Bartek Igielski has been a valuable member of our team for quite some time. Back in 2014, he joined Snowdog as a Front-End Developer, and his journey with us has been anything but ordinary. Unlike the typical path, Bartek only spent a year at university and wasn't particularly fond of mathematics during his school days. However, he has proven to be one of our most innovative and forward-thinking specialists. But how did Bartek achieve such success without a degree? Is an IT degree a prerequisite for starting a career in Front-End Development? The truth is, there are numerous paths that can lead to a rewarding IT career, and we are excited to share the one that has inspired us.
At Snowdog, we believe that passion, dedication, and continuous learning are the key ingredients for a successful career in Front-End Development. While formal education can be beneficial, it is not the sole determining factor. We value the ability to think creatively, problem-solve, and stay updated with the latest industry trends.
Empowering Growth and Success in Front-End Development: Our Supportive Approach
Our approach focuses on fostering a supportive environment where individuals can thrive and expand their skills. We provide mentorship, training opportunities, and hands-on projects to help our team members grow and excel in their roles.
So, whether you have an IT degree or not, if you have a passion for Front-End Development and a drive to learn and innovate, we believe you can carve out a fulfilling career in this field. The story of Bartek Igielski serves as an inspiration and a testament to the possibilities that await those who are willing to pursue their passion in IT.
“I’d like to do more with serverless, to overlay abstraction over things, so that they can be done more pleasantly and quicker, but for them to work just as good.” says Bartek Igielski when asked about his future plans.
Serverless is an emerging approach to programming, in which computing resources are stored by a provider in a cloud, available at all times, but used only when needed. In this way, the users of such a service can do things more cost-effectively and flexibly.
He already started in 2018, writing a serverless API, which he adorably named Wombat.
Embracing the new has been a common theme throughout his life.
“I sent my first email when I was eight years old” declares Bartek.
Computers and technology have had a constant presence in his life since childhood. He first used an old Commodore when he was six and four years later his parents would install an Internet connection in their house — something that, back in the day was far from the standard that it is today.
Bartek took keenly to gaming.
“I had access to games and that meant I wanted a computer that would run them faster. It was all about that MacGyver lifestyle. I wanted to uncover the secrets of how to make my machine better. That often meant crashing it and then fixing it back up, kind of like my favorite TV character- building a helicopter out of a matchbox and chewing gum.”
Sadly, his passion started getting in the way of school and so, the family computer would soon begin to be password-protected.
Following his DIY calling, Bartek just had to solve it. He ordered an Ubuntu 6.10 disc off of ShipIt, a now-defunct CD distribution program and discovered GIMP. He could also, of course, keep on gaming!
All of this led him to a pretty important decision — in the second grade of junior high school, he decided he wanted to go to an IT-oriented technical school.
That’s also around when his career had begun.
“My family has just recently started a business, so I made a logo and a website, took care of hosting, prepared graphics and edited pictures. You could say I became a one-man interactive agency!”
His efforts didn’t go unnoticed and soon, at the age of 15, Bartek had a chance to earn his first proper money. A friend operating in the same niche as his family approached him for a similar job.
Manually updating websites quickly started boring the ever-inquisitive Bartek. Luckily, around that time, WordPress would become a thing.
“Eventually, I had to teach myself about PHP and databases. This is how it would go on — another project, another new thing for me to learn”
In the second grade of his technical school, students had to pick an internship. Bartek worked in his friend’s parents’ company that dealt with industrial automation.
“I put together my first sewage control cabinet there! Then I worked with them all summer long after my graduation, then another, and another…”
Eventually, the firm would hire him as a Front-End Developer. It was his first full-time position. He built a fully responsive mobile app for remote sewage pump infrastructure management.
“That was in 2012” he says with pride “You have to remember that the name RWD [Responsive Web Design] has only emerged around 2010, so it was a very fresh concept, still not held as a standard in many places”.
Bartek left technical school with plenty of hands-on experience across many innovative fields. By the time he had started an IT degree at Politechnika Poznańska, he already knew his way around building apps and figuring out how things work. Still, uni has proven to be a bit of a challenge. Nothing that Bartek couldn’t get through, though. What broke the camel’s back were maths lessons.
“It’s just something that I never found useful in coding and I’m just not able to force myself to learn things I think are useless to me”
His uni stint ended after a year, but gained him valuable networking opportunities and broadened his horizons.
“I left the university enriched” he claims.
Bartek’s life after leaving the university went a typical person-in-their-early-20s route
“I found my first ‘adult’ job, but it didn’t work out. The employer turned out to be dishonest so I left after 8 months. I tried doing my own thing, but that led me nowhere — I wasn’t quite able to satisfy the needs of small businesses — my main clientele”
In April 2014, looking for a new thing, Bartek decided to give full-time work another chance. He sent out a couple of CVs and went to some interviews. One of them was at Snowdog! He went not knowing anything about Magento or the company he’ll soon become a vital part of.
“I joined SD as the second Front-End Dev. I soon started working on Eobuwie, which allowed me to spread my wings and think outside of the box.” Eobuwie is a Poland-based shoe seller. They reached out to us with a request to build a modern online store. Together with them, we created Magento Kiosk App — a physical shop merged with customer-oriented technology in Gdańsk. It had its own feet scanners and one of the best client advisors — Pepper the robot! We went on to win the Most Innovative Customer Experience award at 2018’s Magento Initiative for this project Long story short, we are immensely proud of our work with Eobuwie! Could you tell?
Now, back to Bartek! Working on the Eobuwie project was an opportunity for him and the team to build strong foundations for future challenges.
“This is when we formulated our coding principles, created the first universal tools and templates. By the end of 2015, I organized Snowdog’s first internal Front-End meeting. This is when I became the unofficial Lead”
While assuming more and more responsibility, Bartek remained deeply trusting of his own judgment. When, in early 2016, Magento put out Magento 2, Snowdog’s Front-End team decided they didn’t quite like some of its outdated solutions, so they created their own tools and a template. Both went on to be downloaded around 890.000 times.
“The real number is much higher, because a lot of people use it in a way that doesn’t impact the official download rates.”
Still high off the successful correction of Magento 2, it was time to go out into the big world.
“In April 2016, me and two of my teammates went to Croatia to our first Magento conference. There, we went to a lecture by a developer employed by the company that organized the whole event. I decided to ask him some questions and had a small disagreement. A minute after that, I was having a discussion with Magento architects. Then, a month after the event, their Head announces that Snowdog will lead community efforts to implement our solutions into the Magento 2 core”
In July of that year, Bartek was a speaker at Meet Magento in Leipzig. Since then, he did 17 lectures, mostly at various Meet Magento conferences, including one at Magento Imagine in Las Vegas — the world’s most important event for the community.
He also did two Magento Academy lectures at Poznań’s UAM.
“See, you don’t need a degree to teach at a uni!” Bartek laughs.
Getting out there into the wider world of eCommerce has changed Bartek’s attitude to work.
“When we worked on building a new template and modes of work in 2017, the most important change for me was that I stopped ‘making magic’ for others to use. Instead, I would create the vision of the product and then coordinate the team’s effort”
The result of this new approach is Alpaca, an open-source core code base that can be accessed and used by online stores based on Magento.
In the same year, he also joined Vue Storefront, an open-source initiative focused on making the most cutting-edge front-end eCommerce solutions freely available.
Currently, Bartek leads a 14-person strong Front-End team.
“I’m trying to take the company, the team and every person in it in a direction that’s rewarding, takes us somewhere new and has as little problems as possible. Of course, I also want to make it fun!”
He also wants to double down on the ‘soft’ aspect of work.
“I plan on giving more and more development duties to others, with me becoming a teacher and a mentor. I want to focus on training and preparing educational materials and overall sharing the knowledge and skills and leading people like myself 10 years ago, in the right direction.”
If you’ve gotten to the end of the article, chances are you’re interested in either a career at Snowdog, or getting a job in one of many IT-related fields. Have a look at our open roles page — we’re always on the lookout for new people to join us.
Want to read more about unusual paths leading to successful careers? Have a look at our interview with Paulina Woś, who contrary to Bartek, wanted to become a Front-End Dev, but instead became a Senior Project Manager!
