Referring more to smaller places like my own - few hundred employees with ~20 person IT team (~10 developers).
I read enough about testing that it seems industry standard. But whenever I talk to coworkers and my EM, it’s generally, “That would be nice, but it’s not practical for our size and the business would allow us to slow down for that.” We have ~5 manual testers, so things aren’t considered “untested”, but issues still frequently slip through. It’s insurance software so at least bugs aren’t killing people, but our quality still freaks me out a bit.
I try to write automated tests for my own code, since it seems valuable, but I avoid it whenever it’s not straightforward. I’ve read books on testing, but they generally feel like either toy examples or far more effort than my company would be willing to spend. Over time I’m wondering if I’m just overly idealistic, and automated testing is more of a FAANG / bigger company thing.
Here’s my random collection of thoughts on the subject.
I have no idea how common it is in general. Seems like some devs build tests while others don’t. This varies plenty on a team level as well as organization wide. I’ve observed this at small to very large companies, though not FAANG where I generally hope and expect that tests are a stronger standard.
I will say that test are consistently and heavily used in every large, open source project that I’ve reviewed. At some point, I think quality test cases become a requirement.
Here’s the big thing. Building automated tests is almost always a wise investment, regardless of the size of the org. Manual testing is dramatically more expensive and less effective than running unit and integration tests. I’ve never written unit tests and not found issues.
More importantly, writing unit tests forces you to write code that can be tested. This is important. IMO, code that can be tested is 1) structured differently and 2) almost always better.
Unit tests protect you from your own mistakes. Frequently. Integration tests protect you from other people. E.g when your code depends on an api and that api unexpectedly introduces a breaking change.
Everybody likes having quality tests. Nobody likes writing tests.
Quality tests are basically a strict requirement for fully automating ci/cd to production. Sure, you can skip tests and automate prior deploys, but I certainly don’t recommend it. I would expect people to be fired for doing this.
Chasing 100% test coverage is a fools game. Think about your code, what matters, and what doesn’t. Test the parts that add value and skip the rest. This is highly related to how writing unit tests change your code.
Building front end tests is inherently hard. It’s practically impossible to fully test front end code. Not even close.
Personally, I like the idea of skipping tests when you’re building a POC. Before the POC is done, you may not know if your solution is viable or what needs to be tested. The POC helps you understand. Builds tests for MVP and further iterations.
Quality ci/cd tests are complimented by quality observability, which is a large and independent topic.
/ ramblings of a tired mind
