Test vs Development

With placement session  going smoothly(with few bumps, here and there, of course :)) in my college, I found this doubt prevailing in minds of many of my friends that whether to prefer Test or Development jobs? Which is better? Is switching possible later? What are scopes in both profiles further in life? I'll try to discuss few of these issues here based on what I observed in past few months.

• Which is better: A Test job or a Development job?

Most of the people think that Test Profile Job is some second tier job given to those people who couldn't manage a development job which is not correct at all. Recruiting company never thinks like that. Most of the companies coming at campus never have this notion of superiority of one profile over the other. They do classification of candidates between both profiles based on the requirements suited for that particular profile eg Yahoo had two sections in its written paper.  They had designed these papers in such a way that a person doing well in one particular section was shortlisted for Test profile and another person doing excellent in other section was shortlisted for Development profile.  So clearly, it's not like two cutoffs for two different profiles with lower ones for Test profile as most of the people think.

Most of the biggies in software offer (almost) same compensation to both profiles with equal chances of growth.  There may be some exceptions here but where arent they?

• Which one to prefer: A Test job or a Development job?
  

The only thing to remember here is that "One should prefer the BEST FITTED job rather than the BEST job." After all, the term "BEST" in itself is relative and depends on one's view point:) There's no point going for a job which one doesnt feel like enjoying. So decide what exactly one is made for and then go for it rather than following one's peer group choice. I have seen people during my internship who were doing Test jobs by their choice and not by their destiny. They had options to switch to so called "coveted" Development Jobs in various stages of their lives but they chose to stick to their Test jobs. 

The best strategy to make one's mind is to talk to people working in these profiles in the concerned company and try to find out which job is suited for one more than the other. That's it, no rocket science involved :)

• Is switching between the profiles possible later?
  

The straight answer is "Yes, of course". There are many cases I have seen in recent past. One of my friend who did internship in a company in test profile could convert it into PPO of Development profile. He just conveyed to the recruiter that he's more suited for development job.

Another friend of mine, who also did internship in test profile in the same company later could grab the offer from another excellent company  in development profile.

I would like to make this point very clear that they didnt have any inferiority feeling for test profiles. It's just that they were more into dev than test. A personal choice as explained above and nothing else.

When one can switch from a tech job to a totally new area i.e a management job in their careers( you must have seen many examples of this) so what's the problem in switching jobs in the same domain? 

So, to sum up,  feeling of inferiority of one profile over other is just a false notion and one should first listen to his heart than to one's peers.

P.S. In the whole discussion, I might have sounded like an "anti-dev" person but I only tried to be "pro-test" along with "pro-dev". I am having an offer for dev profile from a good company. So I am not "anti-dev" at all. I invite, all of you, to discuss this issue and put forth your views as this being an open ended question.