Why Amplication

From a contributor to an employee: Why I left my (perfect) job and joined Amplication

It was a rainy Saturday at the beginning of January(I don't really remember if it was rainy, but it sounds good for the story, so bear with me). Little did I know that my life was about to change.

Back then, I started to learn NestJS and found that I liked this 'Angular-ish' framework for Node.js, but I didn't know how common it is in the industry.

So I did what programmers do when they want to know something - I posted on Twitter.

I asked the community about projects or companies that use Nest.js and openly share their architecture. I got two answers that caught my attention, one from Liran Tal, Director of Developer Advocacy at Snyk, and another from Yuval Hazaz, founder and CEO at Amplication. They both referred me to Amplication's GitHub repository and asked for my opinion. I entered that link and read the about section:

"Amplication is an open‑source development tool. It helps you develop quality Node.js applications without spending time on repetitive coding tasks."

OK, I thought to myself, sounds ambitious, I like it.

In the README file, I found the Amplcation Docs and the Amplication Website, I watched a short video explaining how Amplication works. At that point I said: "This is the one. I found an interesting project that I want to be a part of."

Moving back to the README file while trying to set up the project on my machine, I encountered a few problems. Most of the time, I would have given up at this point, but I was not willing to this time. I DMed Yuval on Twitter and asked him for help.

We had a Zoom meeting, and I think that this is the point where my 'silent contribution' to Application had begun. I pointed out several gaps in the contribution guide that made it difficult to begin contributing, especially for developers trying to make their first contribution.

After I succeeded in running the project, Yuval guided me to use Amplication. I was so amazed and told him: "if you had just told me about it, and I hadn't seen with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed."

And that was the look on my face:

As you can see in the video I watched, Amplication is an open-source project which helps you build APIs for your applications. You set your entities and the relations between them and get your API endpoints built upon NestJS, GraphQL, Prisma and PostgreSQL as a database. You also get out of the box Swagger interface, React Admin dashboard, and GraphQL playground, which in my opinion, made the whole package even better, as well as the developer experience.

Putting aside the fact that I was inquisitive and enthusiastic about how this code generation magic works, as a full stack developer, who has developed API endpoints, I know how time-consuming and frustrating it could be to write the same code again and again, just for different entities.

I will not burden you with all the details of my contributions to Amplication. The only takeaway from my story is that to start contributing to a project, you should find a project that really interests you.

I had contributed to Amplication for only two month before the job offer from Amplication arrived, and it was difficult to refuse. During those two months, I found that my engagement to Amplication amplified each day, not only because I like the product and truly believe in it, but also because I collaborated with the team and formed a connection with them quickly.

So, for those who are still wondering:

A few days ago, we posted our roadmap, and you can see there the great things we're planning.

I am very grateful for the opportunity I got, and it's exhilarating for me to work on a project with a group of people and a pretty big community who also like and use the product. This is absolutely one of the most fantastic and exciting things about working on an open-source project.

By the way, another reason why working at Amplication is so great is because we are encouraged to spend 4 hours a month contributing to an open-source project as part of the job.

This feels like the right moment to mention our Discord server.

To conclude, and to answer the question in the title, even though I was working at a fantastic place, it was a matter of timing that led to my decision to follow my heart and my passion.

For those who wonder how to begin their open source contribution journey, my biggest tip to you is to find a project that excites you, go to the README and the docs, talk to the contributors, ask for help and don't be shy.