Hey, Luca & Nicola here — welcome to a new edition of The Hybrid Hacker! Together we write original articles about engineering management, career growth, and productivity, to more than 160K friends!
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Every week I get tons of questions from readers about topics I should cover in the newsletter. Some of the most frequent ones are about QA — in fact, I believe I receive at least one per week.
Are these questions about specific niche optimizations or tactics? No, they are about basic things: who should do QA, what good QA looks like, or whether you need QA at all.
You might think these get asked by fresh managers or young founders — but no, they often get asked by folks who have 10+ years of experience, who are not afraid to admit they are just… confused.
There is little consensus around the role of QA in modern engineering teams, which is the reason why I am writing this piece.
So, this is a full guide (3500+ words!) that explores everything I know about QA: principles, practices, tradeoffs, team organization, technology, and tools.
Here is what we are going to cover:
🧠 QA is a mindset — the difference between QA and testing.
🏆 The value of testing — figuring out the ROI of your tests.
💸 E2E testing is expensive — a basic premise that you can’t ignore.
⬅️ Shifting quality left — getting the foundations right before you get to QA.
🛣️ QA vs product journey — how QA changes at different stages, from zero to hero.
💪 QA in your team — who should do QA? And how? Handling tech and duties.
💼 Using external services — can you delegate QA?
Let’s dive in!