“I left my high-paying tech job to live out my dream of becoming a pastry chef”

The first career I remember wanting was to be a Grammy-winning singer. In my defence, it was the ’90s, and I was obsessed with Mariah Carey and Alanis Morissette. It seemed like a normal and rational job for someone who liked to sing and perform. As I got older, pragmatism took hold and I started to think about more achievable goals.

I come from a family where getting a job as soon as possible is what you do. Between the ages of 10 and 14, I babysat and delivered the Sears catalogue (RIP). On my 15th birthday, I started working at the Foodland in New Hamburg, Ontario, the small town where I grew up—ringing customers through the checkout and selling cigarettes years before I could legally smoke them. There was something about a real paycheque hitting my newly opened bank account for the first time that felt different than being slipped a $20 bill for babysitting. Making actual money gave me a sense of control, a feeling that the world was opening up to me.

Related: “I started Craig’s Cookies out of my tiny one-bedroom in Parkdale. A decade later, we have five locations across the city”

In high school, I thought I’d end up becoming an English teacher or a university professor. I went to the University of Waterloo for an undergraduate degree in English literature and political science, still thinking I’d eventually become a professor, until I looked into the realities of grad school and thought, Oh hell no.

I finished my undergrad in 2008, just as we entered a recession. Naturally, I took a full-time job as a barista in Waterloo while I tried to figure out what to do next. While I liked the work (and love coffee), I knew I couldn’t be a barista forever. It didn’t pay particularly well, and I had student loans to repay. So I looked into post-grad college programs, hoping for more practical, job-specific training.

In 2010, I was accepted to Centennial College’s book and magazine publishing program—a one-year diploma with an internship at the end. I loved to read and write, and I loved the intricacies of grammar, so I was very at home with my fellow word nerds. After finishing college, I finally set out on what I considered my “career,” working in an office, on a computer, from nine to five.

I went on to have several jobs in publishing and many side hustles. Eventually, though, I took an entry-level sales job at a digital marketing software start-up. I left publishing to work in tech for one reason: money. Publishing was interesting work in an industry filled with smart people, but there was always a sense of scarcity. I chose tech because I wanted to pay off my student loans and possibly go on nice vacations here and there.

Related: “Dough is in my DNA”—How the grandson of Toronto baker Dave Silverstein found his true calling

I spent the next decade doing sales in the business-to-business tech space, then made my way to client services. I learned that you really don’t need a business degree to succeed in business. Heck, if you can communicate effectively and don’t mind hearing “no” a lot, you’re extremely qualified. Working in downtown Toronto was fun—if I was stuck on something, I could always grab a co-worker and take a walk to one of many nearby cafés, and being so close to Chinatown meant that my lunch options were vast and delicious. I managed to pay off my student loans; save money; and travel to Mexico City, San Francisco and New York.

Then, in 2019, I was part of a mass layoff at the tech company I’d spent five years at. Even though I knew many other people who had gone through mass layoffs at similar workplaces, I still felt I’d given the company five years of my life for nothing. By the time the Covid lockdowns hit, I had only recently started a new job, and now I was working remotely. I went from doing five days a week in an office downtown to hardly ever leaving my kitchen table.

I know I’m not the only person who used that time to think about where I was at in life, how I got there and what I actually wanted. The transition to remote work was like moving in with someone you’re dating before you realize you don’t actually like them. My work was in my home and wouldn’t leave. And I couldn’t leave either! I could sense a mental breakdown coming, and it seemed like work was the main cause. I wanted to get away from my desk and my emails and the relentless Zoom calls and people constantly yelling at me about software. So often I found myself on the brink of screaming, “Who cares!” at my screen. I didn’t want to be alienated from my labour; I wanted to make something and then see that something in front of me.

So I started baking. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, who always had something in the oven. Everyone in my family has a sweet tooth, so if you showed up to my grandparents’ farm, there was always homemade cake or steaming muffins or, at the very least, a log of cookie dough in the freezer, waiting to be sliced and baked. When I was in my 20s and living with roommates, I liked whipping up a batch of cookies to share or making a birthday cake for a friend, and baking had always been my go-to for potlucks.

I felt like the only solution to my job dread was to do something drastic—even if it meant relinquishing a comfortable salary and professional stability. I took a look at my savings account and realized I would never have enough money to afford a house in Toronto, but I could fund something else: quitting my job and applying to culinary school.

I decided on pastry school, which seemed like it could offer the tangible experience I craved. With baking, once you understand the basics of what to do, you’re free to express yourself. This creativity appealed to me, the idea that I could be present in every soufflé, brioche or pain au chocolat. Plus, delicious baked goods are a surefire way of making people happy. Software may solve problems, but it doesn’t bring people joy like a beautiful loaf of bread.

In the fall of 2023, I started at George Brown College in the two-year baking and pastry arts management program. Being in culinary school was amazing because it removed the trial, error and second-guessing of home cooking. If something went wrong, we could just ask a professional with decades of experience for help; almost everything could be fixed. Once, I thought I’d ruined a batch of Italian buttercream, but my teacher busted out their heat gun and used it on the mixer bowl to help all the ingredients come to the same temperature. I got good at tempering chocolate and laminating croissant dough. I experimented with techniques I’d never been bold enough to try in my own kitchen, like artfully sculpting fondant or bravely pouring a mirror glaze on an entremet.

To pay the bills and feed the cat, I got a job at a west-end bakery while still in school. It was my first time in a commercial kitchen, and my bosses were lovely, accommodating my college schedule while teaching some lessons of their own on baking and what it takes to run a small business. I also took a job as a teaching assistant in an English class at George Brown to help make ends meet.

Even though I was working close to full-time hours while being a full-time student, I felt good about what I was doing. I was able to use my language skills to help my fellow students and use my hands to make cake and ganache and icing. It was the best of both worlds. I would come home after a long day and feel exhausted but satisfied. I had less time (and money) to go out with friends, but it felt worth it in the short term.

After I graduated, in the spring of 2025, I needed to find a good job. I had been out of proper full-time work for two years, and rent was only going up. The bakery agreed to increase my hours, but due to my relative inexperience as a recent grad and the strains of running a small business, I wasn’t making much more than minimum wage—not exactly tech money, and certainly not enough to live on in Toronto.

I had done my research before quitting tech: I’d built a budget around the average baker or pastry cook’s salary that I thought could withstand the expenses of living downtown. But that was assuming I could get an average-paying full-time job. Meanwhile, I was burning through my savings. Still, I’d needed to do something else with my life, and I believe that leaps of faith shouldn’t be limited to people with trust funds.

Finally, I received a full-time offer at a bakery that would pay significantly more (though still not anywhere close to what I’d made in tech). I loved the bakery that had given me my first kitchen job, but I needed to make the move. It’s hard to accept that you made the wrong decision for the right reasons.

My new boss, however, had little patience for my learning curve. I was in my late 30s, sure, but still a brand new baker. I was under pressure to be incredibly productive at 6 a.m. (we were a team of three people at most) while still figuring out the demands of new recipes and new equipment. As much as I loved arriving at work early, having a coffee in a quiet pre-dawn bakery and getting cracking on the bread, the combination of high pressure and low pay were getting to me.

Then, midway through December, my boss told me she would be closing the bakery for a month to take some time off and think about what was next for the business, and she wouldn’t need me any longer. I would go into 2026 unemployed. I was shocked, but I’m no stranger to layoffs, so the reality sank in pretty quickly. The last time I’d been laid off was a couple of days after my birthday, so it felt almost natural that this one should come right before Christmas.

Now, my days are filled with applying for jobs and trying to keep myself busy with reading, knitting and baking—for fun! I know that I will find another job, although what kind of job remains to be seen. Maybe I’ll work in a bakery again. Maybe I’ll sell software to survive and just bake extravagant birthday cakes for my loved ones on the weekends.

I wish I had a more uplifting success story, something like, “I quit a job that I hated, and now I am the new host of the hottest show on the Food Network, and Guy Fieri is my mentor and friend.” But I think my story is okay too. I did something scary and learned a lot, and that’s pretty much the joy of being alive. Plus, now I can make a banging gâteau St-Honoré.