alt Hacker NewsThe best places I've worked were places where QA reported up an entirely different leadership chain than engineering, and where they got their own VP with equal power as the engineering VP, and their own seat at the same decision-making table.
When QA is subordinate to engineering, they become a mere rubber stamp.
A good question to ask when joining a software company is "Does QA have the power to block releases over the objection of engineering?" I have found companies who can answer YES to this put out much better products.
Microsoft was like that in many orgs.
There was a real problem of QA becoming bloated and filled with less than qualified people. The really good engineered would transfers out to SDE orgs and so the senior ranks of QA tended to be either true believers are people who weren't good enough to move to SDE orgs.
Especially with QA outside of Microsoft at the time paying so much less, it was a wise long term career move to move to SDE as soon as possible.