Microsoft laying of testers on the Windows Core team

[dang]

According to the Seattle Times,
Microsoft lays off 62 testers

Looks like Brian Valentine (Senior VP of the Windows Group) has been stressing to the team to move as much work overseas to cut costs.

Wow, I really think this is the wrong group to be doing something like this. To give MS some credit, Windows XP is very stable. I have never had a bluescreen. Any problems I do get are usually caused by an application, not by the OS. IE is not part of the windows core group, so dont go there.

I know what type of testing gets done by outsourcing. It's not pretty. It's "dumb" testing. I'd think that the next version of the OS that has so much of it's testing done overseas is going to end up being fairly unstable.

They claim that they are not laying of the people due to outsourcing, but because of the increased level of automated testing their are doing. Again, if that's true, it's a bad idea. Automation is great up to an extent. Replacing 60+ people because of automation blows my mind. Automation is always an enhancement to manual testing. It releaves the type of testing that is redundant, is great for areas that dont change anymore, or help setup for manual testing (among some others.) It never completely replaces manual testing. The problem w/ relying on automated testing is you miss out on the weird ways of testing that only a human mind can come up with while following a test script. You can find some serious bugs just by accidentally not following a step correctly.

What do you all think? I think this is a huge mistake (of course, I think going overseas for any type of work is a huge mistake anyways, just look at the type of tech support they provide..)

[Ioman]

I think this is a terrible mistake as well. So many people and companies rely on the Windows OS that Microsoft really cannot afford to make mistakes with it. It will cost companies money and give them a reason to switch somewhere else.

[Ioman]

Write a talk back Dan!!

Or send that to Rob Enderle to write on.

[ECA]

This is reduckulas...Yes I spelled it right.

For all the STUFF MS has involved with IE and Windows, trying to TEACH a new team to work with it...automated of NOT...

Whats AUTOMATED, how to CRACK IE?? Nothing new there.
Someone Blow in gates ear, and clean out the cobwebs...