When you\u2019re ready to automate your manual tests, you might naturally think you need to hire someone with a technical skill set who specializes in automating end-to-end tests. That is, you might think you need to hire a QA engineer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not an unreasonable assumption. But for many startups, it\u2019s the wrong thing to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
QA engineers are quite expensive (in more ways than one), bottleneck release processes with their complex tooling, and can present other types of business risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For most startups, velocity and efficient spending are top priorities. So the drawbacks of hiring would be considerably painful if you didn\u2019t have any other options for automating your test cases. But you do have alternatives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this piece, we\u2019ll break down the reasons why hiring a QA engineer might be a bad fit for your startup. And we\u2019ll describe a compelling alternative to hiring that comes with all of its big upsides, with none of its big downsides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n