From Cooking to Coding in 2020
Growing up in Brooklyn one thing you learn to love is food and the abundance of restaurants to choose from. I took that love and turned it into a seven year career with a startup going from a kid with no experience that should not be trusted with a knife into a chef, overseeing multiple restaurants with experiences well beyond that of someone my age. A career I had no idea I wanted or would enjoy so much and that would help to open my eyes to a new path of challenges and growth.
When 2020 Started I would spend my days meeting with chefs and reviewing P&Ls, having conversations about the growth of a company and the development of individuals. I was building processes and tools(some computer based) for cooks and chefs. It was a fun but complacent routine having been with the same company for so long, the day to day challenge and excitement was fading but then march came. The pandemic reset the way we did business the tools and processes had to be remade and once again we back at the startup phase. It was exciting and scary and it wouldn’t last(the job not so much the pandemic ).
In July I was unemployed, the first time in about a decade and the first time since senior year of high school. I had a choice to make one I didn’t see at first but after a few repetitive conversations with my girlfriend and a few thought provoking walks through my now ghost town of neighborhood, continue in hospitality or pivot. But what to pivot to? How long would it take? Am I passionate about anything? Do I want to start over after getting this far?Let’s just say it took a few months, drinks, conversations, and non passionate interviews to answer all of those questions.
While the title of this post definitely gives away what the answer was, it doesn’t fully capture the why. During my time in hospitality industry I had the opportunity to work with different departments on projects that were way out of my scope ( the beauty of a startup). Those project lead me to learn some Javascript via youtube and build tools that I thought were so complex, boy was I wrong. So when I sat down and finally thought about it learning that language and building tools was probably the most fun I had as a “Chef” and I wanted to learn more and turn that joy and passion it my next career.
I started by doing a few cheap and short boot camps mostly from Udemy, that were very informative. It allowed me to really challenge myself to see if this was something I wanted to stick with or just something I talked into my head as a good idea. Turns out I actually really enjoy it and the challenge of learning each day it what keeps me engaged, something I wont have to worry about fading since I can’t possibly know everything about coding. All that lead me to why I’m writing this blog post, as student at Flat Iron School studying Software Engineering this is technically one of my assignments but for me it has become memo to remind myself of the year that has been 2020 and how my journey into coding started. So to all who’ve read this and my loving girlfriend who told me I could do it, welcome to my journey hopefully we all enjoy the ride.
