I became a tester in 2008 when I was 23.

I was only 5 years after I finished my school. From which I were 3 years in a German IT apprenticeship (FiSi).
Therefor I had not much to spent in other industries. I was only 2 years a service technician, finally for mobile network base station.

I was not happy with that and saw a job offer “learning on the job” for testers. They were looking for fresh, IT-interested people and I was the right candidate. It became quickly my profession.

So here I am now with 15 years and going on. 
I changed multiple times the company, but I stay with the craft.

I started my career way off the IT path. My first job was as a general farmhand on a milk farm here in Croatia (I have a master's degree in animal husbandry, so ...yeah ). The team was epic, but the leadership was horrible and abusive towards workers. At one point, they told the tractor operators that they didn't have to come to work if they weren't willing to work 14-18 hour shifts.

I was offered the opportunity to enroll in a teacher education course, and since I was fed up with the mistreatment, I decided to jump right into it. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in teaching/education, I began my teaching career. I worked as a biology/chemistry teacher and also substituted for history, geography, and computer science at a private gymnasium. After about four years, I had had enough of dealing with the parents of the students (the kids were epic, albeit a bit spoiled), and them trying to tell us how to do our jobs. So, I decided to leave the teaching sector. It's important to note that while I was working at the school, I participated in an EU project with the goal of creating a four-year ICT curriculum for high schools.

I came across a job ad for a marketing assistant on a Croatian job board and was surprised to see that they required no previous experience, as the company would provide full training. I applied for the job and was called in for an interview. During the interview, the owner of the company informed me that there was no way they’ll give me a marketing position, but they did have a spot available for a software tester. I accepted the job offer, even though I had no idea what was expected of me to do :D

Fast-forward five years, and I'm still in software testing, and I think I'll stay here until retirement I fell in love with this job. 

Wow, that’s quite a long time in testing. What has made you stick with it for so long? 

That’s a great background leading up to the industry  What is it that makes you love testing? Would you recommend it to anyone or would you say it needs a certain type of person? 

Basically I wanted to get out of customer support and asked for an internal transfer in my first company, it took a while but I got moved to the QA department where the work was more meaningul full and it was more peaceful, as I didn’t have angry customers cussing at me over the phone 

I have more than 10 years of experience in aviation industry, from check-in counter, to organizing multiple teams on the apron, to aircraft maintenance helper, to country manager. Never changed a tire on a car but changed plenty on Airbus aircrafts. About 3 years ago my company lost the public tender/auction and I found myself unemployed. The new company offered the same position but I turned it down cause I have two kids now, and all that traveling would make me an absent father. So for about half a year, every night after kids went to bed I was learning, coding, getting ready for interviews, hoping to land a QA job, mostly oriented on automation. After months of seeing daily emails that started with "we are sorry...", I finally had a chance at an interview. I was eating leetcode exercises daily so when they asked to code live, I was not that bad.

I've already changed companies because recruiters were insisting a lot. So salary went up quickly. 

As for why QA? For me, I like to break things and coding is like a puzzle, I like the dopamine kickin in when it's all green.

I don't like to fix things, cause that would make me a dev. So I leave that to them.

I have a very well long term defined plan and I am disciplined, and that's all you need to succeed. Maybe also a sprinkle of luck. 

What’s there not to love ?! you get paid to break things...It’s like every kid’s dream Besides that I love the fact that there is always something new to learn, to discover. I also love that feeling when you find some bug no-one thought of or the bug that is caused only by specific sequence of actions. I mean, I an curious person by nature and I love learning and that is the main thing that keeps me ‘sucked in’. 

  Would you recommend it to anyone or would you say it needs a certain type of person? 

I am a firm believer that you have to try as much things in possible in life, so I would suggest it to anyone. There is no harm in trying, if one fails, at least the person will know for sure that it’s not for them. However, if you are looking to make a career in testing, I feel that you have to be curious, courteous, willing to learn (philomath)…, and most of all - you need have really strong ‘inner child’ that will make you go: “uuuuu, what does this button do”
 

I like the job … the basic skills are quite universal, can be applied nearly everywhere and the projects and companies are very different. Therefore if i get bored in one project I change the project/company.

The job relies heavily on the people, testing is a social task. Therefore is changing the people a very big factor when I want something new.
There is also very different technology out there, which is another factor to give variety

Like I worte: I changed multiple times the company but stay with the job. It became my profession.

It became my profession. It is how I want to contribute to society. :-)

At around age 14, we wanted to playfully wind the school IT teacher up, adding Solitaire to all the kids computers which was blocked at the time & find neat hidden ways to get to the games through Office apps etc. It was all in good spirits & keeping him puzzled as to how we managed to do it this time was quite the fun challenge :cD

I fell in love with the RAD side in Delphi & VB/VBA knocking up screens in free time & based my general school IT exam work on such an app. A little later I saved for components & learnt to build a PC (with lots of learning & breakages!) at home with my best mate.

I love to help people and found all throughout first jobs, ways to automate & make lives easier or processes from pen + paper onto computer at workplaces before landing a trainee developer dream job.

After 10-15 years of programming I moved country to live in Finland. My limited programming languages known + Microsoft background in a country which used open source tools everywhere made it difficult to find a job, so I applied for a test manager position thinking (rather short-sightedly in hindsight) “well I can write highly technical programming specification docs & already work as a consultant, these MTP docs look pretty straightforward… I could do that”. It was a struggle not knowing the world of testing, but I’ve found the best of both dev+test worlds now in test automation & decided to happily stay here in this area. :c)

That’s a great background I definitely respect the grind after work and the distinction between tester and dev

You taught a native English speaker a new word today 

I was playing World of Warcraft back in 2008 and wanted to show off my DPS (damage per second) to my friends, so I started looking for a feature that would allow me to do so. I haven't found any (spoiler alert: there were plenty), so I have started looking into how to create one and stumbled upon an article mentioning that players can create their own addons using the programming language Lua. Since I wasn't that good at googling, I went to a local bookstore to buy a book on game scripting in Lua and started learning that way. Even though it was a bumpy ride, after some time I was able to create my own DPS meter. Then I realized that I wasn't the first one trying to create it, and in fact, there were plenty of DPS meters available on the internet. Nevertheless, I fairly enjoyed building new stuff, which is why, even after 15 years, I am still doing it. :)

Man, you must have been pretty young then  2008 is exactly when I played (WotLK). I definitely used DPS meters, but I don’t remember what they were called 

@s.matlock , Yup, I was 10 back then meaning that I had much more free time to spent by playing and trying to code. WotLK was a great expansion and I do enjoy playing it once again, even 15 years later. Happy to report, that now I am able to make that DPS meter addon working.