While browsing LinkedIn (which I rarely do ), I came across a LinkedIn profile where someone was proudly flaunting that they had identified 10,000+ defects as a manual tester. Yes, you read that right, 10000 bugs found and celebrated like a badge of achievement. And honestly, it left me like, seriously you want to flaunt that you found 10k defects.
Let me be clear: this is not what QA is about.
[Read here if you do not know what are the important traits of a good QA , additionally Read here, how can Questioning prevent defects to slip into production]
If your proudest achievement as a QA is finding thousands of bugs, something is seriously wrong. Do you think, QA is a number game, the one who finds highest number of defects is more successful? Do you think, you helped your team by finding the defects ?
Well, please think twice. All of the above are not the expectations from a QA. It’s not about quantity of defects you encountered, rather it should be about how many defects you prevented.
If you’ve found 10k defects, that’s not a victory, it’s a red flag.
It tells that something is broken in the process—either the requirements were unclear, communication broke down, testing scope was not identified precisely, lack of automated test coverage, or testing was pushed to the last minute. Catching bugs at the last moment of SDLC should never be a reason to be proud.
What’s the real win?
The real win is working closely with developers and product teams to prevent those defects from ever making it to your list.
When QA becomes more about counting bugs than ensuring a smooth, high-quality product from the start, you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Instead of celebrating, we should be asking:
Why were there so many bugs in the first place? What could have been done earlier to stop them from happening?
QA’s value is in making the product better and stronger by preventing issues, not by finding them.
So if you’re proud about all the bugs you’ve found, take a step back and think about what could have been done differently. The goal is to build quality into the process—not to counting defects.
Let’s stop celebrating the number of bugs we find. Let’s focus on preventing them from happening at all. That’s what QA should really be about.
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