Podcast Archives - bol.com Techlab

Father & Son into IT – Podcast

Every time I look at you. I see myself. I’m so proud of you. For you help make me what I am. A better man. I’m just so proud of you. ~ Lyrics by Alain Clark A special episode comes with a special opening. In February we had an extraordinary occasion during our onboarding. Father and Son in the same ‘virtual room. Father started as Software Engineer in the bol.com security department and son started as… Software Engineer in the security department, doing his final intern assignment. We have got…

Software engineers on Duty – so you sleep well at night

Peter Paul van de Beek, Peter Brouwers, on 31-03-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Agile Innovation devops Engineering Culture Operations Site Reliability Engineering on duty

The why and what of our Software engineers on Duty Let’s be honest about this, nobody likes to be woken up at night to react to an alert whether it’s a text- or whatsapp message, (automated) phone call or traditional pager. But every company taking his 24/7 run seriously has to organize their on call duty in a scalable and sustainable way. Initially bol.com organized it in a traditional way, meaning a team of system engineers with different specialism took care of the duty. Only a couple of years ago…

Software engineers on Duty – so you sleep well at night

What you should know building a Tech Lead community – Podcast

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 26-03-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Engineering Culture Tech Lead

Don’t miss our story of the introduction of the Tech Leads During the podcast, you will find out what Tech Leads are and why we need to build this community of Tech Leads at bol.com. You will learn how we approached this and avoid hiding the Tech Leads in ivory towers. The two tech leads and an IT director share best practices and pitfalls (and what we learned from them). The Why and What of our Tech Lead Community Tech Lead Community Why did we start to define the role?…

What you should know building a Tech Lead community – Podcast

Applied Improv in Business

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 2-03-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Culture Engineering Culture way of working improv applied improv

Introduction Peter is very honest in this episode (the stage is not the place he is really comfortable at) and Peter Paul is sharing his first experience with Improv (is it a small trauma Peter Paul?). So time to talk about Improv, Improvisation Theatre and applied Improv because we do want to learn about it and we are really curious how this relates to our Tech Community. Our guest Burgert prepared this along with these main topics Mindset, Skills, Culture, Structures and Who benefits. Mindset – Relates to the Improv…

Google Assistant – The potential of brand recognition

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 18-02-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Voice Google Assistant Brand Recognition Google Dialog Flow

Introduction In July 2019 we had our first podcast episode on voice and Google Assistant. Back then Marieke and Marvin introduced us to the future of interaction by voice. In this episode, we dive into the potential of brand recognition. Many people in The Netherlands will recognize the voice we use in our commercials on radio, television and social media as the voice of bol.com. The value of this brand recognition is the starting point of the journey to get this voice into the Google Assistant. By doing so we…

The YP Bookclub – Never Split the Difference – Podcast

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 4-02-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Books

Introduction Another week another book discussion. Maybe we can start a second Techlab Podcast dedicated to interesting books? We got some great responses on the last week’s episode about team topologies and we had a good opportunity. So it is time for the Never Split the Difference – Podcast. In earlier episodes, we talked with YP’s about their side projects (behind the mask – platform for the hospital to share experiences and Real-time sales dashboard), about the YP program itself and participating in competitions, the BAPC2020. This time we sit…

The YP Bookclub – Never Split the Difference – Podcast

Team Topologies a DSL for organizational design – Podcast

Peter Paul van de Beek, Peter Brouwers, on 26-01-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Design Product teams Sociotechnical Architecture Team Topologies organisation

Introduction A lot of people involved in the design and structuring of organizations could learn a lot from the book Team Topologies. Our guest describes it in the episode a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for organizational design and evolution. The header of the website and the subtitle of the suggest that it is the way for organizing business and technology teams for fast flow. In the episode, we discuss the 4 kind of teams and the 3 ways of interactions between these teams that are at the core of Team…

Team Topologies a DSL for organizational design – Podcast

TypeScript, where we love strict

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 22-01-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Development Front-End software engineering JavaScript programminglanguage Typescript

Introduction It sparked in the episode Interactive heavy applications we should record a podcast episode on TypeScript. Around the same time, we came in contact with Hackages. A company focusing on learning tech. Time to bring the engineers together and dive deeper into TypeScript. Typescript is mentioned amongst the 5 most promising languages in 2020. We talk about: What is typescript and how do you benefit? What are good implementation strategies? Bol.com examples Examples from Hackages Maturity in the usage of Typescript Guests Niels van Midden; Front End software engineer…

GraphQL – start but start small

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 13-01-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Development software engineering API GraphQL Rest Definition

Introduction We want to share our approach to IT to learn and entertain you. In this episode, we are happy to have an external guest at the table discussing with our internal guest. GraphQL stands for Graph Query Language and is used for interacting with services from the frontend. We are talking about API’s here. Explore with us the possibilities this approach has to offer and how it could even help you to speeds up innovation in the front-end. Like our guest mentions: GraphQL is a specification not an implementation…

BAPC2020 – Olympic spirit or serious business?

Peter Brouwers, Peter Paul van de Beek, on 4-01-2021
Category: Podcast Tags: Culture software engineering Engineering Culture Young Professional Program YP Championship competition BAPC

Introduction No rhythm like algorithms. We have been talking in the podcast about programming contest before. For example, about our own Spaces Championship and Advent of code, which also takes place at the end of the year. Today we’ll be talking to some participants in the BAPC – The Benelux Algorithm Programming Contest. Like stated on the website of BAPC, it is a contest in which about 90 teams from leading universities in Luxemburg, Belgium and The Netherlands participate. The teams have to solve a series of algorithmic problems and…