Dealing with a slow growth curve in improving automation skills and how that affects ones' career?

Question

I have been working as a QA since almost ~5 years now. While I am one of the senior QA in my team, and have brought in other quality aspects to the table, my automation skills are still "beginner". As my jobs have always been manual, with manual : automation ratio being 70:30 or best 60:40, I haven't in all these years been able to improve my skills. more specifically: I seem to take quite more time to complete an automation task / user story as compared to my other QA team mates. It takes me time to understand code. I can do it myself, but I need time, more time than my teammates need. I am not happy about my debugging skills, though I am actively trying to learn from colleagues and myself. Also, I feel like I am not quite there when it comes to adding value to the automation framework. My issues and concerns: I feel like I am very slow to grow in this area, could that possibly cause me to get fired? Would it be a better idea to focus on other areas since I seem to be bad at this one?

Answer 1

Not necessarily! Have ypu considered taking any extra curricular courses to help ypu improve your QA skills? You also need to consider that it is not because the others are better that you are not good. Maybe you just need to focus more on acquiring more skills. Also, how happy are you at your current job?

I hope yhis helps. Feel free to send me a message if you have any other dou ts that I might be able to assist you.