While I previously made some comparisons between Amazon.com and
Microsoft's different approaches to software testing in Building
Services: The Death of Big Up-Front Testing (BUFT)?, I think now
would be a fun and interesting time to do a deeper dive on this.
image Before I joined Amazon.com in 2005 as an SDET, while I was
interviewing for said position in fact, I was told about the “QA
situation” there.  I was told “it’s improving”.  Improving from
what? you may ask.  Well, the perception was QA got short shrift
with the 1 to 10 (or 1 to 7, or 0 to infinity) Test to Dev ratio
held up as proof.   imageImproving, eh?”  Did I buy that?  Not
necessarily, but I  quickly came to a realization: I have
previously used Amazon.com a lot, and had rarely noticed any
problems…it seemed to work.  Even so, after I joined the QA Team
there, it was still a frequent source of grousing that Amazon as
a whole did not value the Quality Assurance profession,
otherwise they would surely fund more of us.  I later shared
this grouse