Are Software Engineers taking care of their health?

Santosh Yadav
2 min readDec 1, 2021

What is like to be a Software Engineer — Is it a mind work where you use your brain to write code?

They understand a problem and try to solve in an optimized way. If the code is not optimized, then it will take more time and more memory to execute it. If it takes time and memory then a company must pay the price, their customers can get frustrated and may leave their app or website. If the code takes a lot of memory, then you must pay the price for upgradation of server. So, the Software Engineer must right optimize code and it should be a maintainable and scalable.

Courtesy: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Programmer_writing_code_with_Unit_Tests.jpg

The work requires a lot of mental efforts, plus it requires physical efforts as well. They work for long hours sitting and coding, reading some confluence documents, checking JIRA tickets, reading documentation of any framework. A Software Engineer can get into meditation mode like continuously typing things for two or three hours and at the end of the day, he/she exhausted. During product launch, or critical production issues, they need to work more or less than 10 hours a day. So, it takes a toll on their body. Software Engineer need to take best care of their health and mind. Due to the nature of the job, there is no way that the work is going to help them to be fit.

They need to be close to fresh air, like near the window (if your city has good AQI). Avoiding air conditioning is recommended. You must drink water (no to hot/cold beverages) to energize yourself. You must visit to nearby garden or walk around your neighborhood/ office complex for 5 minutes.

Stretching is most important at work or in daily life. I do stretching twice during my working hours. In the morning, I do stretching and Yoga Asanas before taking shower. Next stretching, I do before my lunch and 3 hours after that.

You need to keep attention on your sitting posture. How much you lean towards your laptop/computer? You can sit on a chair, or sit on floor for some time, or stand up and place your laptop at comfortable height.

While working I have experienced heavy head, you may have faced it (I’m not alone!). You need to massage it regularly. Put Ayurvedic hair oil on your head once in a week or so. Massaging head, neck and shoulder is very important, it helps blood circulation in those areas. Head, neck, and shoulder are mostly steady during your working hours.

This is a re-post of my original post on blogspot — https://santosh-yadaav.blogspot.com/2021/12/are-software-engineers-taking-care-of.html

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