What do Tech Rats do?
Tech Rats are responsible for our technical systems, such as the website, IRC and API, and maintains the hardware these services run on. They also provide support for technical issues relating to our services. They think up new and clever ways to help the Fuel Rats do their jobs more efficiently, or otherwise support the community.
What kind of systems and programming languages are in use?
We have a diverse ecology of systems. Some of it is JS/React, some is Python, and we also use C++ and C#. All of our code projects are visible on our GitHub organization page, at https://github.com/FuelRats.
Our dedicated servers run Ubuntu, and we primarily use Nginx and Postgres for our backends. Issue tracking and project management happens on JIRA and Confluence, along with GitHub.
How can I become a Tech Rat?
The Tech Rats are a fairly small team, but packs a lot of knowledge into that small package. Thus, our systems are not something one can just dip their toes into. To become a contributing member of the Tech Rats, you should have a firm foundation in one of our used languages, and be willing to jump in on the deep end. We're happy to help support those who want to contribute to our codebases, but we don't have capacity to teach someone how to code.
There is a vetting process to joining the Tech Rats, with a fairly low bar to join in and start looking at ways to contribute. Those who show aptitude with our systems, and fit well with the team, may be offered a position as a Tech Rat. Given that Tech Rats have access to almost all of the data we handle for the Fuel Rats, we require signing of an NDA before accepting new Tech Members.
The Tech Team is a quite closely knit group, and you should have a measure of hard skin and a compatible sense of humor; we don't tend to hold back on our opinions, and discussions can sometimes get a bit heated. But the Techs all love eachother; we do in fact gather once a year for shenanigans, Snickers and swimming. Ever so often, we also do some work.
I haven't been scared off yet! How do I sign up?
Contact one of the Tech Rats on IRC, and have a chat with them. We'll probably invite you into one of our backroom channels to talk with the rest of the Tech Team and other potential future Tech Rats.