Growing up my dad used to tell me that there are three important milestones on a man’s life (though I feel that the same could be said about any gender): Plant a tree Have a child Write a book Through my life, I have planted quite a few trees, including a lemon and papaya tree I used to treat as my imaginary friends :) I have also had the highest honor to be the father to three amazing girls!

First of all, I have to say that I absolutely love being a Quality Engineer, something that I have been doing for a living for the last 11 years of my life! During these 11 years, I have had the pleasure (yes, pleasure!) of being tossed around, torn to pieces and thrown at a lot of scary and difficult situations in the world of software testing! Armed only with a strong desire to learn and excel at my profession, I have seen, heard and gone through a multitude of experiences, challenges, and opportunities.

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.

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.