Reasons to be a Test Engineer

One piece I'd like to add about the advantage of being a Tester (whatever the job title : ) is that you'll learn your underlying product literally *better than anyone*. It's true that PMs have put their sweat and blood into creating detailed Specs, and Devs have literally built the application from the ground up and have an extensive knowledge of underlying algorithms- it's their own code, after all! Ultimately, I would have to argue that the Tester of a feature is going to have the most knowledge of the in's, out's, upsides, and downsides of the features.