On my system, openSUSE (15.1) is installed, as is zypper packet manager, which I'm not used to. Specifically, I think it lacks a huge amount of software, that I would like to use. I did already manage to install yum and add some repositories, but there is not much more content. This question about Enterprise Linux seems somewhat related, but didn't help for my OS.
As I prefer having a packet manager like apt-get over building everything from source, I wonder if there is a way to install it here. Yast was not so useful either
apt-get, it's Debian's repositories of software. My suggestion would be to talk to your (new) colleagues, they probably have similar needs to you, and have found ways to fulfill them on openSUSE.