How I become a QA automation engineer from a manual tester

I graduated from a technology university major in Network Department.

Back in the day when I was a student, I did not enjoy coding at all. All the tasks in the subjects at university related to coding usually get done by my friends. The only time I did it by myself was when doing the final project before graduation.

So right after graduation, when there is a job opportunity about being a manual tester I took it as long as I could earn some money and don't have to code.

But after a few years, I soon realized that doing manual test is boring.

I decided to take some tutorials about development (Java at that time) and still found it difficult as hell :)).

A friend told me I should try to use Selenium for automating some UI tests.

After gave it a try, seeing the magic things Selenium could do, I decided to take a little deeper in the work and finally got into the job for automation.

1.API automation test:

The job I first got into was to test API of an e-wallet product using JMeter.

You can check out about Jmeter in here
Getting started automation with JMeter is easy. Jmeter has the GUI control (despite it's not fancy at all) but you just need some basic instruction and the job test is ready to go.
You can also integrate Jmeter with CI/CD flow, and tool like Jenkins.

Jmeter supports both functional test and performance test. So if you're familar with it, you got some bonus points to your resume.

2.UI automation test:
In the first job about automation, I used RobotFramework for UI automation test.
Robotframework using keyword driven testing so again it's easier for tester who is not strong at coding to work with.
You can check out more about Robotframework in here

But to be honest, I did not like about robotframework at all. As the project growing, it's really hard to keep track of and maintaining. When I need to find what's causing the failed, it's really hard.

3.Confident enough to code:

After leave the first job for automation, I joined a startup company about finance trading.

At this job, I used Serenity for automation test in both API and UI test using Java.

While getting used to Serenity and page-object model, screenplay pattern, I started to loving Serenity, loving how to code.

You can checkout about my serenity tutorial in here serenity-guide

And now while still trying to get things right, I am confident enough to start learning new things everyday.

I think the most important part of learning how to code is that you're not afraid of learning new things. You get used to the learning part.

Thank you for reading this.

Peace!!!