Episode 144 51 min Leaving a dream job at the top
Hannah Brooks on walking away from a VP role to start over at 41, and how she made the decision with incomplete information.
Season 3 · Episode 137 Career
From the kitchen to code at 35
Former head chef Ravi Shah on teaching himself to program, landing his first engineering job and what restaurant kitchens taught him about software teams.
GuestRavi Shah — Software engineer
Episode 137 From the kitchen to code at 35
0:00 1:04:22
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Show notes
Ravi Shah ran a restaurant kitchen for five years. Then, at 35, he started learning to program before every dinner service. Two years later he shipped his first production code.
Maya and Jordan talk with Ravi about the realities of switching careers in your thirties, the surprising overlap between kitchens and engineering teams, and how to turn a previous career into an advantage.
What we cover
- Building a learning routine around a demanding job
- Choosing a first role strategically
- Transferable skills from unexpected places
- Finding mentors and community
Key takeaways
- Ravi studied for two hours before every dinner service for a year.
- His kitchen experience made him unusually good at incident response.
- He chose a first job in a domain he already understood: food.
- Career switchers should lean on their previous expertise, not hide it.
Timestamps
About the guest
Ravi Shah
Software engineer
Ravi Shah spent 14 years in professional kitchens, the last five as a head chef. At 35 he taught himself to code and now works as a software engineer at a food logistics startup. He mentors other career switchers through a free online community.
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