README for Jeff Luna

Hi there, I’m Jeff– pretty straightforward to pronounce, but if you ever come across my legal name, which is spelled with a missing letter– it’s still pronounced as “JEF+REE”.

At Cadence OneFive, my role is…

To support the software engineering team and provide them with an extra pair of eyes—by looking at the already awesome work they are doing.

As a Software Quality Engineer, I aim to test our product in different situations to ensure that it works well as intended and can handle what users might do with it, including both known scenarios and other possible edge cases. My main goal is to find opportunities to make our software better and contribute to the effort of ensuring it provides seamless interactions with our clients—and, if possible, an enjoyable experience whenever they use our product.

Oh and I also help in making sure, we’re not breaking our core features, as we build more useful applications in the future.

Who am I?

Away from work

I’m a 32-year-old Filipino, a South East Asian, working with you from the Philippines. I am 12-13 hours ahead, depending on Daylight Saving Time (DST), so don’t be alarmed if I seem a bit off if it’s already late here.

A bit of history: Our world was colonized by Spain for over 300 years, which makes us somewhat akin to being “Asian Mexicans,” haha—jokes aside, this is because we generally have brown skin and some Asian features, but also Spanish last names.

After the Spanish-American War, the US purchased the Philippines, took over, and colonized it for another 48 years. There was also a period of Japanese occupation for a few years during WW2, which many prefer to forget, though personally, I find it historically significant. Our history explains my last name, my proficiency in the English language, why I can’t speak Spanish despite the 300+ years of occupation, and our cultural similarities. I’d draw a Venn diagram to illustrate this better, but who has time for that? Haha.

I married my high school sweetheart, and we’ve been together for almost 17 years, with 6 of those years in marriage. We live with a 2-year-old golden retriever whose main job is to place her face on my keyboard whenever I’m working. So, if I send you something that seems like gibberish, my apologies; that was her doing.

Poverty is not unfamiliar to me. We always had a roof over our heads at my grandfather’s house, living with three other families, a privilege for which I’ll always be grateful. However, having to sleep through lunch and dinner to save money for school the next day was a common theme. I worked hard in school to get into a state university, but life happened, and both my parents’ health started to decline. The family needed the income, so I dropped out and started my corporate career with IBM Global Process Services as soon as I turned 18 and never looked back. Thank goodness for globalization.

Now that life is a bit better, I make it a point to give back and help people who are in the situation we were in back then, whenever I can. I was never sad about my past; instead, I’m extremely grateful as it gave me the grit I need today.

Supporting your immediate family is knitted into our cultural DNA, so that’s my entire modus operandi. I started doing odd jobs at 12 to take care of my now, 77-year-old dad and 64-year-old mom. They rely on me for everything they need, from food to their medication for Type 2 diabetes. If you see me working late, I am not just doing it for the company, but for them. I would do anything for my family.

When I’m not in front of my computer, I enjoy karaoke and spend time walking around, taking photos of the streets and portraits of strangers. I’m a frustrated photographer and get in the zone, capturing photos frame by frame whenever I get the chance. I thought about building a career with this hobby and even tried shooting pre-weddings, weddings, family events, and more. However, I realized that I love it too much; the stress of trying to make money from it takes away the joy of capturing a moment with a click—a moment that will never happen again. Some photos I share, some I don’t. So now, I just do it for myself and post some of them on Instagram. One day, maybe, try and put some in a gallery that will allow me to haha.

At work

At anything I do, I’m a “Look, Try, Reassess, Do better” kind of guy.

I developed my strong analytical and communication skills by supporting different outsourced units throughout the years in the Customer service industry. I’ve worked in programs that supported British banks, US banks, US retail, UK and US telecoms, US big tech, and my personal favorite, the last program I supported was with the first, and I think they are still the biggest music streaming platform in the world. I worked my way up from being a rep answering phone calls, emails, or chat to spearheading the process development and training effort within the programs I’ve been a part of.

I met the founder of a company called ExecVision back in 2015, and I’ve done CRM support for them, pre-call research, and lead generation for their sales team to some capacity before I slowly transitioned to doing competitor analysis and research for them. I am proud of the work I did, and they started noticing the changes I’ve been making in the bare spreadsheet they had—I was told I had a knack for using software, and they asked what I’d really like to do long term, and I said I love computers and want a career revolving around software.

That’s when I met our CTO at the time, who took me into his Tech team, have groomed me fit to the workflow that the product demanded since. I did what I’ve always done: I learned and delivered. The next thing I know, at the peak of our staffing, I was managing 5-7 people, including some encoders and QA engineers spread across the globe.

I started adapting and learning usable tech skills like test planning, getting familiar with the database (PostgreSQL), understanding what APIs are and how to test them (using CURL and Postman), becoming really familiar with the ticketing tools and sprint dashboard we used (YouTrack, Jira), how to do stress and load testing (Siege, JMeter), and support cross-browser testing (BrowserStack), making and maintaining test suites (Confluence and TestLodge, QASE is a thing I just got started in). Along the way, I also dived into backend testing and honed my skills in log sleuthing, either through DataDog or by directly performing SSH into the concerning box to troubleshoot issues firsthand. This comprehensive skill set has been integral to my role, and before I knew it, I had been living my dream job for almost 9 years. The insights I gained from my customer service career were invaluable, allowing me to evaluate and test products effectively wearing a user’s hat first and then get into the technicalities Second.

The company was acquired in 2022, and to this day, I’m still involved in supporting it in some capacity.

Goals

Learning goals

Right before I dropped out, I was studying hospitality management. That choice was driven by uncertainty about what I truly wanted and the urgency to provide for my family. However, I’ve since discovered that Computer Science is my passion. I was accepted into the University of London’s online program last year through their performance-based admission. I invested all the spare resources I had to pay for the first semester—however, I was hospitalized around midterm season and had to take a break. Thankfully, they offered me a leave that I can restart anytime without any fees, which is great.

In the meantime, I’m focusing on learning and gaining practical knowledge in automation and JavaScript as my short- to medium-term learning goal, as I prepare to pursue my degree in Computer Science again.

Career goals

I want to become a software engineer specializing in Quality Assurance, focused on building tools that significantly benefit the SDLC and implementing automation where it matters most to reduce maintenance costs and effort. I’ve purchased a domain called “SeekGlitches” with the intention of developing it into something meaningful in the future. If not, it’s still a fun domain to own as a career QA Engineer. :)

Ways of working together

  • I’m definitely more of a Slack guy than an email guy, so send me a message on Slack whenever something needs my attention.

  • Don’t hesitate to leave me a message, even if I’m offline or not supposed to be working. Chances are, I’ll get to work on it, haha.

  • I prefer asking the group and waiting for answers that way- vs DMs.

  • Please be straightforward with the tickets. If there are known risk areas, I might not recognize them right away since I’m new and still learning. Mention these in the comments, and I’ll address them.

  • Documentation is always crucial; a lack thereof usually leads to a mess in the long run.

  • Let’s not waste time doing regression testing of the entire application with every release. Instead, let’s identify potential issues stemming from changes and focus on those. We can then perform a comprehensive check of the full app according to a schedule.

  • We should identify features in the product that are not really being used and consider removing them. They’re only a burden on both testing and the overall codebase.

  • I have a huge fear of missing out. If there’s something new and exciting, even if it’s not ready for testing yet, involve me. I can probably start imagining the testing approach just by being a fly on the wall as specs are being discussed.

You can lean on me to…

  • Be present and available. Again, I’m almost always online—send me a message, and I’ll get to it.

  • You can rely on me to be doing my 100% in looking up for my answers, before asking– but I have a limit– sometimes it’s a lot more efficient to ask.

  • I ask a ton of questions until I understand fully. Please don’t get annoyed. Let’s find all the answers now and aim to do it right the first time.

  • I’ll point out if something is not working well and try to offer alternatives, especially when a certain user flow seems weird or redundant. These things don’t make sense to me, down to the small details like “Why don’t we have a loading indicator when the system is processing? Without it, the button could be clicked again, worsening the user experience,” or dealing with inconsistent fields and buttons.

How to support me as we work together

  • I have one rule, give it to me straight, If I’m doing something wrong, tell me directly. If I’m doing something that annoys you, tell me right away, no matter how embarrassing it is, because I’m always open to learn from it and be better. I hate hearing things I’m not doing right from someone else other than the origin of the feedback.

  • Upskill me, if you think I will benefit from X or Y- send it over my way.

How to support me as a person

  • I do need to take some time to take care of family, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to work that day, Id give a heads up to adjust my hours, and still deliver what needs to be done.

  • I like a good conversation, say hi, let’s talk current events, or photography or whatever it is.

I’m my best self on a team when…

  • I feel involved, and looped in - no matter how big or small the stuff is. Being privy to development information keeps my “why am I here” candle lit.

Feedback preferences

  • I prefer it through slack, but a call with a recording is going to be awesome too.

Technical preferences

  • I’m currently researching Playwright, and Learning JavaScript- so I don’t have a preference yet in terms of Language or automation framework- so I’m open to conversation.

  • I would want an API documentation, explaining what this and that does, with instructions on how to get auth credentials to call them, as I try to build tooling where, I’d call them through CURL to quickly check their health and towards building better test suite to test them in the long run.

  • I have always had bias toward YouTrack as the ticketing tool, but this is malleable. I just need to learn and take advantage of what we have

  • I have been looking at QASE as a test management tool for both QA and Devs- Obviously I can’t evaluate it from a dev’s perspective yet- but having it as a repository of all manual test cases, and manage automated suites (when we get to it and I learn them ) within the same dashboard looked amazing + it integrates with GitHub, playwright etc. so I think it’s a good tool to research about.

Schedule and availability

I will be trying to work between 6AM ET to 5pm ET - this is where I get most of the quiet time I need for work, but after resting I really go straight to working whenever I can so– I’m really virtually just there. The only thing that could keep me from responding is me sleeping, sudden life things, and internet issues.

Giving feedback on this document

Thank you for reading through this, I know I write too much, so I’m sorry you had to read through a ton, but if you have any questions, just leave me a slack.

PS. it’s already 6am - so forgive me if there were any lapses in spelling and grammar here and there haha. I will re-read this and fix them:)