HONEYBOOK

Boaz Adato, R&D Director

Before Shai joined our team, we were primarily relying on lean unit testing for our front-end development. This approach left a significant gap in our testing strategy, as we lacked comprehensive system testing and relied on expensive and flaky end-to-end tests. The impact of this was felt daily, as we faced challenges in ensuring the quality and reliability of our products, which in turn affected our development velocity and the morale of our engineering team.

Shai's involvement marked a pivotal turning point in our front-end testing strategy. Collaborating closely with one of our senior engineers, Shai helped us adopt the right technology stack and build a robust infrastructure on top of it. His methodical approach to iteration and improvement on our testing infrastructure laid the foundation for a significant cultural shift within our team.

One of the first changes we noticed was an increased confidence in our testing processes. Shai not only advocated for but also demonstrated the effectiveness of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and emergent design approaches. Through paired programming sessions with various engineers, he was instrumental in promoting these methodologies across the team, enhancing our understanding and execution of effective testing strategies.

The short-term impact was palpable. Our team quickly began to see the benefits of the new testing framework, which led to a noticeable improvement in development practices and product quality. The team's reception to these changes was overwhelmingly positive, with many expressing appreciation for the clarity and efficiency that Shai's methods introduced.

In the long term, these changes have proven to be transformative. Today, most, if not all, new features are developed with decent coverage, ensuring that our products are both reliable and robust. The promotion of the senior engineer Shai worked closely with to a staff engineer position is a testament to the growth and development fostered by Shai's contributions.

From a management perspective, working with Shai has been a learning experience in advocating for best practices, nurturing talent, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. His impact extends beyond the immediate improvements in our testing framework to include a lasting influence on our team's approach to software engineering as a whole.

In summary, Shai's expertise, dedication, and hands-on approach have been instrumental in revolutionizing our front-end testing strategy. His work has not only improved our development velocity and product quality but also contributed significantly to the professional growth of our team members and the evolution of our engineering culture.

ASTRIX SECURITY

Ofek Amir, VP R&D

Shai has been working with Astrix Security for a long period, and I highly recommend working with him to any startup at the beginning of their journey or to a large company struggling with maintaining complex and extensive code.

Shai is an amazing person and a true professional! He helped our engineering department adopt a new mindset in the world of quality, connecting deeply and firmly to the importance of tests as a way to achieve quality, maintain velocity, onboard new people, and prevent the fear of change. As Shai says, maximizing code changeability is critical for a startup.

He helped us avoid the well-known issue of numerous E2E tests running all night, by adopting his approach of integrative tests with mocks, adapters, and contract tests.

My team had the privilege of pair programming with Shai, becoming better developers with improved thinking, a broader perspective, and advanced tools. They continue this path to train new team members as well.

Personally, I consulted with Shai on the most profound and important issues in my role as VP R&D and always found wise advice and a different way of thinking that opened my eyes more than once.

Shai also served as a tech lead as a service, consulting on complex topics in the realms of architecture, technological stacks, building event-driven systems, and even implementing event sourcing and other advanced patterns.

VERSATILE

Noam Solan, R&D Team Leader

As a R&D Team Lead at Versatile, I had the opportunity to work with Shai on many projects, including a major project involving a legacy IoT Firmware built for Raspberry Pi with Python. The project involved rewriting our core data collection and transmission process. Shai worked closely with our engineers for extended periods, and his prioritization of knowledge sharing and adoption of best practices, enabled the team to acquire a diverse set of skills and tools that proved to be highly valuable long after his contribution. It is truly a testament to the significance of investing in sustainable learning and development within any organization. If your organization is open-minded and willing to embrace new ways of building software, you can certainly benefit from Shai's extensive experience and expertise, which will surely challenge the current organization approach of writing software. In our organization, it was proven to be a breakthrough that positively impacted future projects.

FIREBERRY

Alon Moalem, VP R&D

Shai guided us throughout redesigning the core architecture of our product. By exposing us to his approach and knowledge, and by tailoring all of these to our needs, Shai helped us create a flexible, scalable and reliable codebase that increased the quality and velocity of our engineers. Shai has managed to understand our complex product right from the start and helped us build a solid architecture from scratch. He was a great mentor to our tech leaders, and today his approach serves as the basis to our practices in the core of our system.