This is a TGG Team Bio post that I’ve been excited about doing since I met our subject. I’ve been saving it as a Christmas present to our readers.

Please meet The Gartrell Group’s resident professional skateboarder, punk rocker, and video game tester, Erick Caceres!!!

While I’m sure you’re clapping, I’m guessing it’s nothing like the applause Erick heard while playing drums in a punk band on tour in Europe or while participating in skateboard comps.

OK, OK… let’s get to it! I’ve already told everyone your name and some of your highlights. Let’s start with your job title.

I am the Director of QA or Assurance of the Quality and Director Variety.

Explain that to a five-year-old. Or me.

Well, normally, in this situation, it's me saying, "UUUUUMMMM....Eh, heh, well,.....I guess I....or rather, I test the....thing,...you know maps? Yeah, we test that and um, ok so check this out, you know COVID right? Of course you do -- when it was at its worst, remember how we all wanted to see just how bad it was but visualized on a map? I test stuff like that."

or

"I'm a software test engineering director, we test web and mobile applications that are centered around data mapping."

Probably the second one :)

Yeah. The second one, for sure. What is your favorite thing about working at TGG?

I love building out our QA program and managing a super rad team of QA engineers who truly make it fun to come to work, along with all the folks at TGG. I love the camaraderie among our team and all the different projects we get to work on. That's more like a list of my favorite things.

It is. But that’s fine. We’ll forgive you.

Is there a project that you’ve worked on that you’re particularly proud of?

Oh gosh...well...there is one in particular that I've worked on since I started Day 1 at TGG back in 2020. It's been a wild, hectic, and looooong ride, with a ton of ups and downs with many many late night, weekend releases. Several of us here have put a lot of ourselves into this project and I DO feel proud for how much and how far we've come on this one.

How long have you been doing this QA thing?

I've been in the QA industry going on 18 years now. I've had quite a few QA jobs in that time!

How did you get into doing QA?

When I started doing QA, I was in my mid-20s in 2005; I was living in a house with five other dudes. My best friend at the time was working at Sony testing Playstation 2 video games and I was like, “HOW THE [HECK] DO I GET THAT JOB?!” I went to interview for it with no experience at all and got hired.

I was 1 of about 200 QA testers testing Playstation 2 games. I worked 90-100 hour work weeks, making $12/hr. I slept under my desk waiting for new builds because back then, we had to wait for them to get burned on a disc to be able to test new fixes. We used to have these contests where we’d be testing a day before the deadline for it to be done, and we’d compete to see who could find the crash that would pause all testing and force the developer to fix the bug and burn new builds again. That was a crazy time; I was on the team that tested and released the Playstation 3 and the PSP release games.

I assume this was after your gig as a pro skateboarder?

Okay - the skateboard thing was actually a very small part of my teenage life. I was just an amateur-sponsored skateboarder in the early- to mid-90s. I went to high school with Jerry Hsu, and came up in that era. I’m talking when I was about 16 years old. I broke my ankle and then continued skating on it anyway. Then I fully broke my ankle, ending any chance of going further in that profession.

Ouch! How’s that ankle today?

It’s trash. I can’t do flip tricks; it never healed 100%. I just coast around now.

According to office lore, you were also a drummer in a band that toured the world. Is this true?

I played in a punk rock band.

Tell me more.

Nothington was a punk rock band from San Francisco, CA. The founding members used to be in Tsunami Bomb. I was 30 years old when I joined that group as a touring drummer. I was with them for all of 2011. I left because after touring with them for a year, I was completely broke, in debt, and I couldn’t hack the vicious cycle of working a job for a few months, saving and paying insane rent in San Francisco, and then going back out on tour for another year.

That sounds like a fun experience and a great lesson in adulting. Speaking of, tell us about your family.

I’m married to Liz Gaines, who also works for the Gartrell Group.

We really are a family business, aren’t we?

Yes! We have two girls who are 6 and 11 years old. We also have a cat named Winnie, some fake plants, and some real ones too.

Do you like to travel? Do you have any good travel stories?

All my travel stories revolve around my life as a touring drummer. They usually revolve around late-night drinking and mildly wild antics. We drove 100 mph in a sprinter van on the Autobahn while everyone was sleeping. We flew down a German cobblestone road in a soapbox cart shaped like a banana. I skateboarded the streets of Trier, Germany, at 3:00 in the morning. I opened up for bands like DOA, Face to Face, BoySetsFire, Hot Water Music, The Bouncing Souls, Between the Buried and Me. Our tour van caught on fire in Spain, and we put it out by throwing some orange Fanta on it.

That’s pretty awesome. Thanks so much for sharing!