I am pretty decent developer but ended up in Quality assurance :/ it hurts me when people are having awesome discussions about coding amd I am performing dumb tests.

@scrupulous definitely. don't lose time with a job you don't like

I moved up from testing (qa) into a full blown software engineering position.. It's not impossible.

code to your heart's content and don't give no shit to no one, you feel me fam?

You can code tests to run automatically based on inputs provided in an excel sheet. Expand this into a full blown automated QA infrastructure which every QA can use. By now, you are practically a software developer yourself !

Be a "Software Engineer in Test". For me, manual testing is the biggest waste of money on most projects (aside from PMs 😉). If you can't rerun the test for zero cost, then what good is it?

Look into Cucumber/Gherkin. Also tools like Selenium (or other tools that fit your needs). Automate everything and be your company's hero!

I feel your pain! Don't settle for that shit! I can't believe companies still value dumb manual tests over automation and exploratory testing. It sounds like your company is about to loose one really fantastic developer ;)

That's not such a bad space, you can make master improvements on their code through suggestions and prove your worth. If your heart lies with code, do some dev after hours! QA is invaluable to a project, and this is coming from a dev without a QA department. We love you!