alt Hacker NewsImportant to note MS used to have 2 types of QA:
1. SDETs (software design engineer in test) - same pay scale and hiring requirements as SDEs, they did mostly automated testing and wrote automated test harnesses.
2. STEs (software test engineer) - lower pay scale, manual testing, often vendors. MS used to have lots of STE ftes but they fired most of them in the early 2000s (before I joined in 2007).
An ideal ratio of SDETs to SDEs was 1 to 1, but then SDET teams would have STE vendors doing grunt work.
Having STEs as full time employees benefited MS greatly. They knew products from the end user and UI/UX perspective inside and out in ways even the SDETs didn't.
UI/UX quality in MS products dipped noticeably after the STE role was eliminated.