When I started my software testing career in 1996, training wasn't offered... Well, not for manual testers.

Each software tester went through their own baptism by fire. Either you learned on your own how to quickly examine a product, find bugs and carefully report bugs, or you washed out of the field.

• Every bug you found was a mark in your favor.
• Every unreported bug that made its way into production was a black mark that counted against you.

There was no time for philosophy. Your job was to execute, line by line, the pre-written stack of regression tests, exactly as written. If you were senior enough, they would allow you to come up with some tests, adding them to the regression test suite. If not, your job was to follow the script word-for-word, signing your name to record your completion of each step. Not much time was given to gain domain knowledge on the product, explore the product, or review the initial requirements that had been scoped out. There were deadlines to meet.

It wouldn't be until I studied software engineering in grad school that I would hear of Dr. Cem Kaner, now known for his Black Box Software Testing Course with its Foundations in Software Testing, and his books such as Testing Computer Software (1999). It wouldn't be until then that I heard about Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory's Agile Testing: A Practical Guide For Testers and Agile Teams (2009). These books were never discussed on the job. With software testing, there was no time for philosophy.

What is it like now, working as a manual tester, here in Boston?

If you are a new manual tester starting out today, what training do you get? Do you hear about different software testing techniques, how to examine a site according to the specs, or are you still fending for yourself? If you are a manager, how do you get your manual testing team up to speed?

Share your experience about life in the trenches on the Ministry of Testing - Boston discussion board!

I'm sorry I haven't been able to run any events personally for the past few months. But there is a good reason for that...

... As you can see, I have certainly had my hands full!

Thank you so much, Brianne Cordima & Bria Grangard of SmartBear.com, Eran Kinsbruner of Perfecto, Jason Koelewyn of Mass Mutual, Michael Durrant of Sallie Mae, and now Meredith Courtney of Riverbed Technology, for running some awesome events for our group!

Want to share your experience in person, speaking at a Meetup, but don't know where to start? Contact Meredith Courtney, who is looking for people who are brave enough to come up with ten minute lightning talks.

By the way, my company, Threat Stack, in Downtown Crossing in Boston, is looking for a Test Engineering Manager to provide a strategic vision for a seven person team of test engineers. We are currently testing server vulnerabilities, spinning up AWS environments using Chef, API testing in Ruby, and UI testing in Capybara. Contact me for details!

-T.J. Maher, @tjmaher1 on Twitter

tjmaher.com