Episode 12: It allows a small team to achieve really great goals, with Marcin Maicki, Dentons

Episode 12 of "Clojure in product. Would you do it again?" is live — Marcin Maicki, Global Data Developer & Lead Developer at Dentons, joins Artem Barmin and Vadym Kostiuk to talk about running Clojure inside a large, decentralized enterprise.

Highlights:

- Marcin’s Clojure origin story: started with ClojureScript, moved into Clojure, and found the functional mindset a natural fit coming from React.

- How Clojure landed at Dentons: a conscious choice for a focused referral‑network venture that valued expressiveness and small teams.

- Practical stack and ops: Postgres, Elasticsearch, Reagent/Re‑frame + Material UI, Metabase; Marcin also works on PySpark/Databricks in his global data role.

- Maintenance and risk: why they’re migrating away from old, unmaintained libs; regular security scans and external testing make dependency health a real concern.

- Team, onboarding, and hiring: a small Clojure pod (Marcin + one dev, testers, DevOps); knowledge sharing, docs, and close pairing are the onboarding tools — hiring remains the main practical blocker.

- Enterprise realities: polycentric org structure, integration friction with firm standards (Power BI, Azure), and the tradeoffs that make Clojure a strong fit in some contexts but a harder sell in others.

Watch Episode 12 to hear the full conversation and the nuances of keeping a nine‑year Clojure codebase healthy in a corporate setting.