Answers from testers who’ve been there.
Open threads and solved fixes from software testers, SDETs and automation engineers. Search by problem, filter by tool, or jump straight to what's solved.
26 threads
Playwright tests pass locally but fail in CI — where do I start?
Every single Playwright spec is green on my laptop. Push to GitHub Actions and 3–4 of them fail on the first run, then usually pass on retry. The failures aren't consistent — somet…
How do you actually debug intermittent Playwright flakes?
We have one Playwright spec that fails ~1 in 15 runs. The rest of the suite is rock solid. I've read the trace viewer docs but every time I open the trace of a flaky run, it looks…
India: moving from services QA to a product / remote QA role — how?
5 years in a services company in Pune, mostly manual + some Selenium. Comp is fine but the work is Jira-ticket-shaped and I want to grow. Trying to move into a product company or a…
Selenium vs Playwright for a complete beginner in 2026?
I'm switching from manual QA into automation. I've been doing manual testing for 3 years and I know Java a bit, some Python. Every tutorial I open is either "Selenium is the indust…
Who owns accessibility testing — devs, QA, or a specialist?
We just failed a WCAG 2.2 audit. Leadership response: "QA should have caught this". Devs response: "we didn't have a11y requirements in the ticket". Design says "we followed the de…
Should we switch our team from Selenium to Playwright?
~1400 Selenium (Java + TestNG) UI tests, 4 QA engineers, 3 years of investment. Suite takes 90 minutes on Selenium Grid and flakes at ~4% per run. Leadership just asked "should we…
Roadmap from manual QA to Playwright automation in 90 days?
4 years of manual QA (mostly exploratory, some API testing in Postman). Zero coding experience beyond copy-pasting snippets. My company will let me shift to automation if I can dem…
Are test retries an anti-pattern or a pragmatic fix?
Half my team says "retries hide real bugs, never enable them". The other half says "if we don't retry, one flaky test blocks every PR". We're on Playwright with `retries: 2` in CI.…
Which QA metrics actually help vs which ones become theatre?
New VP asked for a "QA metrics dashboard". I've been in QA long enough to know that whatever I put on that dashboard is what my team will optimize for — for better or worse. Test c…
Is the testing pyramid still valid in 2026?
Everyone I follow on LinkedIn is either "the pyramid is dead, use the honeycomb" or "the pyramid was always right, you were just doing it wrong". For a modern SaaS with microservic…
Cypress → Playwright migration — what do you regret?
About to start migrating ~700 Cypress specs to Playwright. Read all the marketing "why Playwright > Cypress" posts. Now I want the other side. For teams that've completed this migr…
Playwright file upload works locally, times out in CI
Test uploads a 2MB PDF via `setInputFiles`. Locally: 100% pass. GitHub Actions: fails ~30% with "Timed out waiting for upload response". The file is checked into the repo under `fi…
What's a locator strategy that actually stays stable across UI refactors?
Devs refactor our React app roughly monthly. Every refactor breaks 20–30 tests because someone renamed a class or restructured a component. We've tried: - CSS selectors → break on…
How do you isolate test data when running tests in parallel?
Cranked Playwright workers from 4 to 16. Suite time dropped 60%, but flake rate went from 0.5% to 6%. Every flake is "user already exists" or "record not found". Shared DB, shared…
What are companies actually asking in SDET interviews right now?
Interviewing for SDET roles at 4 companies (2 fintech, 1 SaaS, 1 e-commerce). Prep resources online feel dated — half of them are still asking about Selenium XPath tricks. For folk…
When should we NOT automate a test in our regression suite?
Leadership pushed a "100% automated regression" mandate. I've been in QA long enough to know that's usually a bad idea, but I need a concrete list of "don't automate this" cases to…
Can AI actually replace QA automation engineers?
Every vendor is pitching "AI-powered testing". My CTO forwarded me one of these pitches with the note "why do we need a QA team then?". I want to give an honest answer — where AI a…
QA culture red flags to look for BEFORE accepting a job offer?
Two offers on the table. On paper both are similar (comp, title, stack). I want to avoid walking into a "QA is a testing department that runs regression 2 weeks before release" sit…
How does Playwright auto-waiting actually work?
Coming from Selenium where I sprinkled WebDriverWait everywhere. Playwright claims to auto-wait — what exactly does it wait for before each action?
Playwright storageState expires mid-suite on long runs
Auth token has a 30 min TTL. Suite runs ~45 min. Half the specs fail on redirect to login. Refreshing storageState in globalSetup only helps for the first shard. What is your patte…
GitHub Actions matrix for Playwright shards - reports do not merge
Each shard produces its own HTML report but I only get 1 in the final artifact. I want a single merged HTML report from all shards. Using playwright@1.45, actions/upload-artifact@v…
How do I run tests in parallel with GitHub Actions matrix?
Suite takes 40 min. Want to shard across 4 runners. What does the workflow look like?
Playwright: when should I run headed instead of headless?
CI is headless by default. Locally I keep flipping. Is there a rule for when headed matters?
Cypress vs Playwright — the honest 2026 take?
Existing Cypress suite, ~800 specs. Worth migrating or double down?
Playwright trace viewer keeps timing out on CI runs
We run Playwright 1.45 in GitHub Actions with 6 shards. Locally the trace viewer opens fine. On CI, uploading trace.zip fails with a 15 min timeout on ~20% of runs. Anyone hitting…
Playwright vs Selenium in 2026 — which should a new team pick?
We are greenfield, TypeScript stack, ~20 engineers. Everyone keeps asking "why not Selenium, it is battle tested." What is the honest 2026 answer?