It’s hard to stay driven knowing how tough it was to land a dev job even with 2+ years of experience… and now I’m not even practicing like before.

Anyway, this is more of a rant and self-reflection than anything else.
Cheers. 🍻

The new role was supposed to be 50/50 manual and automation, but I’m mostly stuck doing manual QA again. It’s been tough to find motivation to work on my own projects, even though I know I should — especially since I barely code at work now.

I had one shot at a dev offer, but I blew it — rusty with interviews after focusing so much on QA. Eventually, I found another QA job. Figured, if I have to go back, might as well make more money, right? Yeah… about that.

Even with great feedback, my manager couldn’t find another dev position for me — only SDET/automation roles. So I hit the job market. Reality check: most companies still don’t see QA Automation as “real” software engineering experience.

When that project ended, I had two choices: move to another QA project or stay as a Full-Stack Developer. Easy call — I stayed, and spent another great year in development. But then… the project ended, and things went south again.

Eventually, the same frustrations came back. But I got lucky: in one project, I had the chance to create an automation framework from scratch — defining architecture, priorities, design — all the stuff I love. It reignited my passion for development.

Moving countries is a lot. And moving to Quebec meant adapting to French and a new culture. So going back to QA made sense — it was something I knew well. The issues I had with QA faded into the background... for a while.

Here’s the catch: when I got that offer, I was still officially a QA. My shift to Software Dev came later, during COVID. By the time the pandemic hit, I already had the offer — no clue if it’d stand. Luckily, it did, and in 2021, I moved to Canada as a QA.

Then life happened. I had a dream — moving to Canada. I joined that company partly because transfers between locations were easier. But fate stepped in: during a dev conference, I met a VP from a Canadian company who offered me a job with Visa sponsorship.

But here’s the thing — QA stopped appealing to me. I wanted to move toward Software Engineering. From 2018 to 2021, I worked at a company where, thanks to an amazing manager, I transitioned from Quality Specialist to Software Developer. Loved it.

I’ve always believed automation should be treated as a software development project — just focused on QA — not “just scripting” like so many see it. So yeah, I went from Manual QA → QA Automation → Automation Architect/Expert.

Around the same time, I was doing my bachelor’s degree, and I started applying what I learned in Software Development to QA Automation. My focus became Automation Architecture, best practices, maintainability, and scalability.