Welcome New Hire: Getting started in Frontend at RIMdev (updated)
Whether you’re new to the frontend at RIMdev or looking for more about our Frontend team, here’s a quick overview of our team, tools, and culture!
As a whole, RIMdev has always strived to use the technology that best suits the task. This post will give you a glimpse into our environment and tooling. Keep in mind, software changes and so do we.
The majority of our frontend team are Mac users, so this post will seem Mac-biased, but if Windows is where you live, that’s just fine! We have several Linux enthusiasts across the team as well, however, we don’t support it for business use (that includes Linux subsystem for Windows).
Communicating
Communication is at our core; we can accomplish more as our sum that we can as our parts, so we talk. About projects, goals, vision, and the path to get there. Slack is where we live, comment, post gifs, cat videos, ya know.
Looking to get up to speed on either? Here are some quick keyboard references for Slack and Teams
Environment
RIMdev is always on a journey to deliver a great, and constantly improving, frontend experience for our users. We leverage VueJS, webpack (although ParcelJS is gaining ground🤞), and Sass heavily to build our Ritter Platform and family of static marketing sites. We’ve also built our own CSS framework Platform UI which continues to grow and be applied across our ecosystem. If you want to take a closer look, head over to npm and grab a copy.
- Node & npm
- Homebrew🍺: Mac’s missing package manager.
- Git & GitHub
- RBenv: Ruby version management (for Jekyll)
- Jekyll: Ruby-based static site generator.
- Hugo: Go based static site generator.
- [VS Code](Visual Studio Code - Code Editing. Redefined https://code.visualstudio.com/), Atom, other?
- iTerm2 or “Oh My ZSH!“
- .NET SDK
- Docker Desktop: To run our shared dependencies locally (MSSQL, Elasticsearch, Azurite).
UI/UX Design and prototyping
All things Adobe, but especially XD!
Supporting cast
- LastPass
- Highfive: Video conferencing.
- Spotify Premium 🎧
- Headphones
More online
- Codepen: A great place to work out problems and share! Create an account now! (shameless plug!)
- Sassmeister: This is a great tool to see how that Sass rabbit hole you’re headed down will render 😂
- Flexbox zombies: You should know it. If you don’t, this is a fun and free way to learn
- Nielsen Norman Group: blog of world leaders in research-based user experience
- Dribbble: Everyone needs inspiration
That’s really great, but what about professional development (me)?
Conferences
Conferences are great opportunities to learn, be inspired, or inspire others by speaking (👈 that’s Jaime! She’s awesome!)! VueConf and An Event Apart have become 2 of our top choices to date. We also encourage each member of our team to seek out new conferences.
Writing
As a developer or designer, you’re faced with unique challenges every day — so are your peers. Write about them! Share your solution with the community. None of us work in a vacuum, and how you approach a solution through code or design can help everyone.
Open Source
We love Open Source, from things we’ve made, to contributing to community projects and Hacktoberfest. Everyone on the team uses their personal GitHub account to build your community footprint. Some of our projects are private, although we keep much public in an effort to show your contributions.
Ongoing
Our professional landscape changes constantly, so we adapt and learn all the things. We all learn differently, so we provide many options: Instructor-led training, book reimbursements, subscriptions, whatever you need to succeed. Some examples of learning tools include Pluralsight, egghead.io, Vue Mastery.
Conclusion
If being a part of a diverse, transparent, and growing team while growing your own career is what you’re seeking, Ritter Insurance Marketing’s development team is a great environment. Team members are here to help you grow, face new challenges, and share pics of our pets (look for the #cats and #dogs Slack channels)! If you’re new to the team, then Welcome! If you’d like to find out more, reach out to any of us on Twitter 😃 and if you’re new, don’t be afraid to start a conversation with your new team members. We encourage everyone to participate and share what’s important to them.
