Pavel Sládek

I’ve been in QA for over a decade, working across different teams, projects, and technologies. One thing I notice often is that many QAs today tend to forget their roots. Let me explain… We hear a lot about new buzzwords in testing. And yes, exploring new tools is important: → AI-assisted test case generation → No-code/low-code tools → Automation testing → Cloud-based testing platforms → Performance & security testing But at the end of the day, all of these rest on the same QA fundamentals that have guided quality for years. The fundamentals that truly matter include (but are not limited to): → Requirement analysis & critical thinking → Test design techniques (equivalence partitioning, boundary value, state transition) → Exploratory testing mindset → Functional vs. non-functional testing → Bug reporting & communication → Regression & smoke testing strategies → API & database validation → Test environment setup and data management → CI/CD and shift-left practices → Collaboration with Devs, Product, and Ops Here’s the truth: The things that make a great QA haven’t changed. Tools will evolve, but the foundations remain the same. Master the basics, and any new tool or technology in testing becomes easier to adapt to. Never forget the roots of QA. #AIInTesting #NoCodeTesting #CICD #AgileTesting #ShiftLeft #ABAutomationHub

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The sequence matters: 1. Build with no-code 2. Find paying customers 3. Hit limitations 4. Then hire engineers Not: 1. Search for CTO 2. Spend 6 months pitching technical co-founders 3. Build something nobody wants 4. Wonder why it failed The market doesn't care about your tech stack. It cares if you solve a problem worth paying for.

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Cultural Debt > Technical Debt We expect tech debt to slow us down. Cultural debt is also sneaky, and it compounds faster. Every time we skip a hard conversation, rush a promotion, or glorify heroics over healthy systems, execution drags. PRs stall. Decisions loop. Great people leave. A simple Cultural Debt Ledger I recommend: Shortcut → Interest → Signal → Repay Ignored feedback → Silent disengagement → Fewer ideas, more surprises → Create visible feedback channels with SLAs; close the loop in public. Rushed promotions → Perceived unfairness → Calibration drama, retention risk → Document criteria, run cross-functional promo panels, publish outcomes. Hero culture → Burnout + brittle systems → Same names in every postmortem → Rotate on-call, reward prevention work, track toil as a metric. Meetings without decisions → Rework + thrash → “Who owns this?” on repeat → Add DRIs, decision logs, and a default-by date. Values-as-posters → Misaligned choices → Slack DMs > docs, side deals → Tie values to trade-offs; review big bets against them. Start small: pick one line item this week. Name an owner. Set a due date. Pay it down. Because when culture compounds, velocity returns.

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Code creates software engineers. Customers create CTOs. That sums up everything. A CTO who doesn’t focus on delivering customer value will fail. And when they fail, their entire team fails with them. The CTO’s most important job is keeping the team locked on the customer. Because it’s easy for engineers to get lost in the code. Clean architecture. Elegant solutions. Clever optimizations. Those things matter—but they’re not the point. The point is the customer. A CTO who forgets that leads a team that builds the wrong things beautifully. A CTO who remembers it leads a team that knows why their work matters, not just how to ship it. Great code is table stakes. Customer focus is what creates impact. And it’s the CTO’s job to make that the standard for everyone. Read my book, Product Driven, to learn more about how to keep customers first in engineering.

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You have spoken! A feedback from about 80 experienced engineering managers is now available, which seems statistically significant to note as the voice of Industry. However, if you have not yet shared your opinion, here is your chance: https://lnkd.in/d_pmm7bH Here are the Results (median of the response noted if statistically significant peak seen, else the top 2 or 3 significant finding reported): 1.     About the responders: - Half the industries employed < 100 engineers, and other half > 500 engineers, leaving a magical gap between 100 & 500. Interesting! - Over 90% respondents were responsible for managing engineers, and at least half of those were responsible for hiring, training, and mentoring young engineers. Their experience exceeded 15 years! *Conclusion*: We have a great group of responders for feedback! Thank you. 2.     About their current expectations: - 50% of the respondents expect the engineers to work on learning and following established practices, based upon available references and know-how. - 30% of the respondents require problem solving skills, - 10% require new product / process capability *Conclusion*: Not many expect capability of new product / process / solution / innovation – which was surprising. This may be because the expectations were tapered down with their past experience. 3.     Experience with Engineers - Engineers on an average take 3 years to do routine tasks, and solve routine problems independently. - At most 50% of the engineers are able to solve complicated issues (some estimates were starting from 10%), or development of new products & processes, and even for them, this period is well over 5 years - Their top complaints about the engineers are #1 – technical competence, and tied for #2 are Behavioural issues (motivation, discipline) and Soft skills (like communication). However, the good news is that the are able to overcome the top 2 complaints with about 3 years of working. - Responders feel that halving the current time neededfor meeting these expectations can have a transformational impact on their and their organization’s delivery. *Conclusion*: Despite lower bar of expectations, engineers take 3+ years for basic tasks, and 5+ years to deliver value. This has probably set a low benchmark of what can be expected from engineers, and therefore not a lot of initiatives for new products, technologies, processes are being planned. The managers would like to see this period halved – about 1.5 years for routine tasks, and about 2.5 years for complex & creative tasks. Thank you! This reenforces our conviction of the programs we are trying to create at FACEng. We are confident that the industry expectations will not only be met, but they will be exceeded by these programs. The successful candidates from this programs will be ready for routine jobs in 3-6 months (having to learn the organizations existing products & processes), and ready for complex tasks & creative assignments within a year.

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It's happening: the "Vibe coding cleanup specialist" role is here. A natural consequence of mass-adoption of tools like Lovable and v0 by Vercel, and probably a new market in the making. It may be a great way for software engineers to find new work-streams. I'm not sure if it is a pleasant work to do, but that's another story. For studios like Pixelmatters, for now, this is not attractive as the clients that need this kind of work are often individuals (B2C) and not companies (B2B) and are unlikely to have a significant budget to invest on their MVP. Still, surely an evolution of the industry to keep an eye on.

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99% of high-performing software engineers I’ve worked with in the last 19 years of my career at Google, Paytm, Amazon, and startups had this one habit that made them stand out: → They used to build prototypes. Fast. Frequently. Even if they’re throwaway. It’s so much easier to reason about a real demo or code sample than to argue endlessly about abstract ideas. 🔁 Building trumps theorizing, every single time: ∟ A quick proof-of-concept > A detailed architecture doc You’ll find edge cases, constraints, and blockers in minutes, not weeks. ∟ 30 lines of code > 3 hours of debate Nothing kills overthinking faster than seeing something actually run. ∟ “Let me show you” > “Let’s brainstorm on a whiteboard” Teams align faster when they see a prototype in action, not just sketches and talk. ∟ One-day spike > Week-long design meetings Most teams need signals and feedback, not another round of speculation. ∟ Even a failed prototype > Weeks of “What if…” Because a failed demo answers more questions than a month of guessing. The best engineers get this: → Shipping something, even if it’s ugly, is the fastest way to stress-test your assumptions and bring others onboard. The feedback you get from a live prototype is 10x more valuable than a week of endless discussion. That’s how you cut through noise. That’s how you lead as an engineer. Activate to view larger image, Please Check Best 💥 Discount 💪 Products 🌐 https://lnkd.in/gfZJqPTR Follow ✅ https://lnkd.in/gZ6myPbn Follow Chanchal Kumar Mandal for more.

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