八塊腹肌成爲硅谷程序員的新標配

When people talk about the skyrocketing metabolism of Silicon Valley, it’s a metaphor for profits, innovation, a surge in products or services. But now it’s happening literally. There is a cultural shift afoot in the technology industry: fitness has gripped the so-called brogrammer. Software developers who see the world as a series of systems in need of optimization have turned that instinct inward. Call it the six abs of highly effective techies—HGH bodies for PHP minds.

人們總是說硅谷的新陳代謝正在火箭式上升，這當然是一個用來形象說明利潤、創新、產品或服務激增的比喻。但現在，這一幕就切切實實地發生在我們眼前。科技行業的文化正在轉變：健身已經成爲所謂brogrammer（意指善於社交，喜歡出外玩樂的程序員）的新嗜好。軟件開發人員一向把世界視爲一系列需要優化的系統。現在，他們開始用這種本能來觀察自己的身體。讓我們權且將它稱爲“高效技術人員的六塊腹肌”——堪比健美運動員的身材，加上PHP思維的頭腦。

“I never really thought of that,” says Thomas Bailey, 40, director of experience technology at SapientNitro, a marketing company in Boston. “But, yeah, I’m looking out of my office at 25 programmers, and every one of them is fit: a bodybuilder, a ton of cyclists, all of that. It’s only when we hire guys older than 40 that we see that old stereotype, like the programmer from Jurassic Park: unfit, sloppy, all that. People used to point out on their résumé that they speak Spanish or Chinese. Now it’s that they run triathlons or are on a competitive local amateur sports team.”

“我做夢也沒有想到這一幕，” 40歲的托馬斯o貝利說。他是波士頓麒靈廣告營銷公司(SapientNitro)的體驗技術總監。“但我正在觀察辦公室外面那25位程序員，每個人都非常健康。其中有一位是健美運動員，還有一大羣自行車運動健將。只有當我們僱用40歲以上的員工時，我們才能看到那種符合人們固有成見，彷彿是從《侏羅紀公園》(Jurassic Park)走出的程序員：身體不健康，非常邋遢。程序員過去愛在簡歷中註明，他們會說西班牙語或中文。如今的簡歷亮點則是，他們參加過鐵人三項，或者是本地很有實力的某家業餘運動隊的成員。

Bailey may sound surprised, but he’s one of them. After a spiel about “eking out efficiencies,” he reveals his hand: “I can’t stand the typical, average, normal gym experience of running on a treadmill, staring at a TV for half an hour,” he gripes. He’s a CrossFit acolyte. His co-worker, Jon Grassis, 32, a manager of interactive development, bikes 18 miles a day. He always makes sure to stop and do 100 crunches, 100 push-ups, and 50 pull-ups. “I’m working on the pull-ups,” he concedes.

這種現象似乎讓貝利非常驚訝，但他其實也是其中一員。在一番關於“竭力維持效率”的高談闊論之後，他露出了自己的底牌：“我無法忍受那種典型的健身房鍛鍊體驗，在跑步機上一邊跑步，一邊盯着屏幕看上半個小時，實在讓人受不了，”他抱怨說。他是一位“全面健身(CrossFit)”新手。他的同事，32歲的互動開發經理喬恩o格拉西斯每天騎自行車行駛18英里。他經常停下手頭的工作，做100個仰臥起坐，100個俯臥撐和50個引體向上。“我正在練習引體向上，”他承認。

“I’m a 100 percent stickler for Efficiency,” Grassis says. “I can’t stand inefficiency in any part of my life at all, almost to a fault. Efficiency is tricky with fitness, though, because you want it to be hard. The moving target aspect is highly appealing to the techie mindset.”

“我做事特別講究效率，”格拉西斯說。“不管是生活的哪一方面，我都不能忍受效率低下，幾乎到了過分的程度。但健身是很難追求效率的，因爲你希望健身有一定難度。不斷提升的目標對技術人員非常有吸引力。”

It is admittedly difficult to find data that specifically backs the assertion that desk-bound programmers are moving toward a fitter existence, aside from the fact that the general market for wearable fitness devices has in recent years rapidly grown into a billion-dollar business. But there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence.

據說伏案工作的程序員的健康狀況正在迅速改善，儘管我們很難發現能夠支持這一論斷的數據——除了可穿戴式健身設備最近幾年迅速成長爲一門數十億美元的生意這一事實——但坊間充斥着大量軼事。

Witness Paul Graham, a co-founder of the seed accelerator Y Combinator, imploring his staff to exercise. (And here is HarjTaggar, a Y Combinator partner, writing about his personal experiments with preventing heart disease.) Chew on the concept of Soylent, which aims to solve the “problem” of eating meals, or Google’s Baseline Study, which seeks to pinpoint what a healthy system—er, body—should look like. Look at the hordes of young tech workers navigating the Spring Break crowds at Burning Man and South by Southwest baring their toned physiques (including the literally Olympian torso of Tyler Winklevoss, the investor and cryptocurrency evangelist). Read efficiency mogul Timothy Ferriss’ 2010 book The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman or renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil’s 2009 book Transcend, a nine-step mnemonic for living well. “Tending to your body is essential to being a successful founder,” writes Seth Bannon, the social entrepreneur and Amicus CEO, who counts among his accomplishments that he is a vegetarian. “Remember: exercise makes you a better entrepreneur.” Or behold the editors of BuzzFeed lavishing praise on “the hottest abs in Silicon Valley,” a description that—with respect to tech’s founding mothers and fathers—would have been unthinkable in the region’s early, nerdier days.

比如，創業孵化器Y Combinator聯合創始人保羅o格雷厄姆懇請他的員工鍛鍊身體。（該公司合夥人哈吉o塔加曾經專門撰文談論過他自己通過鍛鍊預防心臟病的經歷。）仔細想想旨在解決吃飯“問題”的新型食品Soylent背後的理念，或者谷歌公司(Google)的基線研究(Baseline Study)，這項研究試圖找出健康的系統（呃，或者說身體）究竟應該是什麼樣子。再看看一大批正在火人節(Burning Man)歡度春假的人羣中穿梭，或者在西南偏南音樂節 (South by Southwest)袒露健美體格的科技工作者（其中包括投資人、加密貨幣傳道者泰勒o文克萊沃斯那猶如奧林匹斯山諸神的強健身軀）。讀讀效率大師蒂莫西o費里斯2010年出版的經典著作《4小時身體鍛鍊：如何通過迅速減肥和性愛成爲超人》(The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman)，或著名未來學家雷o庫茲威爾2009年出版的著作《超越》(Transcend)——這是一套旨在打造健康生活的九步口訣。“鍛鍊好身體是成爲一位成功創始人的關鍵一環，”社會企業家，法庭之友公司(Amicus)CEO塞思o班農寫道。他認爲自己的成就之一就是成爲了一位素食主義者。“請牢記，鍛鍊可以助你成爲一位更好的企業家。”或者看看BuzzFeed的編輯們對“硅谷最熱辣腹肌”的不吝讚美。在該地區書呆子氣更濃的早期歲月（筆者絕無半點不尊重高科技先驅的意思），這種描述是難以想象的。

The zeitgeist presents an intriguing and novel paradox for data-driven laptop hermits who are still getting used to the concept of standing desks. Study after study demonstrates that fitter folks are more trusted, more respected, more welcomed, more everything—so how can optimized job performance not factor in fitness?

這種時代潮流針對那些依然在適應“站立辦公”理念，依靠數據驅動的筆記本電腦隱士，提出了一個有趣且新奇的悖論。多項研究表明，更健康的員工更值得信賴，更受尊重，更受歡迎，總之什麼都好。那麼，優化工作績效怎麼能夠不考慮健身因素呢？

“It’s a skill set,” says Nick Grosvenor, 32, founder and programmer at CineGrain in Los Angeles. Grosvenor says he’s a devotee to Barry’s Bootcamp, the high-intensity interval training regimen favored by get-ripped-quick celebrities and Wall Street alpha dogs. “It shows that they’ve got their act together. It shows commitment, intelligence, discipline; it’s a cue to efficiency, to a systemized life, everything we respect in the programming world. It’s almost a counterbalance, because working out is the antithesis to sitting down.”

“這是一套技能，”32歲的尼克o格羅夫納說。這位洛杉磯CineGrain公司創始人和程序員表示，他是巴里集訓營(Barry’s Bootcamp)的忠實信徒。巴里集訓營的高強度間歇訓練方案深受那些希望迅速獲得肌肉線條的名人和華爾街“阿爾法狗”的青睞。“這表明，他們已經開始有條有理地處理問題了。這體現了決心、智慧和紀律性；這是一個獲得效率，一種系統化生活，以及我們在編程世界所尊重的一切的線索。這幾乎是一種平衡力，因爲鍛鍊是久坐的對立面。”

Courtney Paul, 35, a trainer at Barry’s Bootcamp, which opened its San Francisco outpost in June, drives this mentality home with his #wearemachines Twitter hashtag. For example, he says, he knows that average walking speed is 3.1 miles per hour, and expects his clients to cool down at a pace of at least 3.5 miles per hour. “It’s not about self-esteem, or encouragement, or cheerleading, or any of that softer old-school stuff from the days when working out was a new science,” he says. “It’s just numbers now. That’s it. The numbers don’t lie. If you do this, and eat this, you will get these results. If you don’t get the results, you’re lying about something. Because the numbers aren’t doing the lying, I know that.”

35歲的巴里集訓營（該集訓營已於6月份進駐舊金山）教練考特尼o保羅通過他的Twitter標籤#wearemachines傳播這種心態。比如，他說，他知道平均步行速度爲每小時3.1英里，並期望自己的客戶每小時至少能走3.5英里。“這跟自尊、鼓勵、加油，或者任何出自鍛鍊還是一門新科學那段歲月的老派思想無關，”他說。“現在，這僅僅是數字。就是這樣，這些數字不會說謊。如果你這樣做，這樣吃飯，你就將獲得這些結果。如果你沒有獲得這些結果，那就說明你在某件事上撒謊了。因爲這些數字不會說謊，我非常瞭解這一點。”

“It’s reaching a point where physical prowess is merging with mental prowess,” says Zak Holdsworth, 32, founder of Hint Health, in San Francisco. Holdsworth is another CrossFit fan, as well as a kitesurfer (and, according to one website, New Zealand’s most eligible bachelor). He says he took blood, saliva, and urine samples to establish his own “personal systems biology baseline.”

“體魄的強壯正在與精神的強壯相互交融，”32歲的舊金山Hint Health公司創始人扎克o霍爾茲沃思這樣說道。他是另一位全面健身愛好者，一位風箏衝浪者（另據一家網站介紹，他還是新西蘭最令人中意的單身漢）。霍爾茲沃思說，他採集了血液、唾液和尿液樣本，用以構建他自己的“個人系統生物學基線”。

Not that all the discipline and rigor is internal. Holdsworth’s office, for example, allows very select snacks—paleo jerky, or nutrition bars made of crickets, for example. “There will never be a candy bowl on a desk in this office,” he says. “It’s harder to make bad decisions when the options don’t allow it.”

並非所有的嚴苛要求都是針對身體內部。比如，霍爾茲沃思的辦公室允許吃一些精選小吃——牛肉乾，或者用蟋蟀製作的營養棒。“在這間辦公室的辦公桌上，永遠不會出現糖果碗，”他說。“如果沒有其他選項，你就很難做出糟糕的決定。”

As software engineers continue to hack and optimize their fitness, does it at some point become a walking résumé? If you want to know how good a programmer is, you can’t just ask him to lift his shirt, can you?

隨着軟件工程師不斷破解和優化他們的體能，身體在某個時點會不會成爲一個行走的簡歷？如果你想知道一位程序員究竟有多麼優秀，你不能僅僅要求他撩起自己的襯衫，是吧？

“People almost don’t believe me when I tell them what I do,” says Vaughn Dabney, 30, a freelance app developer in Washington, D.C. who also founded Soundr, a kind of Vine for audio files (and audiophiles). “They don’t expect it, sometimes don’t accept it. Because I’m not [made from] the mold people think. I never find out what they think I should be, though. I tell them I’m the coolest nerd they’ll ever meet.”

“當我告訴人們我正在從事的工作時，幾乎沒有人相信，”30歲的沃恩o達布尼說。他是一位居住在華盛頓特區的自由軟件開發者，還針對音頻文件（和發燒友）創建了類似於地理位置應用Vine的Soundr公司。“他們沒有料想到，有時候也不接受這一事實。因爲我跟人們對程序員的固有印象不一樣。但我從來沒有查明在他們的心目中，我應該長什麼樣子。我告訴他們，我是他們遇到的最酷的書呆子。”

Dabney, who describes his body as “mesomorph,” says he engages in an hour of targeted workouts every work day. “Things are changing. It’s not just programmers behind the scene,” he says, “You have to be the face. Investors like stories, faces; your body is your brand in a lot of ways. Being in shape is a complement to being fit mentally. It’s getting all the property in Monopoly: the front-end and the back-end, the presentation and the programming—the body and the mind.”

達布尼聲稱自己的身體是“運動型體格”。每個工作日，他都會從事一小時有針對性的鍛鍊。“事情正在發生變化。程序員不能只隱藏在幕後，”他說。“你必須得成爲公司的臉面。投資者喜歡故事，希望看到活生生的面孔；就很多層面而言，你的身體就是你的品牌。身體健康是精神健康的補充。在《壟斷大亨》遊戲(Monopoly)中，擁有健康體魄的人正在獲得所有屬性：前端和後端，演示和編程——身體和心智。”

Which means there’s only one place to go from here: the eight abs of highly effective techies. In time.

這意味着，要想成爲高績效技術人員，只有一條出路，那就是，練就八塊腹肌。時不我待，趕緊鍛鍊吧。