I do

I mean, I’m a programmer and I still test code manually. I’m not sure why it has to be xor

If “by hand” you mean using your hands to type code that generates tests, then yes, I admit to testing code by hand.

It's very simple: you test things because we can't rely 100% on developers to create the right thing or to create it without any bugs. The same goes for automated test software. I've personally created unit tests that were failing for like 2 years but due to a bug still showed green in CI.

To go back to the joke: manual QA is infinitely more likely to find the exploding bathroom than a unit test would ;)

Automated testing is a fantastic tool, but manual QA is still very valuable.

All my tests are individually hand-crafted from sapient pearwood and proctored by a licensed pirate.

It's not an either/or though. Used to have an assignment where we as developers would write automated tests (regression tests), while we had an experienced software tester with an excel sheet verifying things by hand. But instead of just following the sheet - which is automatable - he knew of a number of different techniques and approaches and he'd still find a lot of issues that nobody else found. For which we'd write a test to avoid it happening again.

I mean I wouldn't have minded if they wrote more automated tests themselves, but I'm also very aware that the mindset of me and developers would quickly become "it's not my responsibility to test my software".

QA is more than running tests by hand you could also just code.

Automated test suites suffer from the same problem.

It's weird how many bugs I regularly find in our software by actually testing things by hand, as opposed to our QA department, which does only automated testing and insists they have covered 100% use-case scenarios.

> test code by hand

Personally, I find it helpful to bugger out things with pen and paper before coding it out. This is helpful and useful.

Greatness to you of you need not the analogue. Others "below you" may and can do just as well. Please do not down your nose upon such folks.