Language: English (US)

A Step-by-Step Guide to Starting a Successful Career as a Software Development Engineer in Test

https://www.udemy.com/course/how-to-become-a-successful-sdet-hands-on/

This course is a no-BS, no-fluff playbook to becoming a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET).

These are the principles and ideas that allowed me to go from a junior tester making a little above the minimum wage to a Senior SDET in less than 2 years and later on to a Software Engineer at a FAANG company.

The standard advice out there is that if you want to be become an SDET, you need to learn "automation". This is bad advice that will likely set you up for failure on SDET-level interviews at any respectable company.

Even if you become familiar with some testing framework (all you can hope for from a single course and without much hands-on experience), once you start interviewing, you will discover that you will be asked:

- to solve coding exercises to show your grasp of algorithms and data structures

- object-oriented programming principles

- to answer behavioral questions like "how would you act in a certain situation?"

An "automation" course will not prepare you for any of these questions.

You need to invest some time to build your foundation, so that it'll be easy for you to learn ANY testing framework quickly.

With all the recent layoffs, there is a large number of experienced SDETs competing for the same positions as you. Can you compete with them? Yes, but not without a solid foundation in problem-solving abilities, object-oriented programming, ability to self-learn and interviewing skills.

This course starts by teaching you the big picture and fundamental concepts, then proceeds to let you experience the entire SDET workflow in a game-like fashion and ends in giving you the tools to execute, stand out in the job market and create a winning resume.

We will also work through a simple coding exercise, similar to what you will get on an interview,  learn how to approach it, ask clarifying questions, solve it and even include automated tests (using Python).

Disclaimer: 

Note that this is not an in-depth test automation course. You can take introductory test automation courses for free or almost free on LinkedIn Learning or Udemy these days. Doing so, as I mentioned above,  is unlikely to adequately prepare you for SDET-level interviews or give you the confidence to start contributing to test automation efforts at work.

I believe it's important to start with the big picture before jumping into languages and frameworks.

You can also watch the preview videos where I expand on this topic.