What do a professional chef and a software developer have in common?
Well, as a good friend of mine once told me: “What the heck?”
Let me explain.
Since I was a kid I was very fond of technology. Especially computers. Since my first Acer Aspire back in ’97, the one that came with the telephone, and the many hours I spent playing on it. The good times spent sharing files with my friends, and videogames, of course.
Many years later, life showed me a different path, a different passion behind pans, fire, and knives. And so I decided to become a professional chef.
Many things changed for everybody starting in 2020. Many plans disappeared, and decisions changed. I decided to give it a try, plenty of doubts, in this growing industry of IT.
Computers again. “What?”
“How come?”, “Are you sure?”, were some of the common questions I got from my friends, without forgetting the biggest concern: “Cooking and coding are two different worlds!”… Right?
Well, as I come to realize, it is false!
I know there are not so many things in common technically speaking. But plenty of skills that can be transferable with ease. Things that can prove even more valuable than technical knowledge. Things that take years to develop and no school can provide.
One of the most useful ones is that pressure is real, and I thrive under pressure. Is my favorite extreme sport! Meeting deadlines without losing quality, are like those busy nights in a kitchen.
Another one is the balance between teamwork and self-accountability. A kitchen would not be able to deliver a product without a team working piece by piece to the end goal. But at the same time, as one of my bosses used to say: “I don’t want problems, I want solutions”. Look for your solutions so you and return to continue building in the team. Don’t expect to receive help if you haven’t tried everything before for yourself.
And most important, always keep learning. Everybody can teach you something. Can be a new language, or a new recipe, or as simple as a new word from the dictionary. Marco Pierre White once said: “We all wear blue aprons in my kitchen because we’re all commis, we’re all still learning.”
Don’t ever forget.
All that I’ve learned before behind a stove are proving to be helpful now behind a keyboard. And the skills I get to learn as a developer will skyrocket my performance in a kitchen as well.
Starting over again doesn’t mean starting all over again. I have saved so much time knowing all these things before starting this new venture. This is part of who I am, and what I can give to anywhere I end up working in.
In the end, I am a chef who found in coding a new way to create great flavors!
