Adna and I have known each other for about a year and a half. I remember when I first met her what an impression she made on me; charismatic, interesting, simple, special and ahumble girl (in the best sense of the word). Our relationship started with Adna's proposal to read my birth chart ‘to see what’s going on in my life’. Through this interview, I have the opportunity to talk with Adna about actually basic things about her we haven't touched on so far, such as her beginnings in the world of QA testing, changing branches and other related things.
I start with the shortest and, according to many, the most complex question, which everyone answers from so many different angles, that I'm starting to love it more and more. ‘Who is Adna?’ - she answers briefly, ‘a deep question…Adna is a person who wants to spread love and happiness and a person who wants to help others.’ At the very beginning of the interview, we go back to her beginnings in her career as a QA tester. I ask her when she decided that she wanted to do it and what was so attractive about this part of development. ‘In my 5th year of college, I decided to do QA testing because every other part of the development was rather repulsive to me. What attracted me to QA was that I could give approval for something.’ Until Adna came to tershouse, I, with my limited knowledge of the IT world and its terminology, did not even know what QAs were (the only acronym I knew was questions and answers :D)
Starting from myself, I asked her to explain in layman's terms, for IT dummies like myself, what a QA tester does and how important it is in the rest of the development of a product. Adna explains to me that her role is very important, ‘there is a development team that elaborates a new feature, I get what they have made, I test it. In a test environment, I see if it goes through some cases, and then I see if it works correctly and whether it can be sent to production.’ She also adds that if she "releases" something that is not ready for production, the consequences can be quite big, but as she concludes, ‘a person can always miss something, so the last test is always very important.’
‘There is no audience I need to impress, there is only me. There is Adna from 10 years ago and there is Adna for 10 years. I am my own biggest competitor and critic.’
Adna currently works for betastudio, which deals with venture building and is a daughter company of tershouse. However, Adna was not always part of the IT world. She worked until recently, in a bank as a QA tester. I ask her why she decided to change her branch and how she would compare the banking world with IT. ‘My experience in the bank was such that I built my self, I learned many things, I learned to work ‘by the book’, although I am otherwise like that by nature. The biggest contrast between the IT world and the bank is that there is some freedom that I have now, even if something breaks, nothing will radically fail and that I can work with young people.’
In addition to QA testing, Adna is also a Project Manager in beta studio (PM - the only acronym I knew until I entered the IT world was Prime Minister because I'm a child of political science, sooo....). I ask Adna which role she enjoys more, PM or QA tester. ‘PM definitely, because I know at every moment what who is doing, at every moment what is happening with every feature. That direct communication with the developers helped me a lot in my work, because I think that the developers can tell me exactly what's going on and I understand that and I always try to help them out and I like that people trust me’ (what she is indirectly trying to tell us here is that she is a control freak who loves authority). I ask Adna if she enjoys being authoritative and if this role comes naturally to her character. ‘I'm doing great with it, I had to learn it throughout my life and I think that role will suit me even better over time. Authority and control are something I definitely like.’
I can't help but ask her about the origin of her interest in astrology, because that was our first point of contact. Our common scorpio rising and other astrological ‘tips and tricks’ that she later taught me. She laughs with her beautiful wide Hollywood smile (I'm not exaggerating, trust me) and begins ‘when I was 12 years old, I took a peek into that world for the first time...It was interesting for me to look at the stars, I noticed a few things, about how each sign behaves, it's all very interesting. Now I can understand some things based on astrology, which is understandable. What interests me the most are the stars, their settings, the planets, and how it affects the world order, and many things can be seen based on that. There is a saying that the difference between billionaires and millionaires is that billionaires have personal astrologers.’
Finally, the question that comes second to me after ‘who is…’ is ‘what is your life's motto’. I like to suddenly hear some wisdom, but also some forgotten platitude. ‘There is no audience I need to impress, there is only me. There is Adna from 10 years ago and there is Adna for 10 years. I am my own biggest competitor and critic.’
