon, Google, Facebook and god knows how many banks at this point — have all talked about how they see CD as their future. It’s a legitimate software life cycle practice like Waterfall or Agile. Get over it. Discussions about the definitions of words. Outside the world of academia, no single word is worth a blog post. Link to Wikipedia or an online dictionary if you want to refer someone to the specific definition of a word. Going back and forth about what specific words mean is evidence that the level of discussion has become too fine-grained to be useful. I’m here to make money so I only have time for useful discussion. Asking people not to say “test automation.” There is no scientific evidence that supports the idea that people would change their behavior or beliefs based on what words they use. However Goodhart’s Law indicates such measures will be gamed anyway as people begin to use different words to communicate familiar concepts. Asking people not to identify as “automated testers.” Listen, if I tell you that I identify as a 5th Level Gnomish Tester, I want you to honor my identity. I don’t care about your opinion any more at this point. Just respect my identity please, like I try to respect yours. Regarding automation as something that could take your job. Software testing is cross-disciplinary knowledge work and there is no known way to automate that sort of problem-solving. So relax. Questioning whether test automation is even necessary. Sophisticated automated test tools are the only effective means of assuring quality in complex networked systems.

By the way I’m not saying everyone in the whole world has the same perspective I do. Lots of people wouldn’t. But come on. Who is your audience?

Or rather — who do you WANT to be your audience? Me? Or some rando that just stumbled in here on a badly aimed I-feel-lucky search for the latest and greatest vendor solution?

I’m your audience. Not that rando. So talk to me from now on. I know my craft and I still need your help. That’s where the conversation should start from now on.