After graduating MIT, I decided to cook professionally and figured I'd go to culinary school. Though it cost a lot of $$, it would teach me foundational skills & set me up for success right? There are remarkable parallels between culinary school & coding bootcamps.

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I'm glad I spoke to some professional chefs before finishing my application to the Culinary Institute of America.

Turns out that a culinary degree is a NEGATIVE signal in hiring, and if you are lucky enough to get a job, you get paid the same as people w/o formal training.

2/x

But no one tells you this. I got lucky.

Before applying to culinary school, I decided to volunteer in a restaurant (that's the only way they'd hire someone with no skills... though it took hundreds of applications to get there). They did start paying me after a few days...

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...when I showed I wasn't totally useless, though (in fairness, I didn't know how to hold a knife and was pretty useless). That was nice of them.

Anyway, one day, the head chef overheard me talking about culinary school, took me aside, and talked me out of culinary school.

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I confirmed his take with a few other chefs. There was complete consensus: culinary school was totally a scam.

So, instead, I just kept working, learning on the job, and ended up cooking at multiple Michelin star restaurants.

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Though ultimately, I went back to writing code, every time I hear about coding bootcamps, I'm reminded of this story.

Back then, cooking was super cool. Food Network was shiny and new, and Tony Bourdain was still alive and dropping f-bombs 'round the world.

6/x

Now, coding is the shiny new thing, and shiny news things draw a new generation of scam-moths.

The parallels are incredible, down from inflated pricing to the negative signal to employers.

It's not so easy to walk into a tech company and work for free, but for the autodidacts among us, there are other paths.