Disoft was where my professional IT career really began.

It was a small company in Innsbruck, and for me it marked the point where a long-standing personal interest in technology turned into real hands-on work. I joined as an IT technician and software developer and quickly found myself learning far beyond the job title.

My former boss once told me that he hired me not only because of the courses I had completed in HTML and Windows NT, but also because I was willing to learn. At the time, Java Server Pages were becoming increasingly important, and hardly anyone in the region had experience with them. Since every new employee would have had to learn JSP anyway, curiosity and commitment mattered more than prior knowledge.

So I started from scratch and learned Java Server Pages, later working with JavaScript and Java as well. Because I was the only full-time employee for a while, I was also involved in maintaining the company’s infrastructure, including servers. That gave me early practical experience with Linux, Sun Solaris, and Oracle.

Looking back, it was a lot of responsibility early on, but that was also what made the experience so formative. I had to adapt quickly, take ownership, and keep learning as I went.

One of the most memorable parts of that time was seeing the early mobile world begin to emerge. Long before smartphones became part of everyday life, I had one of the early prototype devices in my hands from a company working on combining a handheld computer with a mobile phone. We developed software for features that would later become completely normal, including what people came to know as MMS.

The company no longer exists today, but it played an important role in my path into IT. For me, Disoft was where it all truly started.