
So You Wanna Be a Chef (2010) - Tomte
http://ruhlman.com/2010/09/so-you-wanna-be-a-chef%E2%80%94-by-bourdain-2/
======
0x737368
I wish more experts would give advice about careers/undertakings with this
kind of honesty and a clear list of requirements to be successful.

With programming they built this whole myth that "coding is easy, bro, trust
me, you don't even need to know maths" and then people approach it with an
according attitude. Once they actually progress from doing CodeAcademy courses
to more real-world-like programming they hit a wall, programming turning out
to be hard doesn't fit their mental model of it being easy, they decide it's
not for them and leave it.

On the other hand, it could be argued that people who need to be convinced to
overcome difficulties in progressing in a skill are not suited for it, but I'd
still say that the world could do with more honesty so people can calibrate
their expectations appropriately.

~~~
GlenTheMachine
My wife teaches pre-veterinary students in university. It's not a dis-similar
issue to the one here. A lot of kids (particular girls, at the moment, for
some reason) grow uo dreaming that they want to be vets because they love
animals. Nobody tells them thqt the path to becoming a vet is just as
strenuous and expensive as being a medical doctor, but the pay is a tenth as
much. And nobody tells them that clients can be far more unreasonable, and in
some cases, downright nasty, about their animals than their family members (a
byproduct, I suspect, of paying for veterinary bills out of pocket). And
nobody tells them they will get bitten and scratched every damn day, and if
they're large-animal a horse will break both their feet within a few years and
they'll have to retire from arthritis in their fifties.

Suicide rates for veterinarians is one of the highest of any professional
group.

The first day of sophomore year my wife always lectures about the financial
and emotional realities of the veterinary field. She makes them make a budget
for themselves that includes a hundred thousand in student loans and assumes
starting pay in the high thirties. And every year she has students leave in
tears. She frequently gets irate phone calls from parents saying that she has
crushed their daughter's (in a few cases, their son's) dreams.

But this is likely the only time they will have had anyone tell them the
cautionary tale. And it is the right thing to do.

~~~
atq2119
From conversations with a new vet, it also appears that they have a weird
ethos of self-sacrifice. Basically, too many of them go into the field to just
do good and help the poor animals, and they end up working for free too often,
or simply not charging enough. (I don't know the details here, I'm simply
relaying the rant from said vet.)

~~~
solveit
An unfortunate side effect of caring more about the animal than its damn owner
does, I expect.

------
zappo2938
Finally something I'm an expert.

> if they should go to culinary school

I didn't go to culinary school. It means I might be one of the best chefs in
the world, however, I will never be hired by a hotel. For 11 years I cooked
exclusively in the top 20 restaurants including 2 of the top 3 on the Bay Area
Zagat survey, yet, I couldn't get hired for months on a private yacht because
I was not 'culinary trained'. At these restaurants, my title included chef de
cuisine and sous chef. Often I'd be the only cook without at least a 2 year
culinary degree from CCA or CIA.

It was the same thing when I decided to start coding. I don't have a degree.
It doesn't matter how incredible my github portfolio is. Nobody looks at it. I
went years without being hired because I didn't have a degree. I code because
I very much enjoy it like I still very much enjoy cooking, not because I want
to make lots of money. I strongly regret not returning to school to get a 4
year degree in Computer Science. I working on data viz using d3 utility
libraries and react native svg at the moment and spend whole evenings working
through khan academy courses on linear algebra and tranforms with matrices
because I don't have that knowledge.

If someone wants to enter coding, it's not necessary to get a 4 year degree in
CS, but I strongly recommend it.

~~~
borplk
There's a saying, I don't remember from whom, that goes like "a degree is just
a piece of paper ... but you have to have one in order to be able to say
that".

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praptak
Join a field that draws lots of passionate people and you will have low pay
and poor working conditions. It looks like the market monetizes passion.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yup. Passion can substitute for paycheck to some extent ("I don't earn as much
as I would at $mundane-job-X, but at least I'm doing what I love!"), at least
for the first couple years - and by then, it's much harder to change your
career path.

~~~
sizzzzlerz
Exactly. After the passion wears off and you're left with a young family that
needs food and clothing and medical care and you can't afford to buy a decent
house, doing what you love isn't enough.

------
bsaul
I’m getting horrified at the way cocaine is becoming standard in so many
places, and the way you hear about it more and more in the media, as something
casual. It seems just like if the drug cartel knew they wouldn’t be able to
benefit from weed for long and decided to start pushing for the next thing.

~~~
woodpanel
I'd offer 2 reasons:

1) Cocaine hasn't the stigma of junkies. Cocaine's junkies are often highly
productive individuals often paid accordingly.

2) In a way, the same self-improvement logic that allows yourself to guzzle
down "soylent" or "huel" allows yourself to take a nose once in a while. It's
like a mega-triple espresso.

While crack _is_ known for its junkies it's also used among high income people
(They somehow manage the teeth issues as well I guess). I've noticed that weed
users regard cocaine users as __*holes, while cocaine users regard weed users
as losers.

~~~
raverbashing
About 1) sounds like it's the 70's/80's again (Yuppies with sweatpants and
bitcoin?)

~~~
sizzzzlerz
I think it was Robin Williams who said "Cocaine is god's way of telling you
that you make too much money."

------
TeMPOraL
Overall, this article strongly reminded me of a recent take on artists [0][1].
The entry prospects are similar - you're supposed to take on student debt
which then you won't be able to repay for 10+ years out of the salaries you'll
be able to command, even if you'd live for free. Unless you graduate from one
of the few top schools, your education doesn't matter anyway, and even if, to
get any success you have to either play everything _perfect_ early in the
career, or get lucky.

Honestly, this sickens me. Our economy still keeps overworking people to
death, and the end results aren't even that great (e.g. typical restaurant
food isn't better because of the grind, there's just 200% more of it).

\--

Also, this resonates badly:

"Rather than put in the time or effort—then, when I had the chance, to go work
in really good kitchens—I casually and unthinkingly doomed myself to second-
and (mostly) third-and fourth-tier restaurant kitchens forever. (...) What
limited me forever were the decisions I made immediately after leaving
culinary school."

It's still infinitely easier in our industry, but being ~6 years past
graduation, I increasingly feel I fucked up my career prospects by not really
paying attention to it in the first year. Part of it was just _life_ , but
part of was lack of courage (or "impostor syndrome"). I should've applied
straight to first-tier companies. I thought I wasn't good enough. Then some of
the people I know got hired by FAANG, and I discovered that the standards at
those companies aren't really "world-class". That was just a myth.

Fortunately, in this industry there's still enough wiggle room to not be
completely doomed by early mistakes. I have a lot of sympathy for people in
other industries, who like me weren't money-oriented and planning their
careers since teenage years, who wasted their first working years and realized
it only later.

\--

[0] - [https://www.ejroller.com/2018/10/25/my-parents-give-
me-28000...](https://www.ejroller.com/2018/10/25/my-parents-give-
me-28000-a-year/)

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18328393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18328393)

~~~
mooreds
Yes, I enjoyed his point about choices you make just out of school having
profound reverberations for the rest of your life.

I think that is, as you allude to, real in software as well. Having a stint at
the FAANGs, or other big names like Microsoft or even Oracle, opens up doors,
at least a crack.

------
isomorph
Bourdain - what a fascinating guy.

I like the brutal honesty. Painful to read some of it though.

That line at the end - "luck is not a business model" \- a classic.

Any examples of startup-success-story-type people acknowledging this, or the
general idea of survivorship bias?

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _That line at the end - "luck is not a business model" \- a classic._

Funny in context of this site, though. While "luck is not a business model"
for the one who's to hope to be lucky, _other people 's luck_ definitely is a
business model. In fact, it's the startup investing business model.

------
sizzzzlerz
I loved that man, Bourdain! He's open, honest, and utterly brutal in his
descriptions. It was so unfortunate that, in the end, he was unable to shake
whatever demons were haunting him.

------
commaone
Rings true to me. It also describes my experience as an attorney. What is most
disturbing is it is a sign of a broken system. Chef, attorney, journalist,
musician, professor, real estate, entrepreneur, etc. The issue is that the
system has broken when half the jobs are untenable for anyone lacking a trust
fund or ivy education.

------
johan_larson
Implicit in that article is the idea that if as a chef you're not working at a
top 20 restaurant, you don't even count. That seems questionable. I could see
someone who enjoys cooking liking the work in a decent but not famous
restaurant, just as there are those who enjoy teaching high school rather than
being Ivy League professors or being nurse practitioners rather than surgeons.
And in each case there are many such lower-tier opportunities.

------
mastazi
> No possibility of making less money. I got older, and the Beast that needed
> to be fed got bigger and more demanding—never less.

In software development it's similar. I am now older, with a family, the days
of "risking it all" in startups have long gone.

~~~
sizzzzlerz
And you can understand why startups practice age discrimination in their
hiring policies. Why hire the guy or gal in their 30s who has a family life
and won't be willing to put in 70 hour weeks regularly when we can hire some
dude-bro in his 20s with no baggage who won't mind sleeping in his office as
long as we feed him breakfast and energy drinks.

------
victor106
Bourdain is one of the best writers in the culinary world you will find. His
sense of clarity comes through in his writing. I wish he wrote more about how
he developed this skill.

~~~
southerndrift
His mother was a writer. He most likely has been nudged into the right
direction if only by being around high quality literature.

------
csa
I saw the title and thought “just read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony
Bourdain”.

Of course, this article is by Bordain (RIP).

It’s worth a read.

------
a_c
Sounds like taking a MBA to me.

~~~
grenoire
Never take an MBA unless your employer is paying for your night classes.

~~~
barry-cotter
Come on, that’s too harsh. An Executive MBA from a good but not great school
is worth it if your employer is paying but most people who go to top tier
residential programmes aren’t going to regret it either. Attending anything
lower is a fool’s errand but if you can get into Wharton, Harvard &c. and you
want to be an executive it’s great if you want to move into a different
industry than the one you currently work in.

~~~
GFischer
As someone who paid for a non-top MBA and regrets it, I agree with the
grandparent - don't take a (non-top) MBA unless your employer is paying (and
don't take the top one unless you know what you'll do with it, though
connections will be very sweet).

If you can get into Wharton or Harvard I think it's very likely someone other
than yourself will be paying.

~~~
barry-cotter
But you’re not agreeing with the grandparent. You’re substantially more
optimistic with regards to top MBA programmes than they are.

