Why programmers are so UNHEALTHY... (as an ex-Google software engineer)

all right hey and welcome back with your host the ex google x facebook tech lead and today i thought i would cover seven healthy habits for software engineers because i've been working in this field for well over a decade and i've learned about how to keep my body in shape and healthy so let's just get into it tip number one is to understand that exercising is the most productive thing that you will do all day many people may think that there's other more important things to be doing but really what could be higher priority than your own health health is wealth i mean come on let's get our priorities straight here so to help me get outside today we have actually a foldable electric bicycle kindly provided by imacwheel.com so on my short bicycle ride today i've already received so many comments about this because bicycles have actually come quite a long way you don't see many bicycles like this and this one is actually it's not even that expensive it's under 500 bucks or so and it's a great little commuter bike especially during lockdown when you want to commute to local places in your vicinity and actually so far i found this bike to not only be sufficiently stylish for one as stylish as myself but also to be a lot of fun as well because it's enabled me to go to a lot of places that normally would be just a little bit too far for me because it has electric motor capability so what happens is as you're pedaling the bicycle will actually boost you to help you go further and it's actually pretty fast with a range of about 35 miles loads of fun and probably the most fun i've had all year and it's a great way to get some sunshine and vitamin d while you're at it look anyways this electric bicycle is called the mac wheel i've been testing so far thoroughly enjoyed it i'll have a link in the description below if you want to grab one as well okay tip number two to understand is that the profession of software engineering is really more akin to joining an athletics sports team than any sort of office activity and that's because due to the sedentary nature of coding where you're sitting in a chair 8 to 12 hours a day you absolutely have to get your exercise in daily kind of like how nfl football teams have to get their daily exercise and training in in order to be able to perform at their best for a more sustainable period of time because you know if you're not exercising and just sitting in the chair all day that is simply not sustainable and so for me i've been in this game for well over 10 years and i've come to realize that if i've spent a whole day coding then i will absolutely ensure that i get some exercise for the day we're talking about at least 30 to 60 minutes of activity where i get my heart rate up and it's even better if you can put it into the middle of your day because research shows that even if you just sit for eight hours a day and then you exercise at the end of that maybe in the evening or the morning that your body basically dies during that eight hour period and it is incredibly unhealthy all right tip number three is get a good sleep routine in so sometimes you hear about these myths of engineers who are hacking all night and i'm sure there's a few people who do that but you also have to understand that those students who were programming all night and studying for their final exams they probably failed their final exams or their lab assignments either way and so you're kind of copying a failed example those people didn't succeed and so what type of people actually did succeed oh me oh yeah that's right you're looking at them right now and so i barely ever pulled an all-nighter maybe like two or three times in my whole entire life but most of the time i finished my assignments on early and relied on a stable routine sleep schedule in order to make sure that i was 100 functional every single day because programming is a mental sport as much as it is a physical sport okay tip number four is about your diet what you eat and drink and for software engineers many of us who get free food at the cafes free lunch free dinner you know maybe we'll go to hackathons and they provide free pizza free red bull there's free candy all over the place sugar caffeine you need to understand that you have to get your diet under control and practice self-restraint because if you don't you are going to eat yourself and drink yourself to an early death and sadly i've seen this young people in my offices with diabetes where they have to inject insulin because probably early on they were just binging on too much sugar you know i had a co-worker who would drink a diet coke every single day at lunchtime maybe even two or three diet cokes actually every single day and the key thing to realize is that all of these free snacks that the companies are providing you it's all there to make you stay and work longer and all of it is going to be infused with sugar or caffeine it works against you and when you combine that with sitting all day so that your body does not have an outlet to get rid of additional energy or fat then that's one reason that you see so many fat overweight and ugly programmers out there because they just don't take care of their bodies and companies will go through these programmers rinse recycle repeat and trash them into the bins and yes i've seen the trash cans with the discarded programmer bodies as well with my own eyes and the fact i'm even drinking some caffeine right here this is it's not coffee it's just powdered to caffeine really but i would suggest that like what i like to do is just drink some hot water or maybe a light tea something without caffeine like say chamomile and you just drink that throughout the day when you're at the desk and what happens is not only does it make your body full but helps you get up every say 30 to 60 minutes for a bathroom break walk around and that turns out to be really good for your legs and just exercising and getting those stretches in throughout the day now tip number five is to understand the first things in your body to go as a software engineer so i've seen a lot of my colleagues with a lot of various disabilities eyes is one right like i've seen a lot of people their screens they have the fonts really big on the screens because they just can't see anymore very well even with glasses you know some of them are they're partially blind like legally and so i would recommend really taking care of your eyes maybe wear some sunglasses when you're driving outside just to stop the sunlight from getting into your eyes too much don't squint too much if you're using contact lenses you may want to consider switching over to glasses because staring at the computer screen all day can really dry out your eyes people will forget to blink for example or just drinking a lot of water may help with that as well i've heard there are also blue light glasses though i've never tried it now the other thing to go are your fingers where you get carpal tunnel from typing way too much you know with that as well i would recommend making sure that you get a nice comfortable keyboard something ergonomic say a mechanical keyboard that doesn't tire your fingers out too much diabetes is the other one to take care of to be careful about you know limit your sugar intake because it's a very common problem especially in western societies weight gain and then your posture right some people end up with this hunched back curved spines and elongated necks and for that make sure to just always make it a habit to try to sit straight even when you're not at the computer when you're like eating food like keep your back straight and that will help with that and also one thing i've started has also been daily stretches to maintain range of motion so every night for example maybe as you're watching tv or before you go to bed you can practice a set of stretches in order to preserve your range of motion now the sixth tip i have for you is that you should actually look into shortening your commute time so this is less of an issue with the whole pandemic thing going on right now but in my own experience i knew for a fact that anybody who had a long commute like for example they would drive in from san francisco into silicon valley that's an hour-long commute sometimes it could be 90 minutes even those people simply would not be able to exercise there's simply not enough time in the day to do that because think about it you leave work at 6 00 pm get home by 7 7 30 then you got to eat dinner takes you up to about 8 30 or 9 p.m and that's pretty much the day and then what you're gonna exercise at 9 00 pm then like that's going to be pretty late and it's just not really maintainable or sustainable so what happens is that your commute just cuts into your exercise time so if you had the short commute you would have an extra say 30 minutes or an hour every day just a clean free amount of time to put in that exercise and then my last tip is to understand that you are not living in a virtual world even though you spend a lot of time in the virtual world right so what happens is a lot of people they go out into the real world and they mess themselves up maybe they break their leg and they think there's an undo button or just undo it roll back get revert you can't do that there's no undo you get one body you don't get to make a copy of it with ctrl c ctrl v and yes it sounds silly ridiculous but unfortunately that's how the younger generation lives because they were raised in the digital era where through a simple key press they can undo any mistake or action they have taken and that's not to mention they're playing video games or watching netflix all day you know for me when i first went scuba diving i felt like i've done this before even though it was a totally new experience for me but it felt like something i had surely done before and that's because i just watched so many nature documentaries on this stuff and so when i was actually scuba diving i almost felt like hey where's my coffee i want a cup of coffee while i'm scuba diving because that's how i normally enjoyed the experience and there were a few moments in retrospect where i almost died because i was just careless or not thinking enough about the true dangers and risks in submerging yourself and having your lungs collapse by half their size because you're scuba diving so there's no second do-overs this isn't a dress rehearsal this is the real thing and you just have to take care of your body because you don't regenerate like in the movies oh and then one more bonus tip never hesitate to take some time off take a sick day or so to go to a doctor's appointment at the disappointment get something checked out take care of yourself you know i know when i was working as a full-time employee it was so difficult for me to even take an afternoon off to go to the dentist i just felt so guilty about it i put off a lot of doctor's appointments or blood tests for weeks or months because i just felt guilty about it and the thing is in reality all of this is it's accounted for it's pre-budgeted for you're allowed to take some time off to take care of yourself that's just part of the cost of working so don't hesitate to do that so that'll do for me but let me know what are some of your top tips for health for software engineers or any type of office job post them in the comments below i'll see you there if you like the video please give a like and subscribe i appreciate that see you in the next one thanks bye

Channel: TechLead Show

Views: 68,732

Keywords: techlead, tech lead, engineer, technology, amazon, google, developer, apple, googler, tech, swe, software, facebook, computer science, cs, fb, software engineer, software engineering, software engineer life, software engineer intern

Id: 2RzhJ_uqYj8

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021