Cues, Cleavers & Keys
My first job was working as a child actor on a soap opera. This role ran for four years, until my character was sent to boarding school and in typical soap opera fashion, returned weeks later a fully grown man… This was an amazing experience, but my interest in acting was fading. I did continue to act throughout my teens, but at 16 I found a new passion that steered my career in a different direction. Over the summer that year, I began working at my best friend’s family’s Thai restaurant. I truly believe there is no greater test of one’s hustle, work-ethic and on-the-fly problem solving abilities than working a shift in a busy kitchen during service. I got hooked immediately and spent the next 16 years honing my skills, expanding my culinary knowledge and working in some of the finest kitchens in the world.
My career in the hospitality industry came to a close in 2016, as my side-hustle had grown into my main-hustle, and I had to leave my position at the wonderful GT Fish & Oyster in Chicago to continue growing the business my wife Karen and I founded in 2014. The business was Chestnut & Grace Gourmet Dog Food Company: A craft dog food company with a full line of food and treats made of 100% human-grade ingredients. For the most part C&G was a subscription box service operating from our online store. It was during this time I was first exposed to coding. As our business grew and our product line developed, I began learning to customize our store’s shopify theme to better reflect our brand. I didn’t think of it as learning to “code” at first, but that soon changed as I wandered further and further down this rabbithole. The business was experiencing healthy growth and the website was looking better than ever. The future was bright…
Enter the sh_t-storm that was 2020... As for all of us on planet Earth, 2020 f_cking sucked. In the early days of the pandemic orders slowed, farmers markets were canceled, and cold chain shipping logistics fell apart. It was clear that we were likely going to need to temporarily shutter the business. During this period I began to teach myself python to kill the boredom. As time passed, everything remained uncertain and temporarily morphed into indefinitely. I continued to code. Then my beloved father passed away. This event led to the decision to permanently close Chestnut & Grace. I continued to code.
2020 was a year that has forever changed the trajectory of my life in many ways I did not expect. There was tragedy, trials and tribulations. There were also silver linings. None outweighing the loss, but sources of strength and drive to move forward with intention.
With that intention, I shifted from being a hobbyist programmer to voraciously learning about programming and web development. On June 7th, 2021, I began the Software Engineering Immersive program at General Assembly to gain in-depth knowledge of current industry standard technologies and began extending my network into the tech sphere. Upon completion of the program on August 31st, 2021, I did not shift gears, I just kept building. To be honest, I was terrified of the application process for developer jobs. I didn’t feel ready. I figured that once I could build something that would impress myself, it would impress others as well, that would kill my imposter syndrome, and I would be ready for a job in the tech industry…
Almost all of that turned out to be true. In mid October 2021, I began building a City of Chicago Carjacking data modeler using the Chicago Police Department's CLEAR (Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting) system. By November 3rd, I was ready to present my app Shy Jack at a General Assembly graduate showcase. Those in attendance were impressed by my app. The following week was filled with interviews and culminated in an offer from Third Act Digital. I accepted the offer and thus my career as a software engineer officially began. The imposter syndrome though… that’s still alive and well. We'll talk about that later.