Software Testing Question:

People Skills.
Here's another area in which testers and programmers can differ. You can be an effective programmer even if you are hostile and anti-social; that won't work for a tester. Testers can take a lot of abuse from outraged programmers. A sense of humor and a thick skin will help the tester survive. Testers may have to be diplomatic when confronting a senior programmer with a fundamental goof. Diplomacy, tact, a ready smile-all work to the independent tester's advantage. This may explain one of the (good) reasons that there are so many women in testing. Women are generally acknowledged to have more highly developed people skills than comparable men-whether it is something innate on the X chromosome as some people contend or whether it is that without superior people skills women are unlikely to make it through engineering school and into an engineering career. The fact is there and those sharply-honed people skills are important.