My Journey from Amateur to Frontend Team Lead - Lessons from 10 Years in the Industry

Welcome to my blog! I'm Seb, and a passionate frontend technology enthusiast with almost 10 years of experience in the industry. Today, I'd like to share my professional journey and the most important lessons I've learned along the way.

Beginnings Aren't Always Easy

My programming adventure started quite modestly - creating websites for Counter-Strike 1.6 clans and designing auction templates for Allegro (Polish eBay equivalent). These were my first steps in the world of HTML and CSS, long before React or even jQuery became the standard. However, it wasn't until 2016, when I joined ENP as a Frontend Developer, that I truly immersed myself in the world of modern web interfaces.

When I was starting out, there weren't as many resources as we have today. Mostly books, poor documentation, and just a few tutorials on YouTube. I gained most of my knowledge through trial and error, which was time-consuming and frustrating. I spent a tremendous amount of time in front of the computer, often 16 hours a day, sometimes neglecting my health. Red Bull and coffee were my best friends - today I know that wasn't the healthiest approach, but that was the price of learning. Those early projects for CS 1.6 players and Allegro sellers taught me the basics, but most importantly, they showed me how satisfying it is to create something that other people actually use.

Before joining ENP, I worked as a freelancer. Oh, how many failures there were! Missed deadlines, poorly estimated projects, clients disappearing without payment - all of this was part of my education. I messed up many things, but I also delivered plenty. Each completed project, even if it wasn't perfect, gave me invaluable experience and built my reputation.

Working on different projects, I dove into the world of advanced JavaScript techniques. I mastered DOM manipulation, asynchronous operations, and design patterns, and I also began experimenting with the Vue framework. One of my first major successes was deep performance optimization, which helped reduce page loading times by more than 500ms for five major stores in Poland. I learned critical techniques such as resource lazy loading, minimizing HTTP requests, optimizing critical rendering path, and effective browser cache management. This experience showed me how frontend performance impacts the end user experience and conversion rates in e-commerce.

Pivotal Moment - CTO Role

In 2020, I joined Acclaim, where first as a Senior Fullstack Developer and later as CTO, I had the opportunity to take responsibility for the company's overall technological development. Working on 60+ projects, I had to quickly master various technologies:

React and its ecosystem (Gatsby, NextJS)
WordPress and WooCommerce
Sanity as a headless CMS
PHP for backend

It was here that I understood how important it is not only to write good code but also to build efficient processes. Implementing agile methodologies doubled the team's productivity, and migrating the infrastructure to AWS/Digital Ocean cloud allowed us to scale projects more flexibly.

One of the most satisfying periods in my career was the time I spent as a mentor and lecturer at Coders Lab. Teaching JavaScript, React, HTML, and CSS to over 50 students not only helped them find well-paid jobs (more than half of them found employment!), but it also deepened my own understanding of these technologies.

As they say: "If you want to really learn something - teach it to others." Personalizing feedback and taking an individual approach to each student helped me achieve a 100% satisfaction rate among participants, which I consider one of my greatest successes.

Current Challenges as a Frontend Team Lead

Since 2022, I've been working as a frontend team lead, where I lead a group of talented developers. One of my biggest achievements was implementing automated tests, which reduced QA testing time by more than 50%, demonstrating how important quality and automation are in modern frontend.

Currently, I'm mainly focusing on:

React and NextJS as core technologies
Cypress and Jest for testing
Tailwind for styling
AWS and ArgoCD for infrastructure and deployments
Java application architecture

After-Hours Projects - Passion and Innovation

What truly reflects my passion for technology are the projects I develop after work hours:

Mobile Service - an iOS application in React Native supporting electronics service technicians (soon as SAAS)
Accomore - a reservation system for apart-hotels with Booking API integration
Anonymous Surveillance - an optimized JAVA application for database management
MoodBeat Analytics - my latest project (started 01/2025), analyzing user mood based on voice recordings (soon as SAAS)

I'm particularly excited about the "mono services architecture" concept in MoodBeat Analytics, which I plan to present on my YouTube channel. It combines the advantages of a monorepo with microservices, using Java 17, Spring, NextJS, and Tailwind.

Lessons from Failures and Successes

Those early years as a freelancer taught me more than any courses. I remember a website project for a local business where I completely underestimated the time needed to implement a payment system. It ended with nights spent coding and financial loss. But thanks to such experiences, I learned to plan better, communicate with clients, and realistically assess my capabilities.

There were also successes - like a website for a startup marketing agency that attracted their first major clients and opened doors to bigger contracts. That's when I understood how a well-designed and implemented website can impact a client's business.

What's Next?

The frontend industry is changing at a rapid pace. Frameworks that were popular a year ago may be outdated today. That's why I'm constantly learning and experimenting with new technologies.

I believe the key to success in this industry is:

Continuous learning and adaptation
Optimizing processes, not just code
Ability to work in a team and communicate effectively
Knowledge sharing and mentorship

In future posts, I'll share more detailed insights about specific technologies, problems I've faced, and solutions that have worked in my projects. I'll also share all those failures from the beginning of my career - because they are just as valuable as successes if you draw the right conclusions from them.

And when I'm not sitting in front of a computer? You'll find me with cars, on the racetrack, or helping friends repair their houses and apartments - because a programmer is not just about code, but primarily about solving problems! And yes, I've also learned that working 16 hours a day fueled by Red Bull is not a recipe for long-term success - balance between professional and personal life is just as important as knowing the latest frameworks.

~Seb

PS. If any of you still remember old CS 1.6 forums with colorful, flashing banners and clan graphics - yes, that was probably my work! From those simple pages to today's React and NextJS applications, I've come a long way, but the same passion for creation remains.