2020 was not the most exciting year for businesses. With a global pandemic at full speed, a lot of companies lost the ground beneath their feet and had to fully transform their work strategy to survive. The whole world had to go digital in a heartbeat and get used to less eye-to-eye contact than we’ve ever experienced. But, in the end, it wasn’t all that bad, right?
Let’s focus on the bright side. We were actually pretty busy managing complex projects and developing advanced solutions for our clients in different countries. Our focus, as always, was on delivering better results and helping our partners grow.
In 2020 at DevriX we marked an important anniversary – 10 years of proudly doing what we do best and being part of the global WordPress family. We started small, grew big and sustained because we love what we do.
During the COVID-19 crisis, we were lucky enough to be prepared. The company was founded in 2010 by Mario Peshev with the idea of creating a new, remote-first business environment focused on results, not office presence. Only several years ago, part of the Sofia-based team gradually moved into a physical office.
But in any environment, we work without compromising our processes and quality – using Slack, Asana, git, Zoom, Meet, and Email to clearly communicate, deliver great results and move forward. Our team continued to work hard, although, honestly, we missed seeing each other every day like we were used to in our cosy office.
The pandemic didn’t stop us from growing and transforming, so now our crew boasts team members from all around the globe and has a total of 19 wonderful and talented women on board 🙂
And that’s not all. Read on to find out what 2020 looked like for DevriX, what accomplishments we had, what rocked us, and how we rocked the WordPress world.
DevriX at Work
2020 will be remembered for what it was, but we managed to keep our loyal customers and partners and create more value for them. We also made new partnerships and explored new territories. But amongst all we kept the good work flowing.
DevriX’s 2020 in numbers:
- High-profile WordPress retainer clients grew up to 21
- Successfully completed one-off projects: 10
- Exchanged 1,187,083 Slack messages in channels and private messages
- Completed over 7,000 Asana tasks by 50+ team members
- Published a total of 173 articles on DevriX’s blog
One of our biggest achievements this year was that in just three weeks we managed to build an AdOps-first publisher platform ready for scaling with smashing Lighthouse results beating almost any market player out there. And it tested perfectly against half a million sessions a day.
This was part of the successful results achieved thanks to our WordPress retainers plans, coined back in 2015. With retainers in place, DevriX scales multiple complex web initiatives for SMEs and publishers at a fraction of the cost of hiring a large team of industry experts with in-depth expertise in the space.
Our WordPress retainers enable you to utilize diverse talent and allocate monthly activities related to WordPress consultancy and troubleshooting, AdOps, infrastructure development and 3rd party integrations, scalability, performance optimization, security, and more.
I would like every.single.week to end like with client emails like this #staypositive pic.twitter.com/a89ge1vpxp
— Stanko Metodiev (@metodiew) April 24, 2020
We are also proud to say that one of our clients was recently acquired by Facebook! We hope that our successful partnership will continue to flourish and give us exciting new work opportunities.
Contributing to WordPress and the Community
Giving our contribution to the WordPress society has always been amongst our core values. In 2020, 5 of DevriX’s 11 Core WordPress Contributors participated in updates throughout the year.
We are proud to say that Todor Manoilov, part of our backend dev team, got his patch accepted in the 5.4 “Adderlay” update, launched back in March 2020.
Vladislav Abrashev, a Senior Back-end Developer at DevriX and a Core WordPress Contributor, has been part of the community for more than 10 years. He took part in the 5.5 “Eckstine” release together with our Junior Tech Lead Bojidar Valchovski.
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But that’s not all. Our long-year team member Yovo Kolev got his first Core Contributor badge for actively providing bug reports and helping the release squad. He participated in the 5.6 “Simone” release, where DevriX’s CTO Stanko Metodiev also left his mark.
A Camp Like No Other
In October 2020, Stanko Metodiev was also a lead organizer of the first-ever in Bulgaria online edition of WordCamp Bulgaria. As you know, the event, in its essence, is about meeting and exchanging ideas in person. So moving it to the virtual world was a bit challenging. Yet, the Bulgarian team didn’t let difficulties set it back and made it happen thanks to the support of the whole community. We are glad we had the chance to see prominent speakers exchange ideas and share insights from their experience. Our CEO Mario Peshev was also one of them.
Company Recognitions
Being great at what you do is never about the praise you receive. But having your accomplishments recognized is, nevertheless, a pleasant feeling for the team. It gives one motivation to work even harder and strive for perfection. We are thankful that our top-notch work was noticed in 2020 and we got featured by prominent brands.
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Here are some of the places that DevriX got featured in 2020:
- Top Global WordPress Development Companies by Clutch
- Joined GoodFirms’ Featured partners’ list
- Top WordPress Development Agencies by Pagely
- World’s Top 30+ Web Design & Development Companies in 2020 by Software World
- Best WordPress Agencies in Central and Eastern Europe by Cloudways
… and more you can see here
Sharing Knowledge
2020 was the year we learned that every event, every meeting, and an astonishing amount of work can be done online. We attended conferences online, “went” to meetings from our living-rooms, and watched workshops “together” with colleagues remotely.
It’s safe to say this was the year of the revolution in online communication and content distribution.
Giving our support to the future generation of devs and helping aspiring talent has always been amongst our company values. We are happy that we took part in Hack TUES 6 and met some brilliant young people, whom we hope will work side by side in the foreseeable future.
DevriX’s CEO Mario Peshev took part in the DevStyleR spring webinar discussing how the IT industry is working in a remote mode. He shared insights from our processes and ways to get through the #stayhome phase. In the discussion panel, Mario expressed his views on the state of the sector and forecasted how the pandemic will reflect on the industry.
Our CTO Stanko Metodiev had an inspiring session at another DevStyleR webinar looking into how employee happiness affects business success. Stanko shared his thoughts on how to keep developers happy without spoiling them too much, and provided good tips for nurturing a motivated and productive team.
Our own DevriXian and member of the WordPress Core contributing team Bojidar Valchovski was the lecturer of an inspiring and useful online seminar about WordPress performance optimization and scalability.
More Women on Board
2020 will remain a signature year in WordPress history with WordPress 5.6 “Simone” update and the first release squad led entirely by women.
As we already mentioned above, for us at DevriX our anniversary year was also one deeply impacted by the feminine presence in the team. Last year there were only 10 female staff members and now there are 19 brilliant women to make the company even stronger and more productive.
Other Levels Unlocked
Here at DevriX we are not only a team but a family. And some of the achievements we cherish the most are the little things that bind us together and contribute to our culture.
We created an awesome Spotify Playlist named WP Jazz. It features a song by each musician that WordPress has ever named a release after. Enjoy it:
During the little time we spend together in summer we had a plank competition to stay in shape. Guess who managed to hold it the longest?
Friday at the office be like – let’s see who can make the longest plank pic.twitter.com/b6IQTj1UT9
— DevriX (@wpdevrix) May 29, 2020
If there is one good thing about 2020 and working from home, it is that we got to spend a tremendous amount of time with our pets. Needless to say, some of them were also regular members of our Zoom meetings. As our team evolves, so does the DevriX pet count. There are a total of 28 animals owned by DevriXians, including 16 cats, nine dogs, two canary birds and one turtle. Among them is our favorite Community Manager Mara, the beast.