Raymond’s best career lesson: Be the mentor that you would have wanted yourself
Meet our Boozter @Raymond Benc. Moving from California, USA, Raymond joined Boozt as a Senior Web Developer. Two years later he now has the role of a Web Development Manager. We sat down with Raymond to learn more about his career here at Boozt.
What drew you to working with web development?
It basically started when I was playing Counter Strike back in the days, and I wanted to build a homepage where I could showcase our team’s stats. The easiest way to do so was to learn HTML and CSS.
What made you want to join Boozt?
The social aspect was the main driving factor. I had for a long time been working in a small team or by myself as a consultant and was really eager to be a part of a bigger team, something that Boozt could offer. I also found it enticing to work on the tech side of a fashion and lifestyle company.
You started as a senior web developer, next becoming a team lead, and now you are in your current role as a web development manager. How has Boozt allowed you to develop into this role?
If you do want to move forward here at Boozt, there is no one stopping you from doing so. Whether it is in your path or actually a simple feature on the website. There is no red tape on how to get things done. I think this type of environment has really been beneficial for me, since my background as a consultant meant that I was used to working on projects, with no strict guidelines on how to get things done. Instead, the focus lies on trying to find the best solution possible for the company, which is also the case here at Boozt.
How do our values Trust, Freedom and Responsibility play into your everyday work?
The values are very evident in the platform team. We want newcomers to deploy something on the website within the first two weeks, which shows from the beginning that we place a lot of trust in our developers. Additionally, at Boozt we do not test our peers code but simply do a peer-to-peer code review. The main selling point is that we don’t have a Quality Assurance department or team in the webshop and this allows us to deploy very fast on a daily basis. This is one of the coolest things when working at Boozt as a developer as we don’t have the extra overhead of waiting for QA to test code and purely rely on our Trust, Freedom, and Responsibility of the developer to make sure they test their code before deploying.
What is your favorite part of going to work?
Being able to come to the office and see my friends!
Why is e-commerce an interesting industry to work in?
It is a fascinating industry in that it is so fast-paced, which requires one to take quick decisions and be ready to reprioritize projects.
What project has been the most influential and memorable in your career?
In 2020, we launched the CMS tool to empower Boozt Media Partnership and the Marketing teams. This allows the teams to create and customize landing pages. I learnt a lot during this process, and I realized that you can pass a lot of roadblocks if you push for them.
Career lessons that you have learned thus far?
- Google is your best friend 😉
- If you want to move from mid-level developer to senior, then be the mentor to your team that you would have wanted yourself.
