Hey peeps, this is gonna be my 2nd blog post and as I said I find it weird to write about yourself so I'm going to talk about other people. Like.. Omg.. Gossip...

Actually I want to talk about how incredibly awesome the dev community is and I'm sure you've heard that before & maybe even roll your eyes like "yeah dude, sure..." but my perspective here is of that of an outsider so to speak. I mean I like to think I'm part of the community now but I'm still learning the basics, still in school, and still looking for my 1st dev position.

As a chef there was this constant air of competition, which at times was healthy, but mostly destructive. Everyone thought their level of experience was greater than the next person and that their experience in xyz kitchen was at a higher level than someone who came from ABC kitchen. There was a story of this famous chef Grant Achatz from Alinea in Chicago who in his younger days went looking for a job at The French Laundry run by Chef Thomas Keller. Grant walks in, sees a guy sweeping the floors and asks to speak to the chef. Turns out the guy sweeping the floor was the chef, he never felt he was too good to help out with the lesser duties. It's a philosophy I've sort of adopted into my own life, a "we're all in this together" mentality.

It's that mentality that I've been seeing in the dev community. I kind of expected a lot of pushback initially being a stranger in a strange land, a sort unwelcoming to outsiders view. So far though the response is overwhelmingly positive, there's been a troll here or there but such is life & after being screamed at kitchens or had my food thrown at me or in the garbage I've grown a rather thick skin.

Honestly, from the moment I started talking about my journey on social media I've had several people reach out to me trying to help me along. I actually have a large list of names of folks that have gone above and beyond to help me in various ways and once I get that first dev job I'm going to do a giant shout out to them as gratitude. It's a bit weird... Growing in New Jersey, not exactly the friendliest state, usually when someone is being nice to you they want something from you but the dev community is just generally nice, they seem to want to mentor, grow the community and share their success. So... Thank you, all of you. Even if we've never spoken, thank you for helping others, for helping each other and for continually striving to better the community as a whole.