I trained as an environmental engineer. Then I changed everything.
Bragança, Valladolid, a telecoms network, and the slow discovery that the method travelled better than the subject.
I did not plan this. I studied environmental engineering, went to Portugal for a master's, spent an Erasmus year in Valladolid building potentiometric enzyme sensors, and ran multivariate statistics on grape-residue extracts.
Today I lead quality in a fintech. On paper there is no line connecting those two points.
What actually transferred
Not the chemistry. The method: define what you are measuring before you measure it, know your error, distrust a clean result, and never confuse the model with the thing.
That is the same posture a quality area needs. Most of what looks like domain knowledge in software is really that posture applied to a different subject.
The network engineering years
Two years at a telecoms operator in Bragança taught me something the lab did not: systems that are up are not the same as systems that are working, and the gap between those two is where every operational discipline lives.
Changing fields costs more than people admit
For about a year I was visibly the least knowledgeable person in most rooms. There is no way to shortcut that, and the advice to "lean into your outsider perspective" is mostly told by people who are already on the other side of it.
What helped was narrow: pick one thing the team does badly that your old field does well, and be useful there first.
Would I do it again
Yes, and earlier. The expensive part was not the switch. It was the two years I spent being sure that the degree I had already paid for was an argument for staying.
