I step into my first day as a Software QA tester, What advice or tips would you recommend for someone starting out?

Regardless, my point is not invalidated. Your assertion that use of automation is inherently better than manual testing is false, as is your assertion that automation finds more bugs more quickly.

It is not necessarily true, but it is nearly always true. Automated tests run faster than humans ever could. Automated tests can be run endlessly, they do not get bored and they will not mess up a critical step the 17th time they ran because they lost focus.

Humans will.

Computers are really poor at qualitative assessment.

UX design skills and testing skills do not often go hand in hand either.

In practice most people think they are experts in UX design but it's a rare skill.

it won't tell you that you've built the wrong thing or selected the wrong solution for your problem

If your tester is the one telling you that you built entirely the wrong product then you have real problems, and not the kind of problems that a tester can help solve.

Your assertion that automation will end up catching more bugs more quickly is a naive notion that holds true only for the narrowest views of testing. If you are comparing a human running pre-determined checks versus a computer running the same checks, then your statement might hold water. That's not testing. That's checking.

You seem to be somewhat confused about what actually constitutes testing. Either way, I'm not interested in debating what's in the dictionary. It doesn't change reality.

I do know that testers who build harnesses and write automated scripts end up uncovering more bugs and quicker than those who write and follow manual scripts and like to argue about UX design.

Be wary of falling into the trap of thinking that all testing can be automated. It cannot.

Why are you under the impression that I wrote "all testing can be automated"?

You don't seem to be very detail oriented.

/r/softwaretesting Thread Parent