Best: the U2 pilot's handbook, as you _wanted_ to read it.
The S370 assembler docs. Everything you needed and nothing more.

Worst: where to start? How about the defect reports produced by contemporary QAs? Maybe a screenshot, and an implied demand for telepathy. Mate, you're a mindless drone, the definition of brainless. Applying telepathy on you is pointless.

The correct amount of applied test time is often subjective. My theory to objectify is this.

Plug a tester into the mains supply.
Turn the juice on.
When his screams reach a certain pitch, you objectively know QA is done.

Thoughts?

I need to shoot some QAs out of a cannon. Not being trained in artillery ballistics, this is a challenge. Does any kind soul have suggestions for correct charge quantities, caliber, and trajectory projections? Thanks in advance.

Worst sin ever was during a workplace hackathon.

Being ultra competitive I decided the other teams build script was too functional, ie. It worked. Changing it to

.echo please accept our warmest contrafibularitiea and have a nice day

...and commit gained more than a little (deserved) approbrium.

Estimating a 1 day change as 4 weeks when the scrummaster, product owner & BA haven't bothered to run the simplest dilligence check and can't be arsed to even give a quantitative valuation.

Knowing that QAs hate broad impact analyses, must test every path, yet love someone else writing their test plans, "everything is impacted. You need to test it all".

Desktop SSD just failed. All VMs lost. Domain admins too drunk to fix. No timesheets no sprint diary no mail no IM.

!rant.

Most QAs are dumb beasts, unable to think clearly or rationally, lazy parasites that suck the lifeblood out of a project.

Except this one guy I work with. He blackmailed the CTO to move, and landed himself a junior dev job.

He joined my team a few months ago.
"Right" says I "forget the crap you've learned so far. Here's a list of algorithm books from Amazon. Order them and read them. There'll be a test at the end."

He did. He is now reviewing lead dev work and merrily trolling their poorly performing work. Speaking to them in Big O (and so confusing the crap out of them) and earning stars at every turn.

I'd like to think I had a hand but all the effort was his.

That feeling when you hace your first talk with new lead QA, all the way from Microsoft:

QA (sitting at her new desk & PC): "How do I get the log in screen?"
Me (trying to be helpful): "Have you checked the machine is on?"
<QA checks>
QA: "How do I turn it on?"

Worst of many. Had to work with someone who could be accurately described as a monkey in trousers with strategically cut fur.

Him: "I have refactored code now I have to refactor all your goddamn unit tests"
Me: "so?"
<silence>
<checks his commit>
Me: "why have you commented out every single line in all the unit tests?"
Him: "I DON'T BELIEVE WE SHOULD HAVE ANY UNIT TEST. THEY ADD TIME".
Me:"You cannot be serious. Apart from the obvious mistake in judgement why in the name of blue buggery fuck did you not delete the files? Have you not heard of source history?"
Him:"...."

I became his lead.
He left.