  This paper attempts to understand motivators and de-motivators that influence
the decisions of software professionals to take up and sustain software testing
careers across four different countries, i.e. Canada, China, Cuba, and India.
The research question can be framed as "How many software professionals across
different geographies are keen to take up testing careers, and what are the
reasons for their choices?" Towards that, we developed a cross-sectional but
simple survey-based instrument. In this study we investigated how software
testers perceived and valued what they do and their environmental settings. The
study pointed out the importance of visualizing software testing activities as
a set of human-dependent tasks and emphasized the need for research that
examines critically individual assessments of software testers about software
testing activities. This investigation can help global industry leaders to
understand the impact of work-related factors on the motivation of testing
professionals, as well as inform and support management and leadership in this
context.
