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About me

Hi, this is Marcin. I am a software engineer based in Wrocław, Poland. First of all, thank you very much for reading my blog and I am glad you are here!

My Story

My career in the IT industry started rather unconventionally. Programming was not my first job. Before working in IT, I was a roofer – I laid roof tiles, welded roofs and installed gutters and skylights. I did this for seven years and went through all the levels in this profession – from an assistant to a specialist and master.

After about three years of working as a roofer, I concluded that I couldn’t support a family and live decently on this job in Poland, so I started studying computer science. I have been interested in computers since childhood, thanks to my dad, who bought me a Commodore C64 when I was about 10.

During my studies, I became very interested in programming, and at first, I was pretty involved in backend technologies such as Java and databases. Still, unfortunately, I couldn’t find a job as a backend developer.

In May 2013, I found a job at Chop-Chop.org as an intern front-end developer. Changing jobs was a difficult decision for me because my first child was due to be born in a few months. At that time, changing roles from an expert-roofer to an intern-programmer meant significantly reducing earnings and leaving my “comfort zone,”.

I took the risk, and after hundreds of hours spent on front-end development, it turned out that I was quite good at it. They called me the “pixel-perfect man.” However, my passion for the backend still smoldered within me, so when I was allowed to work with Magento, I told my manager after 2 minutes: You convinced me! 😄

Magento 1 was something: frontend, backend in PHP, database, deployment, servers – I was delighted, and after a year of tedious learning and bug fixing in client projects, it turned out again that I was doing quite well.

I wanted to try something bigger than just fixing bugs in Magento 1. The opportunity arose when I joined Divante.com, where I had the opportunity to work in teams implementing Magento stores for well-known Polish companies.

In the meantime, Magento 2 appeared, and I worked with this new system from the very beginning, getting to know it inside out, which I documented by obtaining all possible Magento programming certifications. The best one was the “Magento full-stack certified developer” certificate, which was held by less than 100 people worldwide at that time.

At Divante, after about 2.5 years of work, I became the technical leader of the Magento front-end. I was responsible for developing Magento programmers, the development of programmers’ work environment, and sales support.

In 2020, I joined gorillagroup.com because I wanted to try my hand at an international team working on online stores for companies worldwide.

While working at Gorilla Group, I supported an open-source project: Magento PWA Studio. I contributed some code there and helped develop this product. During this time, I also wrote tutorials for developers who wanted to start their adventure with PWA Studio, which the community and the PWA Studio team appreciated.

My work was noticed, and at the end of 2021, I took on the role of technical leader of the open-source project Vuestorefront for Magento 2. My great team and I brought this project to the next level in six months. It was a fantastic adventure.

Recently, I got involved in helping to develop the Vue Storefront Console platform. For me, it involved another leap into new technologies such as Google Cloud, Serverless, Terraform, and microservices architecture.

Unfortunately, after several years of continuous development, I started to lose my spark and passion for programming. I also had quite a lot of complications in my private life. I got to the point where just the sight of the computer made me want to vomit.

I am slowly coming out of this crisis completely changed. I have completely changed my approach to work and development, and although I still love to develop, I do it to maintain balance in my life. I became interested in the “Slow life” movement and now I work in the slow rhythm. Fewer hours, more results – this is my motto.

So here I am, and you are with me because you are reading this, for which I thank you once again. I greatly desire to share my experience, so I am writing this blog. Deep down, I feel that my professional career is slowly turning from the programmer’s path to the path of an educator, creator of educational materials, and mentor for others. I want to do that, but will it be useful for others? It sounds like a topic for another adventure. 🙂

What is important to me

I don’t know how to name it, but I’m old-school. On the one hand, I love new technologies that I use at work, but on the other hand, new technologies scare me.

Our world is becoming increasingly virtual every step of the way, and we want to do everything faster and better. The result is that life escapes us because we can’t enjoy it.

In order not to get caught up in this vortex, I try to focus on one thing at a time and consistently move towards my goal instead of rushing like a madman, changing directions and goals for any reason. Tiny steps instead of giant leaps.

In addition, I value education. I’ve developed a way of learning in which I spread the knowledge I gain among others. This way, I understand and can also teach others. I’m not an expert in many areas, but a pragmatic approach to development and the consistency resulting from essentialism allows me to improve and educate others constantly.

I would like to reach a point in my professional career where I can focus on creating educational content available to everyone. I publish my code in open repositories on GitHub and tutorials as articles on my blog whenever I can. Unfortunately, 95% of my time lately has to be spent on commercial cooperation in enterprise projects.

What I do outside of work

Outside of work, I’m a runner. For the past two years, it’s been my main passion and brings me immense joy (or maybe allows me to survive and be often smiling?). My favorite distance is a half marathon, and my personal best so far is 1:45. In a marathon, I ran so far, and the only positive information from that race is that I made it to the finish line. 😉

Another one of my passions is football in any form: watching, supporting, playing for real, and playing in FUT champions 🙂 Frodigopl is my nickname in FUT. Are you interested in a match?

Do I use social media?

NO. I have an account on Linkedin, but I haven’t been there much lately.

If you want to contact me, the best way is to use the contact form on my website or email me at [email protected].

If you want to stay updated with my content, sign up for the newsletter. You will receive emails from me with the possibility of sending me a private message.

How can you support me

Thanks again for reading this page. If you want to support me in writing this blog and creating educational content, you can do so in many ways: