How Google Tests Software
by James A. Whittaker · first published 2012
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Hundreds of millions of lines of code distributed across billions of source files. Billions of build actions prompting millions of automated tests daily. Hundreds of thousands of browser instances daily. Apps released at a continuous pace. Ladies and gents, it doesn't get more difficult than this (at least not by much). About the Authors James is an Engineering Director at Google and has been responsible for testing Chrome, maps, and Google web apps. He used to work for Microsoft and was a professor before that. James is one of the best known names in testing. Jason is a Test Engineer a
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Maybe counterintuitively, most big tech companies have no dedicated QA & tester roles, rather, they encourage engineers to think about software quality while developing product. See the book "How Google tests software" (by James A. Whittaker, 2012) and the Pragmatic Engineer blog has a good post on how big tech does QA: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/qa-across-tech
on “1,145 pull requests per day” ↗…blazingly-fast products (Superhuman), stupid simple on-boarding (Stripe), infographics and actionable data (FiveThirtyEight), distributed collaborative development and CI (Github), testing bad-ass-ery ("How Google Tests Software"), and building the company culture we dream about. This role is exclusively onsite in Downtown Los Angeles. If you are interested please email hello (at) audacious (dot) io
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2018)” ↗…blazingly-fast products (Superhuman), stupid simple on-boarding (Stripe), infographics and actionable data (FiveThirtyEight), distributed collaborative development and CI (Github), testing bad-ass-ery ("How Google Tests Software"), and building the company culture we dream about. This role is exclusively onsite in Downtown Los Angeles. If you are interested please email hello (at) audacious (dot) io
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2018)” ↗…and it's been incredibly helpful to create a policy around when something requires manual testing, how much and what the manual testing should actually cover. It's covered reasonably well in the book "How google tests software". Having a policy around that means that there's no misunderstanding what gets automated and by whom, and what's left for exploring and by whom.
on “Ask HN: How does manual QA fit into your process?” ↗A Google search didn't return much. These are the ones which I know of: "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" by Douglas Edwards "How Google Tests Software" by James A. Whittaker Any others? Edit: Clarification: I meant those who were Google employees at some point as well as those who are working at Google now.
on “Ask HN: List of books published by Google employees?” ↗This review https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RGB0DI8V7KLN1/?AS... of the book "How Google Tests Software" (https://www.amazon.com/Google-Tests-Software-James-Whittaker...) gives a couple of hints. I don't own the book myself, I saw it on the desk of a QA engineer a while back.
on “Ask HN: How is HTML client-side testing done by big companies such as Google?” ↗He was an engineering director for a couple of years working on the dev/test tool chain and Google+. He's done a few books, including one he co-authored called How Google Tests Software, which is a fairly pragmatic discussion of large-scale testing practices at Google. (I'm not sure if this is still the case, but Nooglers used to read this book as a part of their orientation.)
on “Why I left Google (2012)” ↗…blazingly-fast products (Superhuman), stupid simple on-boarding (Stripe), infographics and actionable data (FiveThirtyEight), distributed collaborative development and CI (Github), testing bad-ass-ery ("How Google Tests Software"), and building the company culture we dream about. This role is exclusively onsite in Downtown Los Angeles. If you are interested please email hello (at) one-eighty (dot) co
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2018)” ↗