I'm very much just a wannabe developer, not yet had a tech role anywhere, but have been coding and making stuff for a long time. One thing Gitlab is great at, besides being open stuff like this, is being extremely welcoming to oss contributors. I applied for a technical writer job there, and before I even heard back I started looking at doc issues and making MRs. Messed up a little the first time, and was immediately helped by some employees and given feedback and direction. I kept going for like a month and felt like part of the team for brief moments. Someone there even offered to video chat with me and go over some career advice. It was really nice, I got nominated that month as a contributor MVP. I was unfortunately screened out of the job at the first stage, but still very much appreciate how nice the people I was working with were.