The Softening Effects of a Software Career
Description
A screenshot of a Reddit post that captures a humorous take on the lifestyle of a software developer. The top of the image features a side-by-side comparison of a person's hand, labeled 'Same hand before and after taking horomones' (sic). The 'before' hand is more traditionally masculine with visible veins and hair, while the 'after' hand is smoother and more delicate. Below the original post, a highly upvoted comment reads, 'I feel like this is my hand before and after I started working in software development.' The meme's humor lies in co-opting the original post's context to satirize the sedentary, indoor nature of a tech career, implying that the lack of manual labor and physical exertion metaphorically 'softens' a person, much like the hormonal changes depicted. It's a relatable, self-deprecating joke for experienced developers who have traded physical calluses for keyboard calluses
Comments
11Comment deleted
I used to have calluses from building things with my hands. Now I have them on my brain from trying to center a div
Before I wrote code my skin was RGB(225,180,160); five sprint reviews later it’s #f7f7f7 - apparently the most aggressive debt in the backlog is vitamin D
The real hormone therapy is discovering that your vitamin D levels have been replaced by RGB lighting exposure and your circadian rhythm now follows CI/CD pipeline schedules instead of the sun
The transition from 'touching grass' to 'touching keyboard' - where your Vitamin D levels drop faster than production on a Friday deployment. At least our IDEs have dark mode to match our newfound complexion
Smoother than a monolith-to-microservices migration - zero distributed transaction headaches
Software adds abstraction layers: same API (five endpoints), but after a few sprints the rough edges move from your skin to your service boundaries
Bare metal: rack rash. After Kubernetes: hands so smooth the fingerprint reader returns 404 - apparently the only state left in our system is the cloud bill
Coding rejuvenates Comment deleted
Tfw started coding in rust Comment deleted
This thing kinda changed my life Comment deleted
when when rust Comment deleted