From newbie, to company hero. The story of Michał Bolka and the Pimcore-Magento Connector

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This is the story of Michał Bolka – a young developer who has been working in Divante for three years already. He started from a junior position, then got promoted to the standard position. Six months ago, he had the privilege to work as a leader in an important project for an international client. It’s also the story of the Pimcore-Magento Connector – an interesting, new, open-source tool for eCommerce. 

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Michał Bolka joined Divante 3 years ago. At that time he worked mainly with Magento technology. Pimcore was just developing.

“Quite fast I realized I am more interested in Pimcore technology, rather than Magento. I prefer to have more independence in what I do – do slightly different things than just eCommerce platforms. For this reason, I decided to change the technology. I moved to the Pimcore Tribe “Snippety Zagłady” (Snippets of Doom in Polish language). The transition was smooth. I started working under the wings of more experienced colleagues, and quickly got into the team. I didn’t have any obstacles from the company, which was very important for me.” – Michał Bolka.

Michał started working under the wing of the technical leader Jakub Płaskonka, who introduced Pimcore technology in Divante. He helped his new tribe member to learn the complexities of this system. He showed Michał the practical tools he can use, involved him in real assignments in the projects. Bolka was learning, improving, and moving to larger projects.

“I could try not only different technologies in Divante, but also different roles. As the lead developer, I had more contact with the client than with the software itself. I could see how I feel about it, what may soft skills are, and develop my language & presentation skills” – Michał Bolka.

Michał was also taking his first steps with the tribes model. When he worked with Magento, there were no tribes in Divante. Then joined a Pimcore tribe.

For Michał, the transition to Snippety happened at almost the same time as the introduction of the new structure in Divante. Working with Magento still meant working in a team, whereas joining Snippety meant working in a tribe. 

Snippety

“I was very surprised by the great openness. There are regularly organized informal meetings, joint implementation of projects after-hours, joint ordering of food. We receive support in developing our own ideas. I appreciate the possibility of solving problems while playing table football, or on the forum of our entire room. Together, we try to solve them, with the whole team” – says Michał Bolka.

All this makes Michał even more excited and eager to come to the office on a daily basis, even though he has the opportunity to work from home. He loves sitting in the office and working with people, with his team.

Starting the new relationship between Pimcore and Magento

Finally, Michał came to the Pimcore-Magento Connector – a project  which changed his career, and also the company.

Pimcore and Magento

The general idea of this project is simple. Pimcore is a flexible, easy to use product information and master data management ecosystem. Magento is a modern, open-source e-commerce sales platform. The idea was to create a universal connector between these two systems.

“We found out that there is interesting potential for a relationship between these two systems. Information from Pimcore can be exported to the Magento platform, although there was no universal tool that would allow connecting these two platforms; there were only some systems created for individual clients. Our goal was to create a universal solution that can be quickly and easily implemented in any project combining Pimcore and Magento” – says Michał Bolka.

This is exactly what they did. Michal was a member of a research group. Their mission was to analyze this problem, determine all requirements, and prepare a list of documents on which they worked to develop the architecture. The first Pimcore-Magento Connector was a product made for one of Divante’s clients. Over time, Divante decided that it is worth creating an open-source project based on that solution.

Michał’s role was to coordinate this project, take care of it, improve it, rebuild it. Soon after, the connector was made available to everyone on GitHub for free. Now the global open source community is constantly developing it, which helps to keep it up to date with the latest versions of Pimcore and Magento. The Pimcore-Magento Connector project not only allowed to create a specific product, it also helped to set certain work standards in the field of internal communication and cooperation between tribes in Divante.

“While working on the Connector project, we had to cooperate a lot between the Pimcore and Magento tribes. It was something new in Divante at that time. We all were able to learn a lot in practice” – says Michał Bolka.

The tribes changed the way he works

Michał’s story sounds very natural. But changing technologies and groups, and such fast development is not something obvious in many companies. Especially those which work using the departments model. In such companies, if you are working as a developer in one technology, you deal with that technology every day. Other technologies may also be interesting for you, though. Unfortunately, in many cases, your boss doesn’t want you to learn them and change technologies. It’s not in his interest. That kind of approach may kill your creativity and desire to develop yourself.

Pimcore-Magento Connector

In Michał’s case, such a change was not only possible, but also smooth and easy. That was a win-win situation. He was able to develop and follow his interests. The company was able to make the best use of his talent, youthful energy, and commitment. The result of that good decision was the Pimcore-Magento Connector. All of that was possible because of the tribes model in Divante, which helped to build an agile, modern organisation.

Switching tribes or changing technologies is not a daily activity in Divante. People do not jump between teams every week or month. However, if someone consciously wants to make such a change, Divante eagerly helps. It’s one of the many benefits for employees working in the tribes model.

Divante is open to changes

Divante is open to changes. If someone does not enjoy working with a given technology, has other skills and would like to spread his or her wings by working with new technology, Divante is open to it.

“We have regularly organized so-called Contribution Days every few weeks. It’s a whole day where we can work on our projects. That can be  support for various types of open-source projects, for example. Sometimes we try to learn new technologies, interesting things from the Scrum area, etc..  I recently tried some programming in Java. Another time I heard about an interesting tool for code analysis. During Contribution Day, I implemented this tool, which has improved my work. Another time, our beloved spreadsheet for ordering food was created, with an automatic calculation of who is behind, and by how much. We all love Contribution Day, during which we can learn a lot of new things” – says Michał Bolka.

The first company heroes and the important projects they created

Michał’s story is an inspiration. He shows that it’s good to follow your aspirations, don’t be afraid of changes, learn and work hard. It’s also just one of the many success stories of Divante employees. There are many examples of  win-win situation type stories where 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. In this case, the result was the Pimcore-Magento Connector – an important project which developed a new product and helped to improve internal standards. Soon you will read more, so follow our blog. Want to write your own success story in Divante? We are waiting for you!

Published September 13, 2019