Hello, I’m Ela Shapira
— a Startup Doula, guiding startups from Seed to Series A in 9 months.

I support women-founders by providing a safe space to vent, practical advice, and close mentorship for every step of the way.

This newsletter contains a story which is too personal for the general public, a bit of humour, and an answer to a question from my readers.

I hope you enjoy. Feedback is always welcome 💝

Conclusions from a True Story

My first story is from the first startup that employed me.

I started working there while I was in my second year of university. At the time, I knew how to write functions in Java, but not much else.

The dev-team consisted of two guys, each responsible for a different part of the product, and myself — the newbie responsible for a separate third part, the web-based management dashboard. It was more than homework-level Java functions.

The start was bumpy, but I figured it out. I got tasks from the CEO and completed them as fast as I could. After a few months on the job, I was finishing my tasks so fast, that I was bored. I started refactoring the code for readability and adding comments.

The company grew, hiring QA and a Team Lead, who became responsible for distributing the tasks. Everything was friendly — we all ate lunch together every day. We enjoyed a flexible schedule; the CEO didn’t care how long we spent in the office, as long as the job was done. The Team Lead himself rarely appeared before 11AM.

In addition to working and studying, I partied :)

One early morning I finished partying. It was too late to go home and sleep it off. So I didn’t. I went to the office around 6AM and finished my tasks for the day before anyone arrived. I left a note, explaining that my tasks are done, but I’m not feeling well (true at that point) so see you tomorrow. Then I went home to sleep it off.

I woke up to an angry invitation for a hearing, which was just a stupid formality.

The Team Lead fired me because I disrespected his authority or something.

No complaints about the quality of the work done by me :)

The End.

Mistakes in Hindsight:

• Hiring a Team Lead

• Sudden change in office time policy 

• Firing me :)

What should have been done differently:

• Instead of hiring an external Team Lead, growing a Lead from the team, which already performed well without an official Team Lead. A raise would have been cheaper than a full additional salary. The newly minted Team Lead would have moved mountains to justify their title. The rest of the team would have celebrated the official acknowledgement of what was happening anyway. It shows that efforts are recognised and rewarded.

• Removing flexibility of work hours is worsening work conditions.
  Just don’t do it :)

• Kicking someone out should be the last resort, not the first remedy for hurt ego.

Comic Relief — the importance of good QA

Software development of a bar has finished, and it’s time to run tests.

The tester orders one beer. They order 2 beers.
They order 100 beers. They order 0 beers.
They order 99999999 beers. They order -42 beers. 
They order “Hello World!” beers. They order “Asdfsk!@$” beers.

All the tests pass OK and the bar goes to production.

The first customer enters the bar; they ask the bartender where is the toilet.

The bar explodes :)

Ask Ela - Questions from Readers

Q: Everything is automated nowadays. Is there real value in hiring manual QA?

The short answer is: YES!!!

The long answer starts with a question: who wrote the automation?

An automated test is only as good as the combination of:

1. the framework it was written on

2. the ability to automate environment creation

3. the readiness of the code to be automatically tested

I’m not dissing automated test completely — they save valuable time for basic sanity testing. I just wouldn’t trust them as the main QA of my product.

You can imagine how to automate the test from the joke:
Order beers according to input; try different numbers and strings.

You can also see how that test completely misses a test case.

Your product has an interface for its users. Getting someone to touch it all over, like a regular user would, is crucial to avoid bugs in production.

Want your question answered too? Send it :)