I guess I've been in the software testing profession long enough to hear a new generation of tech managers voicing some of the same discredited notions I thought had been put to rest years ago. I guess there is a never-ending need to educate people about our profession.
Some background: I work for a big company in Seattle which divides the testers into two groups--SDETs (software development engineers in test) and manual testers.
A manager mused during a team meeting that the company was perhaps moving in the direction of employing only SDETs and automating most of the testing of the website and mobile apps. After the meeting one of the manual test leads confessed that he had been seriously worrying about job security because of this sentiment.
But wait, I told him. Was our test automation capable of discovering the error landing page showing in a sidebar iframe on the company's website that my wife discovered this week? I don't think so.
I told him to relax. It's impossible to replace manual testing. 100% test coverage of user interfaces via automation is still and will continue to be impossible. Prove me wrong.
