TechLab by Bol

Over three years ago we published our third podcast episode. The topic of the episode was the Go programming language. We noted, “When you listen to the stories our two enthusiastic guests share in this episode, you might even believe Go is the future.” So, let's check in and see how things have evolved.

The number of feature teams in bol.com using Go has grown. What else has happened? Our guests share their experiences and provide solid advice for starting your journey with Go.

What this episode covers

• Introducing the Go programming language in an organisation
  • What do we like about Golang?
• How to onboard people in the Go experience?
• What is a good approach to deal with boilerpate code in Go?
  • Should you generate it? Or use a "framework"?
  • What frameworks are available?

Guests

Patrick Akil – Consultant, Software Engineer, Trainer in Go, Podcast Host

Albert Brand – Consultant at Xebia – Software Engineer, Go Trainer

Goos van den Bekerom – Software Engineer

Hannes de Jager – Software Engineer

Kevin van den Broek – Software Engineer

Notes

• Our 1st podcast episode on Golang
• The power of Go
• Axle
• The Functional toolkit for Kotlin HTTP applications - http4k
• Cookie cutter
• Go kit

We discuss the way of working of the Tech Lead and Architect in the Marketing Domain. Functional- and Technical aspects need to be taken into account when defining the direction of the development teams.

From our guests Alexandra and Lennart, we learn what cooperation means in these relatively new functions.

What this episode covers

Product-Led is adapted more and more as a way of organizing for innovation. In bol.com we are shifting towards this concept. One important topic in the adaptation is forming the leadership in a product organisation. Given the nature of the innovation teams we both need to focussing on functional- and technical aspects.

Guests

• Alexandra Egher ; Product Tech Lead in the marketing domain
• Lennart Billekens;Product Architect in the marketing domain

Notes

• Learn more on the introduction of Tech Leads at bol.com.
• Product architecture for the product organization.
• Check how we adapted out innovation rhythm when introducing a product led approach.

A few months ago we noticed a message that stood out on our internal platform. Basically, it stated: "I'm back". Naturally, it happens every now and then that employees explore their horizons but still return to bol.com.

What this episode covers

However, the number of software engineers that turn to indie game developer and come back, is quite limited. That sparked our curiosity since for a vast group of engineers it is some kind of dream job to develop games. That must have something to do with the large number of gamers among software engineers.

There are some interesting learnings and experiences in our conversation with Roy. Listen and check what is in it for you.

• Have you always been intrigued by creating (computer) games?
• How did you prepare for your adventure to make games for a living?
• What were the obstacles you had to overcome trying to make a living crafting a computer game?
• What did you learn?
• Please share also some examples of how you learned this?
• What will you take with you now that you are back at bol.com?
• How is it to be back at bol.com?

Guests

• Roy Kok – Software engineer at bol.com in Buying and former Indie game developer.

Notes

• Unity

Everybody can go to bol.com and check the Front-End of our webshop. But what if you are a seller, supplier, partner or internal employee? What is your view when interacting with our IT systems? In general, you will use one of our Portals. These portals made a long journey to get to the stage where they are today.

What this episode covers

Not only does the backend site, mainly covered by SWAP's (Small Web APplications) rely on different frameworks, also the Front-End work does. How to adapt to a new 'Look and Feel'? How to be consistent? How to make the lives of Software Engineers easier? Listen to this episode and find out yourself.

• What does the Portal and SWAP architecture look like in bol.com?
• What is a front-end framework?
• What role play Design Systems like Figma, Storybook, Zeroheight, Frontify, Stencil?
• What are design tokens?
• How do UX Designers, Front-End Developers and Back End Developers work together and profit from a framework?

Guests

• Jake de Oude - Front-End Software Engineer
• Robin Aldenhoven - Software Engineer within Logistics working on Front-End applications
• Robin Cijvat – Product Tech Lead
• Rens Jansen – Visual designer \ design system designer – new bol.com style in the component libraries

Notes

In an earlier episode back in 2019 we already talked about SWAPs and a blog on this topic is available here.

Welcome to episode number 100!

A special show with a very interesting topic: Inclusion of Introverts and Introversion. We asked our CEO Margaret Versteden for a quote for this number 100. She surprised us with the fact that this topic is so important for her as she is dealing with this her whole life, as an introvert.

So if you are an extrovert, we think this is a "must listen".

What this episode covers

It will help you to understand and to make the world and your environment safer for introverts. It is about the inclusion of everyone and the inclusion of introverts

Why is it so much harder for an introvert to be included than for an extrovert? To understand this, we first dive into questions like:

• What is an introvert?
• And what it is not, what are the common misunderstandings?
• Why is it so important to be more aware of these differences?
• We touch upon neurodiversity and neuro non-typical persons, as some of the requirements for a safe environment also applies for these groups.

After this understanding we dive into the environment:

• What creates a safe environment? How to include diverse people?
• What can you do as a facilitator?
• We talk about meetings, presentations, standups, dealing with feedback, spark meetings and many more examples
• We discuss tips and tricks to build a more inclusive environment

And we are confronted with our own bias, more than once.

Guests

• João Martinelli - Software Engineer and Scrummaster in one of the Payment Teams
• Sarah Gruneisen - Engineering Manager, Agile Coach and Liberator
• Reena Choudhary - Software Engineer in one of the Payment Teams

Notes

Liberating Structures: https://www.liberatingstructures.com/

Other shows on Diversity and Inclusion:

Cultural Diversity

We are not only the hosts of the show but so far we also do the selection of the topics ourselves. Research what’s interesting. Find diverse subjects and guests, etc.

What this episode covers

And sometimes guests make it easier for us. They post on our internal platform a message….

“What is the superlative of bragging? I don't think I can go any further than telling you that I co-wrote a book. And of course, it's about experimentation Yesterday I received the first copy in my hands, and it is of course for sale at bol.com ”

The book is called “Steering on results”, how to work together on the greatest ambitions. Work smarter not harder. (So far only available in Dutch but English translation is being worked on). And since this week we know that the book is on the long list of books to become Management book of the year in 2022. A Dutch award organized by one of our partners managementboek.nl. (how can I check if this is true?)

This triggered us in two ways:

First – what is the book about?

Learning by three elements

1. Data
2. Tangible Objectives
   1. Introduction of CRAFT: Create, Refine, Align, Finalize & Transmit (CRAFT)
   2. Introduction of Objectives, Progress Metrics & Estimates (OPME’s), in bol.com we refer to this one as OKR's.

3. thorough research methods

Second – How is it to start writing a book?

• So we know how it started, let’s find out what it is to become an author next to your job
• When did it start?
• Why did you choose to do it?
• How did you work together?
• What steps did you take?
• Did you already have experience in writing?
• Was it according to expectations?
• What were the learnings?
• Do you advise others to write a book?

Guests

We have an award-winning guest:

Denise Visser; According to Linked in it says Product Manager Experimentation at bol.com and freelancer.

You probably know Denise from a previous show about experimentation.

Notes

Sturen op resultaat website

The Book Sturen op Resultaat

Blog on experimentation

Podcast Episode on experimentation with Denise and Maarten

Longlist management boek van het jaar

This episode is 2021 Techlab Wrapped. Inspired by one of the platforms that host our podcast Spotify.

It is the end of Season 3 and the end of 2021. Time to look back and to look ahead.

What this episode covers

2021 Wrapped and maybe a glimpse into 2022.

• We look back at 2021 by the numbers.
  • Top 3 lists
  • Top 5 countries
• We discuss the topics and episodes that really got us.
  • For instance the one on Log4j and the PMC member who is working in bol.com.
• We share the plans of 2022 and the OKR we set ourselves: "we get on TikTok and you get to decide what dance we should perform if we double our listeners on the best episode ever"

Guests

Peter Brouwers

Peter Paul van de Beek

Shownotes

Top 3 according to Blubrry

1. Episode 91 - Retailer API
2. Episode 93 - The Programmers Brain
3. Episode 81 - Data Maturity and Data Literacy

Top 3 according to Spotify

1. Team Topologies
2. The Data-Driven Approach to supporting products with KPI's and OKR's
3. Curiosity is the common denominator for our business analysts

The new Bol.com ECOmerce podcast about sustainability

Notes

During the recording of this episode, we are in the week of Black Friday. An exciting week for people hunting for bargains. And also for a lot of our colleagues.

What this episode covers

Whether that is from a commercial point of view or an engineering one.

All the eyeballs on our website, bring a lot of traffic. And consequential a lot of load on our systems. In this episode, we focus on one aspect of preparing for a large load: Load Testing. In this episode, we are going to talk about Load Testing with Locust. An open-source load testing tool.

Triggered by our guest's presentation during the spaces summit, we wanted to know more about this and share it with you.

• What is Locust?
• Why did we start using Locust for Load Testing?
• Examples of Load tests and Performance tests performed with this tool
• What did we need to setup for it?
• How to configure your Locust tests
• How to run your tests on Kubernetes
• What were the challenges?
• How does it make use of the cloud benefits like scalability?

Guests

• Leon van Wijk; Full Stack Software Engineer at Craftsmen and engineer in our Logistics Team

Notes

• Distributed load testing with Locust
• Locust presentation at the Spaces Summit
• Performance testing the Chat App

If you are a regular listener to the podcast or an e-commerce watcher, you know “the season” is very important for us. It is a yearly recurring theme in the podcast. You are probably also aware that uptime and responsiveness of our app and website are crucial.

What this episode covers

And you might have noticed that enabling our software engineers to perform at their peak is very important for us. Enabling teams and engineers is what we do to build a great place to engineer.

And sometimes things just go sour. A perfect storm occurs that is definitely not a tailwind…

As our CTO will say “never waste a good crisis”. We have to learn from what happened. Let’s explore one of those incidents. We go back to the season start of 2019. Just before the start of the Friday Afternoon Drinks, a huge incident started in our Android App. This triggered downtime in other areas of the platforma as well. And maybe just like when investigating a plane crash there is not just one thing that was off but a series of unlikely things happened in a short span of time. Let’s dive into this.

• Why is learning from failures an important topic to share?
• Some context, what part of the landscape are we talking about in the episode?
• What was your perspective? What were you doing and what happened?
• Taking a few steps back: What was the process of incident management and how did we step by step fix the issue?
• When the dust settled: What did we learn? What did we improve?

Guests

• Julius van Dis – Full-Stack engineer at Flock. He was responsible for the app, specifically its direct backend. Some of the projects he has done include making the app and service landscape multilingual, the migration and integration of a new gateway, creation of a basket API and improved app updates.

Notes

• Julius adventures at bol.com
• Mobile App updates
• Moving to multilingual
  • Podcast on multilingual
• Refactoring the mobile app API
• Learnings and next steps

In this episode, we virtually visit the AI for Retail Lab and dive with two members into the world of recommendations. The AI for Retail (AIR) Lab Amsterdam is a joint UvA-Ahold Delhaize industry lab and conducts research into socially responsible algorithms aimed at the retail domain. Think of developing models for recommendations and managing goods flows.

What this episode covers

The research, testing and application of the models take place in Albert Hein Delhaize and bol.com.

• What is the AIRLab (Artificial Intelligence Research Lab) and what is it trying to achieve?
• PHD projects?
• How does science profit from business involvement and the other way around?
• We take a deep dive into recommendations
• What is being researched?
• Why is this important?
• What is the hypothesis?
• What has been discovered so far?
• Explore the approach to the research.
• How can both business and academia benefit from this research?

Guests

• Barrie Kersbergen – Recommendations bol.com & PhD Candidate at AI for Retail LAB
• Sebastian Schelter - Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam

Notes

• AIRLab research papers
• Earlier episode on the gathering of measuring data. The feedback loop for recommendations