QA on Og Maciel's Journal

Just What Is A Quality Engineer? Part 2

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The last time I wrote about Quality Engineering, I mentioned that some of the reasons why people are not familiar with this term are, in no particular order:

'Quality' is usually something that is added as an after thought and doesn't really come into the picture, if ever, until the very end of the release process
Nobody outside of a QA team really knows what they do. It has something to do with testing...
Engineering is usually identified with skills related to writing code and designing algorithms, usually by a developer and not by QA

A quick search on Google shows the following results:

Just What Is A Quality Engineer? Part 1

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Whenever I meet someone for the first time, after we get past the initial niceties typically involved when you meet someone for the first time, eventually the conversation shifts to work and what one does for a living. Inevitably I'm faced with what, at a first glance, may sound like a simple question and the conversation goes like this:

New acquaintance: "What do you do at Red Hat?"
Me: "I manage a team of quality engineers for a couple of different products."
New acquaintance: "Oh, you mean quality assurance, right? QA?"
Me: "No, quality engineers. QE."

What usually followed then was a lengthy monologue whereby I spent usually around ten to fifteen minutes explaining what the difference between QA and QE is and what, in my opinion, sets these two professions apart. Now, before I get too deep into this topic, I have to add a disclaimer here so not to give folks the impression that what I'm talking about is backed by any official definition or some type of professional trade organization! The following are my own definitions and conclusions, none of which were pulled out of thin air, but backed by (so far) 10 years of experience working on the field of delivering quality products. If there are formal definitions out there, and they match with my own, it is by pure coincidence.

Red Hat: 366 days later (and counting)

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Woke up to the following email this morning:

Dear Og Maciel,

Congratulations on your one-year anniversary with Red Hat! Thank you for your commitment and work over the past year. We hope that it has been everything you expected it to be and look forward to celebrating your future success with the company.

Time sure flies when you’re having too much fun! I can’t believe it’s been one whole year since I joined Red Hat as a Senior QA Engineer to work on their CloudForms project! So much has happened since then that it is a bit hard to remember all the new and exciting things I had the pleasure of being a part of! It is absolutely grate to be able to work on such a cool and challenging environment, and to experience first hand what open source and meritocracy really means!