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Ask HK: How to get “production level” experience with a new technology

4 points by y3k ↗ HN
Hello.

Recently I've got really interested on working at GitLab, I've started using their products and they are so great, I'd ~rally~ really love to be part of that.

However, one of their strict-requirements is: "You have worked on a production-level Ruby application, preferably using Rails (this is a strict requirement)."

At the moment I'm a Sr. Software Engineer at my current job, but the stack I've such experience is Python with Tornado / Django / Flask.

What do you think would be a good way to get such experience with RoR?

I can make some side projects as a practice, but I doubt that'd give me enough experience to apply for a job at GitLab.

I could also apply for other company that accepts a lower experience with RoR to get started with it, but that'd mean invest at least a couple of months plus a junior position.

Has any of you made a change like that before?

Thanks.

8 comments

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quickthrower2
I’ve tried to but it’s hard to get a RoR job from another tech unless I took a big pay cut. What is so special about GitLab, can another company offer you what you want?
y3k
I like the idea that they are "remote focused" and the quality of their product.

I'm not "married" with the idea of working there, as a matter of fact I'm already on the interview process with another company (remote too).

wrestlerman
They pay based on local rates. For me, this is a big no. I don't think they are a company worth changing your stack for.

But going back to your question, this is a hard one... Unfortunately, I guess most companies look for experience in a specific framework, not even in a language in senior roles. Probably you would have to find some company and consider pay cut/start yours with the new stack. I think smaller companies may be less picky about your stack. You could also look for team lead roles and practice new stack while leading a team. Sometimes companies let you introduce a new stack, but it has to have a good reason. If you work with django I see no reason for rails.

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...

y3k
Oh well, there it goes...

It's a bummer TBH, I'd need to take a big pay cut to work there.

Thanks for the information.

x4nt
Personally, I converted our in-house Flask app to a RoR application with View delegation to React. This was mostly to align the technology to the skills we currently have on the team, but I got a lot of experience in the process.

See if there is any room to convert your current Python applications to Ruby.

y3k
Where I work at the moment doesn't have a single Ruby application, and it's "corporate enough" that introduce one would be pretty hard-ish.

I can give it a shot with personal projects, but still I don't think it'd be enough experience.

rosspackard
I don't work at gitlab but one great avenue is working on large open source rails apps. And gitlab is actually open source. Try to get it up and running and tackle an issue they have.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues

also some other rails apps to look at:

discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse

dev.to https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to

just recently mentioned in another thread consul https://github.com/consul/consul

Or search for large open source rails apps.

nuclx
I wouldn't invest a lot of time into learning another stack - and personally I don't find learning RoR attractive in 2019. Just try if you can convince them with your current experience and catch up on the stack-specific details if the deal works out.