The chaps dig into another Keithism to see where it takes them.

Keith Klain published a blog post that drew a line in the sand for testers. His conclusion is blunt: there's a specific type of testing work that too many in our industry believe is our raison d'etre, while the market is rapidly reassessing its value (and not in a good way!).

Chapters

00:00 - Intro

01:12 - Welcome (may contain traces of Premier League banter)

03:00 - Who is Keith Klain and why should you listen to him?

06:30 - Checking vs testing: what's the actual difference?

12:00 - Keith's warning: AI is coming for the…

12:56 - The CEO has one job…

14:04 - …and they have two ways to do it

15:31 - If your value isn’t the amount of tests you’ve executed, what is it?

19:42 - Richard's updated AiT principle: shared understanding over assumed understanding

23:53 - Shift left is more than "test the requirement first"

27:18 - The ways your perceived value is constantly moving.

31:57 - Maaike's stance: what if you refuse to use AI entirely?

34:09 - Too big to fail? What AI investment really means for the industry

39:53 - The skill no one taught testers that now matters most

42:54 - "Become the insufferable AI person" and other survival tactics

45:22 - Keith's call to action

47:09 - Why no one at Test Coast said "risk" when asked why they test

51:01 - AI summaries as input to other AI: the risk nobody designed for

54:00 - How one bad step ruins everything

55:27 - Statistics, Hugging Face, and the skills testers need to learn next

57:43 - There’s more than one way to “be technical”

59:54 - A rallying cry from Rich to the testing community

01:04:00 - Forward-deployed engineers: just a QE by another name?

Links to stuff we mentioned during the pod:

• 03:00 - Keith Klain
  • Keith's blog Quality Remarks
  • The blog post that triggered this episode: "Checking isn't testing. Soon it won't be employment either."
  • Keith's LinkedIn
• 19:33 - ELT stands for Executive Leadership Team aka The C-Suite. The folks who have job titles like Chief Executive Office (CEO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), etc.
• 20:00 - You can find Richard's AiT Principles here
  • And you can listen to his new ideas about those principles in Episode 33 “Six Principles of Automation in Testing: Still Relevant in 2026?”
    • We’ll add a link to the talk as soon as we can
• 27:18 - Vernon's Credibility Playbook
• 27:18 - Vernon’s upcoming Agile Testing Days talk “If Testers Had a Dragon’s Den Pitch, Would Anyone Invest?”
  • DM Vern if you’re interested in going as he might be able to help… 😉
• 32:00 - Maaike's LinkedIn post Vernon referred to during the episode
  • You should subscribe to her blog too
• 34:14 - John Cutler
  • John’s newsletter
  • John’s LinkedIn
• 37:26 - Simon Wardley
  • If you're not following Simon Wardley, please follow Simon Wardley! His work on Wardley Maps and situational awareness in strategy is essential reading
  • Simon's LinkedIn
• 46:38 - Rapid Software Testing (RST) is the methodology created by James Bach and Michael Bolton.
• 47:12 - The Test Coast Conference where Richard delivered a keynote
• 49:44 - Vidya Ranganathan’s fanbloodytastic post about the different kinds of risks we should be considering
  • Vidya's LinkedIn
• 56:48 - Hugging Face
  • The Hugging Face website
  • The Wikipedia page