TechLab by Bol

There are two pillars in this episode. We start with the Technical Platform at bol.com. We'll explore what type of software engineering these teams are working on and what they are trying to achieve for the rest of our engineering community. The other part is Product Discovery. We try to figure out what problems we are solving in the discovery phase. While doing this we keep our focus on the...

Moving Elastic Search to the Cloud. Elastic is one of the core components of the eCommerce Tech Platform. It powers the search engine as well as other trivial functions. In our own data center it has the biggest footprint. Time to discuss how the team approached this cloud journey. What this episode covers In this episode we want to answer these questions: How do I transfer my Elastic Search data?...

If you look at the title of this episode, you might think that we are going to unveil our details about how we protect the bol.com platform against DDoS attacks. We should be clear about this, we just can’t in the current world we live in. But we wanted to talk about this because the solution used is worthwhile sharing. So we double-checked with our security department and verified what aspects we...

Chantal is on a mission. To make people aware of the buying drip or in Dutch "Koopinfuus". Together with Chantal we dive into this phenomenon and discuss what it is. We find out what the three pillars are that contribute to this drip. We make the connection with Tech. Tech empowers platforms like bol.com to use for the good and bad. Never before it was so important to be aware of this ph...

The Tech Radar is a tool to inspire and support Engineering teams at Bol.com to pick the best technologies for new projects; it provides a platform to share knowledge and experience in technologies, to reflect on technology decisions and continuously evolve our technology landscape. Based on the pioneering work of ThoughtWorks, our Tech Radar sets out the changes in technologies that are interesti...

Neurodiversity is the idea that neurological differences, such as autism, ADHD, Tourette syndrome and dyslexia, should be recognized and respected as a natural form of human diversity, similar to cultural and ethnic diversity. The neurodiversity movement advocates for the rights and equality of individuals with neurological differences and promotes the idea that these differences should be celebra...

The guest of our show presented the Data Build Tool, DBT, in one of our knowledge-sharing sessions. Especially the fun part is what I recognize when I look at this knowledge-sharing session. The guest of the show presented it in an enthusiastic way and used terms like: the macro functionality makes DBT awesome and Ephemeral is the Unique Selling Point. What this episode covers In General What is a...

Five years ago, Chantal found out she got a lower salary than a male colleague with less experience. Till that moment she was ok with the male-dominated Tech world. But this triggered her. She started reading about this topic, interviewed many people and decided to write this book. She became very passionate about this important topic which you can already feel when reading the book. And while int...

Order Sourcing Simulation is needed to enable capacity steering over our warehouses, network of sellers and logistical partners. Data Science is used to predict customer behavior and simulate capacity impact. What this episode covers What is: Order Sourcing Capacity Steering (multiple warehouses, locations, etc) What is needed to do this well? Intake Etc. Now the context is clear, we can dive into...

What is a product-led organization? If you google it you will find a definition in the 1.4 billion answers similar to this: Product-led means being guided by the potential of products and product teams, and breaking down the silos between “the business” and “the product”. The business IS the product. At bol.com, we are on our own journey to discover what product-led means. And we see similarities...

Many know the retrospective from the agile way of working. It's one of the most important sessions in working agile. If done correctly and followed up it will make you better step by step. This is also the reason many people use it as instrument to improve after for instance an emergency. But what if retro's become boring? Some might recognize this so time to dive into this and make retr...

With 2 of our engineers, we look into how we keep enhancing the quality of our webshop using canary testing and analysis, contract testing and end-to-end testing in isolation. What this episode covers We have quite some communities within bol.com. One of those focuses on quality. For this episode, we invited 2 engineers from this community to share some of our latest developments on this topic. Th...

In the introduction mail, it said: “Having a culture in which we all can thrive, is one of our most valuable assets. To celebrate and cherish our unique tech culture, we are organizing events throughout the month of June. ” From Meetups to Games, from Tech talks to sessions with the IT management and most important of all, interactions. That's in brief Tech Culture Month. We hope to inspire y...

This experiment triggered so many questions with us: Creating a pop up warehouse with Google Glass implementation, how much time does it cost? Why are we doing this? Is this totally new in the market? What this episode covers We dive into the experiment with this business usage of the Google Glass in a popup warehouse. (Image: https://cdn.sanity.io/images/qxrxmo3r/techlab-prd/1ee7d3b5ecc11dc4ba0e0...

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 gu...

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 i...

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 sin...

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'...

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 thi...

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...

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 L...

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 aspe...

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....

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, t...

Warehouse mechanization is a part of our IT landscape where our IT meets the physical world. It is one of those places where we encounter that while we could scale our IT almost indefinitely in the cloud, the physical world and warehouses don't work that way. As you listen to this episode you will learn how the world of IT has to adapt to the physical world to make things work. And as Peter s...