Filip Rakowski has had the pleasure and privilege of being involved in the Vue Storefront project from the very beginning. That was the beginning of something special – both for him personally, but also for the company.
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The hero of this story joined Divante three years ago. At that time, Filip Rakowski worked as a junior developer. Before, he worked as a freelancer focused on medium-sized repetitive WordPress projects. Shortly after joining Divante, Filip engaged in the open-source project Vue Storefront. That was a very good decision. His career developed quickly.
I was able to develop and advance in a very short time thanks to the Vue Storefront project. When we started to implement this project, there were a lot of challenges and problems to solve immediately. I had to learn a lot!
Filip Rakowski, Senior Developer at Divante
What is the Vue Storefront project and how did it influence Filip’s career?
Vue Storefront is today the number one open-source PWA for eCommerce
It is currently the most popular headless PWA platform in the world. It is even ahead of Adobe’s proprietary solution for Magento. It’s always free and open-source under the MIT license.
The Vue Storefront community numbers over a thousand developers around the world. It has over 40 websites implemented, and over 50 partner agencies around the world. It’s fair to say that Vue Storefront is very popular.
We are at the stage where this technology is becoming mature. Vue Storefront has such a strong position that we can be confident that the product will last for a long time. Although we have been on the market for over two years now, interest is still growing. We are focused on the professionalization of processes and the product itself. We are taking into account the latest trends and platforms.
Filip Rakowski
The default choice for any implementation of headless eCommerce
Nothing in nature that is alive stays stagnant, without growing. Plants are either growing, or they’re dying. It’s like products in the IT world. They must grow or die. What are the growth plans for Vue Storefront?
We aim to maintain our leader position, which in turn is associated with constant experimentation, i.e. intensive R&D. We also want the platform to be used with even more use cases. We want to reach a situation where Vue Storefront will be the default choice for any implementation of headless eCommerce. But we also have to please customers, their customers, their developers, marketers, etc. There are a lot of plans and hard work, but it’s worth it.
Filip Rakowski
The future is bright for both Filip and Vue Storefront. How did he get to where he is so fast, and at such a young age?
Open-source helps to learn over 3-times faster
When working in a standard project for a client, the developer has his small field, his tasks to do. Productivity and quality are very important. Normally, no one assigns any important tasks to junior developers. It looks completely different in an open-source project like Vue Storefront.
You have to make many decisions. There is a huge responsibility. You have to look for the best solutions, fix your and others’ mistakes, think outside the box, go outside the comfort zone, and trust your intuition.
Filip Rakowski
People from all over the world are joining open-source projects – from beginners to experts. There are people with different specializations, from code creation to marketing. You will meet interesting people with great stories, exchange views, knowledge, and comments. People in the community mutually motivate each other and check the quality of the code, which ensures its high quality. What’s more, people in open-source communities are very open. Everybody wants to help and share their knowledge.
Working in that way in the Vue Storefront project helped me to gain a lot of experience. After three years of programming Vue Storefront, I have the experience of a developer who has been programming for 10 years .
Filip Rakowski.
The agile structure of Divante and the tribes model both play a big part in the development of Filip’s career. For Divante, Agile is something more than just a buzzword. It’s a culture, the way the company works and grows, without losing its DNA. The tribes model combines all the benefits of working in a small company, like a start-up, with the advantages of working in a large company. It helps organizations to be fast, effective and efficient, and to be closer to the people.
“Working at Divante opened my career. It’s hard for me to imagine a better place to grow”
Filip started as a junior, and now he speaks at the biggest JavaScript conferences in the world. He is a co-owner of the largest PWA eCommerce platform in the world and a co-creator of the Polish community framework Vue.js. In each of these activities, Divante not only enabled his growth but supported it actively. Filip says directly: “It’s hard for me to imagine a better place to grow”.
In the beginning, I was a little surprised that your role in Divante is never rigidly defined. Sure, you can do so-called minimum competence. But if you feel like building some interesting IoT project on the side, start writing on a company blog or talking at conferences, then the company will help you. These are just a few examples. The board promotes its initiatives and helps build a good personal brand. After three years in this company, I can safely say that the development opportunities are practically limitless here. As they say: “The sky is the limit”.
Filip Rakowski.
Filip’s example is just one of many stories of successful careers in Divante
All of them have a common thread. The employee was able to develop and follow his interests and the company was able to make the best use of his talent and growth. Follow our blog for more stories. Do you dream about working in an open-source project for money and growing your career? Drop us a message.
Published November 7, 2019
