In an earlier installment, I wrote, I don't quite understand why, but most programmers don't like testing. I also hinted that I wasn't completely clueless about the reason. It's really quite simple. Their employers tell them that writing software is more important than testing it. Sure, at the all-hands meetings, some VP will get up there and drone on about how we're all part of the team, and everybody is important in their own way. Comes payday, however, the message is loud and clear.
I just took a quick look on glassdor.com for engineers' salaries at EMC (a Fortune-500 technology company, who also happens to be a former employer of mine). I see three job titles for QA or Test Engineers, ranging from $53k to $93k. I see five job titles for Software Engineers, ranging from $58k to $165k. Similarly for Google (New York). Software Engineers average $104k, Software Engineers in Test average $89k. Not a very scientific survey, but the results jive with similar investigations I've done over the years.
This is stupid. What it does is selects for the poorest engineers doing testing. Which means testing doesn't get done very well. Which inevitably comes back to bite you in the butt when you ship buggy software that blows up at a customer site.