I've done this most of my career. There is some great advice already in comments here, but if I had to boil it down to one thing, it would be this: have permiss

I've done this most of my career. There is some great advice already in comments here, but if I had to boil it down to one thing, it would be this: have permission to be the new guy and ask dumb questions. Explicitly ask for this permission -- and take advantage of it. If done well, yes, people will drop their opinion of you for a week or two. Then once you "get your feet wet" you'll start making a sythesis between what you already know and the new domain. It will start making sense to your coworkers. Don't soft-pedal it. Don't try to know everything. In fact, admit to being a complete noob. Starting at zero you can humbly begin to kick ass and get noticed. Walking in the door as Superman? Not so much. If you do that, there's nowhere to go but down. The crazy thing I've noticed is that people inside domains view technology as the most important part of a job. So instead of learning SexPumpkin 4.0, they'll look for somebody who's already an expert, because that's what we need! As it turns out, there are a ton of super smart people in the world, but there are only a tiny few people that know both tech and the domain well enough to solve problems well. If you're too busy, lazy, or incompetent to pick up the new tech, then fresh meat isn't going to help. The real skill is to already know a bunch of things people want and be able to transition domains quickly. You can gain that kind of thing by doing charity work, alongside personal projects. One of the unexpected benefits of being the new guy and asking dumb questions is that in many cases, you end up solving complex problems that have stymied the org for years -- mainly because they've been so deep in the work they haven't been able to look at it from the outsid. The worst thing you can do as a technical expert is to ignore this advice. Ask questions. A lot of them.