Vanaja Devi

spent some time in mexico recently & struck up a rando convo with a bunch of chefs. turns out they were on a kind of pilgrimage, tasting everything they could get their hands on. street food, fine dining, weird niche spots. not just for fun, but to refine their palates, to train their intuition, to figure out what they’d been missing. i’ve never had a good way of framing how to be a great at anything until this convo—fundamentally this is exactly how you should think about being a technologist, or a product person, or really anyone who wants to build something great. in my mind, it comes down to three things: 1) train your intuition like an llm. chefs don’t just wake up knowing how to balance flavors. they taste, compare, deconstruct. they build a mental model of what works & why. same in tech—your intuition is your edge. it’s what makes you better than a prompt-fed machine. consume relentlessly, but do it actively. 2) craft within context. tasting is just step one. the real game is taking that intuition & applying it to this moment, this audience, this need. chefs don’t just throw ingredients together—they design dishes for a setting, a culture, a mood. product people do the same. 3) ship like a chef. a dish isn’t real until it hits the table. same with products. you have to get things out in the world, let people react, refine, repeat. it’s not about shipping fast—it’s about shipping with intent. the best chefs aren’t the ones who hoard ideas; they’re the ones who plate them. repeat. great chefs aren’t just cooks, they’re curators of experience, constantly learning, constantly refining. great technologists should be exactly the same.

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