How to gain experience with different tech stacks (without actually changing jobs)?

🙋 Questions
,
1

At my work, it’s mostly C#, PowerShell and python, and with Azure DevOps for pipelines.
Recently, I have started to learn about Playwright, and Selenium. I have tried some of the beginner stuffs and for the most parts, I am learning but I won’t say I am “experienced”.

Realistically, I probably need to devote more time to this.
However, I am curious how you folks do it.

Thanks

2 Likes
2

Side gigs and person projects, I guess.

2 Likes
3

Background:
You have plenty of experience with technology (tool) X, but want to have experience with Y, Z, etc.

What would I do:

  • Learn language and toolset
  • Prepare a sample Web UI / API project using a new toolset and use it as an open-source example on GitHub. Do it as much closer to “production” as possible - include automatic builds, reporting, screenshots and video, parallel runs, test run configuration, etc.
  • Ask for a code review and feedback from friends who work with this tech stack or here at the MoT forum
  • Find some side project as a freelancer - but have something to show as evidence that you are capable of building things
  • Ask your side-project employer to leave the feedback
  • You can test your newly acquired knowledge by going to job interviews

As a result - you have your experience (at home and and as a side job).

1 Like
4

Thank you.
That’s roughly what I had in mind.

5

Also try and see if you can apply what you want to learn as part of some Proof-Of-Concept or pilot/trial project at your current workplace, on your own spare time, if can’t dedicate some work time for it. It could turn out as something useful for work if accepted/adopted and give you some recognition at work, otherwise, can just be a learning opportunity for you - but in this case unlike open source projects or side projects (not affiliated with workplace), you may not necessarily be able to showcase the work publicly or talk about it without workplace affiliation.

1 Like
6

Also useful if you can find open source projects around the tech stack you’re interested in that you could contribute to.

2 Likes
7

There’s a few “test websites” that you can use to test against. To play about with Postman I ended up making my own small API (with intentional bugs) then built a suite of tests. Some 6 months later I got the chance to do similar at work so I had experience to leverage.

Whilst most my learning is security focused of late, I’d still recommend OWASP Juice Shop and Google Gruyere. Gruyere is probably a decent one. MoT has some great resources as well.

The downside of this is that it all in your spare time. A couple of times I’ve made the case to try similar tech to what I really want.

In all honesty, if you can learn a technique in one tech stack, you are half the way for others!

1 Like