Undeterred, she went back to the drawing board. Today, she's the proprietor of Jo's Fusion Kitchen.

Jo's actually shares a kitchen with a catering company, since Dwarakanath can't yet afford her own digs. So, weekdays from 4 to 10 p.m., she and her three employees make dough and pizza sauce and chop vegetables. They turn out some 100 vegetarian pizzas a day.

The road from coder to kitchen wasn't easy. In February 2003, Dwarakanath was laid off from LSI Logic, where she wrote code for the set-top boxes that are distributed by cable companies. Her job was to watch TV all day long, looking for programming glitches in the audio and video signals being transmitted to the boxes.

Dwarakanath says, "I enjoyed working as an engineer, but I felt there was a glass ceiling." She also felt "contradictory" watching television at work when she wouldn't let her kids watch TV at home.

Her 8-year-old daughter attends Country Lane Elementary in Cupertino, while her 3-year-old son is in preschool. The layoff gave Dwarakanath a chance to spend last summer playing with them. That's one reason why she says "I was very happy the day I got laid off. It's always easier when someone makes a decision for you."

It wasn't all play last summer, though. By June, Dwarakanath knew she wanted to do something outside of high tech. That's when she started making pizzas for family and friends. She's "always loved to cook for others" and saw a need for healthy, vegetarian pizza pies with "spicy flavors."

After several months of experimenting, she launched Jo's Fusion Kitchen last November. Jo's produces four varieties of take-and-bake frozen pizzas: a Mexican combo called Baja Sizzle; an Asian-influenced Black Pepper Medley; the Indo-Italian Paneer Delight; and the traditional Indian-sauce-flavored Bangalore Masala.

The last is a reflection of Dwarakanath's Indian heritage. She came to the United States 13 years ago and has lived in the Cupertino area for the past eight years. For now, she's keeping sales close to home, selling to local Indian grocery stores, as well as to high-end supermarkets like Lunardi's, Cosentino's, Draeger's and Gene's Fine Foods. She adds that the business is "still not quite there yet. I'm hoping in six months I'll be making some money."

That may well happen: According to researchers at the Leading Edge Group, the frozen-pizza market will grow to $4 billion by 2005.

As for other techies thinking about a career change, Dwarakanath says "go for it." Being the lead salesperson, sole marketeer and head chef is tougher than she thought it would be, but she's figured out "when you're doing something for yourself, you come out feeling good at the end of the day."