Welcome! There used to be a full-time moderator assigned to this community and they would encourage people to post in the welcome thread. But that person left the company a couple years ago and they now handle the mod duties differently by rotating them among a bunch of different staffers who have other jobs as well, so this thread just hasn’t been used much since then.
Meanwhile, a lot of things have changed. Since you have a technical background, I recommend starting with the technical welcome letter in the community – created wiki.
After that, go to the quick browse lists in the wiki, look down at the bottom of that page for the “project reports” section, and choose the “get started” list. You should find a lot of helpful things there.
There used to be a full-time moderator assigned to this community and they would encourage people to post in the welcome thread. But that person left the company a couple years ago and they now handle the mod duties differently by rotating them among a bunch of different staffers who have other jobs as well, so this thread just hasn’t been used much since then.