Team Leader Luis

I like to think about myself as a simple man, loyal and respectful. I'm from Perú so naturally I eat a lot of good and tasty food... getting a little bit chubby lately but I'm working on it. I enjoy playing football or should I say soccer? love listening to music and those rich bass sounds that make me ear drum dance, love playing video games, learning new skills, would like to learn to play the guitar or piano and much more... but time is limited so sadly we have to choose and leave others.

Anyway, about my education, I have a formal but unfinished background on Biology. I had to quit that cause towards the end I realized that, although I love the field, I couldn't see myself working on it, I just loved studying it. Right now with this Test IO chapter in my life and other things, I've decided to become a self-taught student in some field CS field that I'm still figuring out (perhaps AI). There are so much learning resources on the internet, you can try this or other field too! and change your life and the ones that surround you :)

My journey started because of the circumstances, the global crisis, looking out for ways of getting some income, and decided to go into an adventure: find an online job... something that I never did, dunno why. I didn't even know what freelancing means at the time. I think I got lucky (the kind of lucky most people know of) because Test IO was the first platform that I found and signed up to. I joined Test IO in June 2020. At my first test everything was overwhelming, buttons everywhere but with the pass of the weeks I started to improve gradually. I'm very competitive so I decided to become a Great Tester, and the first step for that would be to constantly and steadily improve my Quality Rating. I also noted that I was closer and closer to reach the Ranking leader board which was cool. Around that time a great opportunity presented: the new Testing Cup 2020. I decided to participate and fortunately, the Rangers team had the victory. Honestly, I thought our chances to win weren't that great at first but after passing every round and beating strong teams like Team Blue or ShakhtarDonetsk to reach the finals I was starting to realize that we, had big chances to win. I'm the slow type of tester (investing a lot of time only to verify and understand how the website/app should work) but luckily my team was able to carry me in the finals and so we won against the super-strong/favorite Vortex! Very cool!

So slowly but steadily I kept on working to increase my Quality Rating by making sure my reports were reproducible to be sure that they were bugs indeed, read the academy completely, and even though some still got rejected I kept looking forward and making improvements where I most needed.

Now, recently I got lucky but the kind of luck most people probably don't know of: the meeting of the opportunity and the preparation. Test IO was looking for 2 new TLs from the Americas region. I immediately thought to myself: how unlucky I am. I felt prepared for the journey but thought that my relatively short career and experience in Test IO wasn't gonna be enough to be considered. Long story short, I got interviewed and frankly, I kept getting amazed by the Community Staff: talking about Olha and Markus. Awesome people! Once I received the results of the interview I was so happy, I couldn't believe it.

What I like the most is that I can try to be fair to everyone. For example, if I note that a fellow tester put a lot of effort in a bug report, which is usually the case, but some details were missing, then I take the time to fix it myself. Sometimes, there is simply no bug but the effort and time put on is still there? so I try to help them with some sort of bonus.

On the other hand, there are times where bug reports are just too horrible (yes I'll say it) and painful to review lol. I've learned with time that I should leave these to the end to avoid getting stressed too early.

Overall, if you ever work for Test IO whether as a TL or any other role, you'll understand me when I tell you that this is a very comfortable place to work in.

1 You should care about your Quality Rating, the better you are, the better opportunities you will get.

2 If you are new, be patient, observe and observe more, then take notes to improve with every test. Focus on reproducing first. You shouldn't try to run if you don't know how to walk yet.

3 In general, focus on the quality of your report. If you are a non-English speaker, verify your grammar with translation tools. Verify that your steps are clear and understandable for others. Remember that your report is gonna be read by the Customer! without them, no company can survive so extra attention to that, please!

4 Always verify the problem is reproducible and not just a temporary issue, browser cache, internet problems, etc. If your report can't be reproduced then it's probably due to some steps or conditions that you didn't include and that are crucial to trigger the bug.

5 Think like a TL or a Customer. Think not only that you are testing for the money, but for a product/website/app that need fixes.

6 Use the app like a real user. Don't force bugs like entering - 100 shoes to the cart or clicking a button like crazy, even big apps from companies like Google, Facebook might fail if you do that. These types of bugs aren't useful or valuable for the Customer so they usually get rejected.

7 Don't take the test instructions for granted. Take them with discretion and if you are uncertain ask about it. Sometimes TLs may not answer in time due to time zone differences so in these cases you should take an educated guess, in other words, apply common sense while understanding how the product/website/app should work.

Personally, I need to take short naps (20-40 min) to reset my stress levels and be "happy" again. I suggest you try this to see if this fits your needs cause for me it has been working wonderfully so far

None yet but I'm 100% sure the time will come but I'm not telling what dream it is until it becomes true ;)

Movies:

Wall-e

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Matrix (it's a mindblower)