being in tech

I made it through the first month of my first assignment on my own and feeling really good about it. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t always the case, especially two days into the job.

This year, I got my Swedish citizenship after living in Sweden for 5 years. In my first year in Sweden, I took all the SFI (Swedish For Immigrants) classes while searching for a job. I managed to finish all the basic courses before I got employment with ByBrick.

I ended up working in mostly international teams so I have been using English in the work context ever since.

When I got my citizenship, it kind of snowballed into me setting up my own company and from that decision, I thought of stepping it up a notch and finally forcing myself to integrate in the best way possible, and that is by getting into a Swedish work environment.

I was fortunate enough to get an assignment at Skandia where they were open to English as long as I had a basic understanding of Swedish. I tried my best to do the interviews in Swedish though I back pedaled to English when my brain couldn’t handle it anymore.

I managed to get the job and I started on the 1st of September which was a Thursday. It was straight into onboarding meetings and really being immersed in full on Swedish. Thanks to my husband introducing me to all the Swedish TV series, I think I caught most of it, but I remember taking bathroom breaks with my head in my hands and contemplating whether I had made the right decision. I motivated myself by aiming to just make it through to Friday.

The team was great and very welcoming. We even had a small after work on the Friday which was a great close to the week. I remember being fully drained that weekend. It was definitely a good call for me to start on a Thursday, otherwise I think I would have been totally overwhelmed.

It continued to be challenging, so I kept motivating myself to just make it one week, then one sprint, then one month and before I knew it, I was sending off my first invoice. That was definitely a good milestone and a great feeling for me.

I’m fortunate enough to again land in a really good place to work, with a great team. It’s a lot of new things but it helps that I have some vague background on the insurance business from way back when my mom got me into selling insurance when I was in college.

I’m finally starting to get the hang of things, though I still resort to Swenglish. My vocabulary is definitely growing exponentially so I’m learning so much from this assignment, above and beyond the technical learnings as well.