I enjoyed reading this. I came across your post while googling stress comparison between chefs and programmers. I was a chef for 20 plus years including being a head chef and chef de cuisine. I was always able to handle the stress until I wasn’t. There were certain jobs that were just too much. It wasn’t the hours necessarily. Although, working months of 16 hours a day for 6 days a week will take a toll. I was not passionate about being a chef for most of the time and the pay was also horrible. I was able to outwork people often and most of the time be the eye of the storm. I gave it up for good last year when the pandemic created a vacuum even after I had just landed a fancy new job as a private chef at a bio tech startup. At that point, I was already a “dead chef” as my fiancé likes to call me now. Although, I do still make her dinner almost every night. After being furloughed and taking a few months to mentally recuperate, I decided to begin learning how to code. Now, that’s the path I’m on. I find myself extremely fascinated with it and have found some good mentors to help me through the process. But I am not sure I will ever be as passionate about it as I am about music. I am a musician as well. I’ve been one since before I even had my first cooking job. Even went to college for it. But like the culinary path, it does not pay unless you are a combination of gifted and lucky. So, I decided to keep this as a passion and not ruin it by trying to force a career out of it. I have played professionally. More recently in fact. Effectively retired from restaurants 7 years ago. Was a self-employed private chef after that. This allowed me more time to work on music. I have written and produced a bit of music and a music video. I have tons of unfinished demos. All this is to say that I think it’s hard to make a career out of passions and can also suck that passion right out of us. Especially, if the pay does not equal the energy output. But what I have gained throughout my professional career is that a good ole fashioned hard work ethic is enough to be successful professionally. Out working others can be a good goal to have and competitiveness is motivating. But no matter what one does for a professional living, I do not think it’s imperative to be passionate about one’s job. It certainly helps. But it’s completely possible to be really good at what you do professionally and also have an appropriate work/life balance and protect their true passions. Hopefully, I will be gainfully employed as a full stack developer within a year. That is my expectation. I set my goals high. Thanks for reading my thoughts and opinion and I appreciate the post you made. Please excuse my fatigued ramblings and grammatical errors or typos. ~ Cheers!
Thank for your thoughts! I agree with you completely that our careers don't necessarily need to be our foremost passions, but can help us live a lifestyle that allows us to pursue our passions. Best of luck on your journey and let me know if I can help in any way!
Hi! Thanks for replying. I could actually use some guidance. Mostly, I am beginning to work on my portfolio and some projects for it. Wondering what the best frameworks and libraries are to use for it and also what the best projects are for it. Although, I was a chef I have always been a musician and would love to work for some sort of music company as a self-taught “entry level” web developer. But, of course I would also take any entry level web development job. Anyway, any insight is appreciated. Thanks again for this article and your reply.
I would say that the best frameworks and projects to use are the ones that excite you. It would be good to have projects that showcase your evolution as a programmer.
My most recent portfolio had a CLI program that connected to the Google Books API and let users put together reading lists, a Ruby on Rails web app that was a wine-lovers' social media page, another Rails app that was a job search organizer, and a small webpage I made that tells you dad jokes when you click a button. All of my projects were written in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and JavaScript.
CLI programs are really nice to have because they show proficiency with a language. Full-stack web apps are good to include because that's what we work on most of the time, so it's good to be familiar with how they work. Whatever you include, be sure you deploy it to Heroku or some other cloud provider.
Once you start working professionally, all of your learning projects can be replaced with examples of your real-world work, which is a great feeling.
I hope this helps! Let me know if I can give you any more information. I'll try to respond sooner next time.
Thanks for this reply. I actually missed it somehow. As one might assume, progress was a little halted due to life's little twists and turns. Been doing a lot of personal chef work since about the time you responded, but I am now a little more balanced and back on the coding path. Thanks again for all that information. Very much appreciated!
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I enjoyed reading this. I came across your post while googling stress comparison between chefs and programmers. I was a chef for 20 plus years including being a head chef and chef de cuisine. I was always able to handle the stress until I wasn’t. There were certain jobs that were just too much. It wasn’t the hours necessarily. Although, working months of 16 hours a day for 6 days a week will take a toll. I was not passionate about being a chef for most of the time and the pay was also horrible. I was able to outwork people often and most of the time be the eye of the storm. I gave it up for good last year when the pandemic created a vacuum even after I had just landed a fancy new job as a private chef at a bio tech startup. At that point, I was already a “dead chef” as my fiancé likes to call me now. Although, I do still make her dinner almost every night. After being furloughed and taking a few months to mentally recuperate, I decided to begin learning how to code. Now, that’s the path I’m on. I find myself extremely fascinated with it and have found some good mentors to help me through the process. But I am not sure I will ever be as passionate about it as I am about music. I am a musician as well. I’ve been one since before I even had my first cooking job. Even went to college for it. But like the culinary path, it does not pay unless you are a combination of gifted and lucky. So, I decided to keep this as a passion and not ruin it by trying to force a career out of it. I have played professionally. More recently in fact. Effectively retired from restaurants 7 years ago. Was a self-employed private chef after that. This allowed me more time to work on music. I have written and produced a bit of music and a music video. I have tons of unfinished demos. All this is to say that I think it’s hard to make a career out of passions and can also suck that passion right out of us. Especially, if the pay does not equal the energy output. But what I have gained throughout my professional career is that a good ole fashioned hard work ethic is enough to be successful professionally. Out working others can be a good goal to have and competitiveness is motivating. But no matter what one does for a professional living, I do not think it’s imperative to be passionate about one’s job. It certainly helps. But it’s completely possible to be really good at what you do professionally and also have an appropriate work/life balance and protect their true passions. Hopefully, I will be gainfully employed as a full stack developer within a year. That is my expectation. I set my goals high. Thanks for reading my thoughts and opinion and I appreciate the post you made. Please excuse my fatigued ramblings and grammatical errors or typos. ~ Cheers!
Thank for your thoughts! I agree with you completely that our careers don't necessarily need to be our foremost passions, but can help us live a lifestyle that allows us to pursue our passions. Best of luck on your journey and let me know if I can help in any way!
Hi! Thanks for replying. I could actually use some guidance. Mostly, I am beginning to work on my portfolio and some projects for it. Wondering what the best frameworks and libraries are to use for it and also what the best projects are for it. Although, I was a chef I have always been a musician and would love to work for some sort of music company as a self-taught “entry level” web developer. But, of course I would also take any entry level web development job. Anyway, any insight is appreciated. Thanks again for this article and your reply.
I would say that the best frameworks and projects to use are the ones that excite you. It would be good to have projects that showcase your evolution as a programmer.
My most recent portfolio had a CLI program that connected to the Google Books API and let users put together reading lists, a Ruby on Rails web app that was a wine-lovers' social media page, another Rails app that was a job search organizer, and a small webpage I made that tells you dad jokes when you click a button. All of my projects were written in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and JavaScript.
CLI programs are really nice to have because they show proficiency with a language. Full-stack web apps are good to include because that's what we work on most of the time, so it's good to be familiar with how they work. Whatever you include, be sure you deploy it to Heroku or some other cloud provider.
Once you start working professionally, all of your learning projects can be replaced with examples of your real-world work, which is a great feeling.
I hope this helps! Let me know if I can give you any more information. I'll try to respond sooner next time.
Thanks for this reply. I actually missed it somehow. As one might assume, progress was a little halted due to life's little twists and turns. Been doing a lot of personal chef work since about the time you responded, but I am now a little more balanced and back on the coding path. Thanks again for all that information. Very much appreciated!