Culture Archives - bol.com Techlab

Spaces Talk #3: How to work the climbing ladder?

Asparuh Hristov, on 10-08-2020
Category: Blog, Culture Tags: Spaces Summit

I, Asparuh Hristov, a Data Science Craft Lead at bol.com, believe that my working experience actually helps my other huge passion: Climbing. Sure, my work leaves a limited amount of time for actual climbing, but at the same time improved the quality of this time spent practicing my hobby tremendously. During the Spaces Summit 2020 digital conference from bol.com, I did a talk on “How to work the climbing ladder?”. About the talk “Your job should be your passion” has been repeatedly questioned by work/life-balance “gurus” with the argument that…

Spaces Talk #3: How to work the climbing ladder?

Spaces Summit goes virtual – Organising our internal tech conference

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 28-05-2020
Category: Culture, Podcast Tags: Conferences Spaces Summit

Spaces Summit in corona time means Spaces Summit goes virtual. Maybe you remember from last year that we have an annual internal tech conference at bol.com. Given the measures, in place, we can’t come together. So, we go for a digital online equivalent. We wanted to know what it takes to organise an event like this? But we found out there’s an even more important step before. It’s getting the answer to the question “what are we going to do?” Many people and organisations who are organizing conferences, meetups, summits…

Spaces Summit goes virtual – Organising our internal tech conference

Spaces Summit – Launching for the 3rd edition

Niels Kuiper, on 7-06-2019
Category: Culture, Development, Events Tags: Event Development software engineering Spaces Summit

On June 13th, we organize the third edition of Spaces Summit: an internal tech conference for and by bol.com IT. From the start of the idea three years ago at a “borrel” (Friday afternoon drinks), Spaces Summit has become the biggest event inside bol.com IT to get inspired, learn, share knowledge, show off and get together as a community . This third edition will again be bigger than last year: a total of 500 attendees (150 more than last year!), an unusual afternoon keynote, inspiring talks on a variety of subjects, good…

Spaces Summit – Launching for the 3rd edition

How we deal with the unexpected

Peter Brouwers, on 8-01-2019
Category: Blog, Culture, Infrastructure Tags: IT Outage Post-Mortem Retro On Call Peak Season

“It didn’t look like a big issue at that moment”. Everybody in the room listened to what the Engineer on Duty (EoD) had to tell about the first moments what, later on, turned out to be a partly outage of the webshop in peak season.

The life of a WMS consultant at bol.com

Jeroen Ligthart, on 7-01-2019
Category: Blog, Culture Tags: IT Logistics WMS Warehouse

Bol.com is growing with approximately 30% per year, not just in terms of revenues but also operationally. With these increasing numbers it’s an on-going challenge to fulfil all customer orders in time. Year in year out we’re pushing both logistical operations and IT to their limits; two elements that come together in the role of a WMS (Warehouse Management System) Consultant. it’s our job to design and build scalable solutions in the WMS to improve stability and operational efficiency.

Stop Smashing your Keyboard! Zoom out! Think!

Eduardo da Silva, on 14-12-2018
Category: Architecture, Culture, Development, Events Tags: Architecture Development Culture Design

TL;DR: this article discusses in detail my presentation at Spaces Summit 2018. I talked about the need to stop smashing our keyboards and “blindly” focus on “high-speed”, and start thinking about what we are doing, why and how we are doing it.

Stop Smashing your Keyboard! Zoom out! Think!

Part 3: Talks Spaces Summit v2.0

Sjors van Berkel, on 25-09-2018
Category: Blog, Culture, Development Tags: Java Kotlin conference Organizing JVM

Last June, Spaces Summit was organized by and for bol.com employees. At Techlab, we want to celebrate this event by highlighting two presentations every month. This month, let’s get meta, and talk about organizing a conference. After that, we’ll go full geek again and look at Kotlin, to cure the Java headache you probably didn’t realize you were having in the first place.

Life of an IT Intern at bol.com

Laura & Paul, on 11-09-2018
Category: Blog, Culture, Development Tags: Development internship IT automated testing Axon Spaces Summit

At bol.com, we deal with a lot of complex, technical challenges. Luckily, we also attract a lot of people who like a good challenge. This blog features two of our valuable interns, who chose to do a project with bol.com to benefit both us, and their studies. Read about their experiences, and the fun they had while doing their awesome work.

Part 1: Talks Spaces Summit v2.0

Sjors van Berkel, on 8-07-2018
Category: Blog, Architecture, Culture, Cloud, Development Tags: Event cloud

Last June, Spaces Summit was organized by and for bol.com employees. At Techlab, we want to celebrate this event by highlighting two presentations every month. This month, we will look at the challenges of moving our server infrastructure to the cloud, and, also important, how to use the cloud for pouring cold beer. Talk #1: Going to the cloud: Forget EVERYTHING you know! Speaker: Maarten Dirkse Genre: Way of working Slides Abstract: bol.com is moving to the cloud. When you’re doing so, what should you care about? Can you handle the…

Spaces Summit v2.0 – “That t-shirt is not black, it is very dark blue”

Andrey Krichevskiy, on 14-06-2018
Category: Blog, Culture, Events Tags: Development conference Summit IT

Yes, we made it again! Spaces summit 2018 – the bol.com IT conference by engineers, for engineers – happened again last 7th of June, on the hot summer day in our home town Utrecht.