Prashamsa Pandey is a Web Developer at Park & Battery with a background in full-stack development, accessibility, and UX research.
She holds an MS in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Auburn University.
Starting a career in tech is exciting.
But starting one in a new country, culture, and job market is something else entirely. When I moved to the United States from Nepal for graduate school in 2021, I expected to learn new frameworks, but the harder part, I soon realised, was learning to present myself in a system that worked nothing like the one I knew. I had to learn how to network, interview, and read professional norms that others seemed to know intuitively.
Even with my technical experience, applying for roles in a new environment felt like starting over. And as a woman entering a field where I did not always see people who looked like me, I questioned whether I was ready or confident enough to belong. Over time, though, I realised uncertainty was not a sign I was unqualified. It was a sign I was doing something genuinely new.
Today, I work as a Web Developer at Park & Battery. But getting there taught me things I wish I had known earlier.
Your story is part of your skill set
My path to becoming a developer was not a straight line. Before graduate school, I built websites for clients, translating business needs into code under tight deadlines. Then graduate school added different challenges: coursework that stretched how I thought, projects designed for users very different from myself, and collaborative work where the hardest problem was often communication, not the code itself.
But that’s where your story comes in. An interview offers a unique opportunity to convey something more personal than just a list of skills: stories about specific users and decisions. What broke during testing? What would I build differently?
That shift, from listing tools to explaining impact, changed how I presented myself. I have seen this especially in women I have spoken to, who sometimes undervalue experience that does not match a “standard” tech path. Some of the strongest careers I have seen were built by women who took unconventional routes and learned to talk about that experience with confidence. You do not need a linear background to belong in this line of work and, in fact, it is often an asset.
Pay attention to the environment, not just the offer
Even once you know your story, the next question is where to tell it. When landing your first tech role, it is easy to focus on proving yourself and forget whether the company will support your growth.
Inclusive workplaces show up in smaller signals: how people respond to your questions, whether managers make space for learning, and whether teammates explain things without making you feel small. Try asking:
- “How does the team typically support someone ramping up on an unfamiliar codebase?”
- “When a junior team member flags an issue, how does the team respond?”
- “How does the team handle disagreement on technical decisions?”
This matters for anyone new, but carries extra weight for women. How a team handles scenarios like the above reveals a lot about the environment you are entering.
Speaking up is a learnable skill
Once you are in the right environment, the harder work is learning to use your voice in it. Early on, I hesitated to ask questions in case they sounded too basic.
I would rehearse a question in my head halfway through a meeting, sometimes translating it twice before it felt right, only to hear someone else ask it minutes later. What I learned is that questions should be treated as part of the process, not a weakness.
Learning how to ask questions was also important. Instead of “I don’t understand,” I would explain what I had looked at, what I thought was happening, and where I was stuck. That small shift changed how the conversation went, and how confident I felt.
Speaking up does not always mean having the right answer. Sometimes it means asking for clarification, flagging a concern, or saying “can we walk through this once more?” Because those are equally valuable contributions, especially when communication is the goal of any strong team.
Confidence is built along the way
Nobody is a stranger to the rigour of applying for jobs, and there will always be a stretch when applications go quiet. But the silence can start to feel like a verdict on whether you belong in tech at all. During my journey, I would refresh my inbox, rewrite bullet points on my CV, and second-guess decisions that I felt sure of days earlier. The hardest part wasn’t the rejections, but how they made me question myself.
What helped quiet those doubts was learning to ask myself different questions: Was I failing, or still learning? Was I behind, or comparing my beginning to someone else’s middle? Reframing my situation so that it reflected what it actually was – my own journey, not someone else’s – was grounding, and continues to be in such a hypercompetitive field.
If you are preparing for your first tech role, your background and your path are not things to apologise for. They are part of what you bring to work, especially in rooms you are still learning to read.
