I took this photo on my first day of work as a tech writer in Vienna, ten years ago.

New city. New industry. No technical degree. No experience in the field.

I was stepping into something that felt completely unfamiliar. I thought I didn’t belong.

I assumed everyone around me had studied software development, and I dreaded questions about my background.

Talking about technical details in German felt overwhelming.

And I was seriously worried about Git conflicts.

It was April, still cold outside. But I was coming home every day, covered in sweat, exhausted and wondering how long it would take before they realized I wasn’t good enough.

One day, I told myself: Marina, you’ve learned other things. You can learn this too.

And I made myself a promise: I wouldn’t leave the office without having learned something new.

From that moment on, everything changed.

I started asking more questions.
I started seeing mistakes differently.
I fell in love with reading and understanding source code.

And I found out that many colleagues hadn’t studied IT either. Some had even taught themselves. That discovery blew my mind.

Step by step, I grew stronger.

Over time, I won several employee awards in different IT companies, including a Hackathon at Broadcom, where we hacked our documentation software into interactive user experiences (way before AI was everywhere!).

Ten years later, I’m a Product Manager building software solutions for logistics.

My two main takeaways from that experience:

• You can learn anything if you stay curious and are willing to put in the work.
• Your assumptions and reality often don’t match. Always double-check.

Have you ever felt like an outsider in your field?
I would love to hear your story.