八块腹肌成为硅谷程序员的新标配

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.

人们总是说硅谷的新陈代谢正在火箭式上升，这当然是一个用来形象说明利润、创新、产品或服务激增的比喻。但现在，这一幕就切切实实地发生在我们眼前。科技行业的文化正在转变：健身已经成为所谓brogrammer（意指善于社交，喜欢出外玩乐的程序员）的新嗜好。软件开发人员一向把世界视为一系列需要优化的系统。现在，他们开始用这种本能来观察自己的身体。让我们权且将它称为“高效技术人员的六块腹肌”——堪比健美运动员的身材，加上PHP思维的头脑。

“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.”

“我做梦也没有想到这一幕，” 40岁的托马斯o贝利说。他是波士顿麒灵广告营销公司(SapientNitro)的体验技术总监。“但我正在观察办公室外面那25位程序员，每个人都非常健康。其中有一位是健美运动员，还有一大群自行车运动健将。只有当我们雇用40岁以上的员工时，我们才能看到那种符合人们固有成见，仿佛是从《侏罗纪公园》(Jurassic Park)走出的程序员：身体不健康，非常邋遢。程序员过去爱在简历中注明，他们会说西班牙语或中文。如今的简历亮点则是，他们参加过铁人三项，或者是本地很有实力的某家业余运动队的成员。

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.

这种现象似乎让贝利非常惊讶，但他其实也是其中一员。在一番关于“竭力维持效率”的高谈阔论之后，他露出了自己的底牌：“我无法忍受那种典型的健身房锻炼体验，在跑步机上一边跑步，一边盯着屏幕看上半个小时，实在让人受不了，”他抱怨说。他是一位“全面健身(CrossFit)”新手。他的同事，32岁的互动开发经理乔恩o格拉西斯每天骑自行车行驶18英里。他经常停下手头的工作，做100个仰卧起坐，100个俯卧撑和50个引体向上。“我正在练习引体向上，”他承认。

“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.”

“我做事特别讲究效率，”格拉西斯说。“不管是生活的哪一方面，我都不能忍受效率低下，几乎到了过分的程度。但健身是很难追求效率的，因为你希望健身有一定难度。不断提升的目标对技术人员非常有吸引力。”

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.

据说伏案工作的程序员的健康状况正在迅速改善，尽管我们很难发现能够支持这一论断的数据——除了可穿戴式健身设备最近几年迅速成长为一门数十亿美元的生意这一事实——但坊间充斥着大量轶事。

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，创业孵化器Y Combinator联合创始人保罗o格雷厄姆恳请他的员工锻炼身体。（该公司合伙人哈吉o塔加曾经专门撰文谈论过他自己通过锻炼预防心脏病的经历。）仔细想想旨在解决吃饭“问题”的新型食品Soylent背后的理念，或者谷歌公司(Google)的基线研究(Baseline Study)，这项研究试图找出健康的系统（呃，或者说身体）究竟应该是什么样子。再看看一大批正在火人节(Burning Man)欢度春假的人群中穿梭，或者在西南偏南音乐节 (South by Southwest)袒露健美体格的科技工作者（其中包括投资人、加密货币传道者泰勒o文克莱沃斯那犹如奥林匹斯山诸神的强健身躯）。读读效率大师蒂莫西o费里斯2010年出版的经典著作《4小时身体锻炼：如何通过迅速减肥和性爱成为超人》(The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman)，或著名未来学家雷o库兹威尔2009年出版的著作《超越》(Transcend)——这是一套旨在打造健康生活的九步口诀。“锻炼好身体是成为一位成功创始人的关键一环，”社会企业家，法庭之友公司(Amicus)CEO塞思o班农写道。他认为自己的成就之一就是成为了一位素食主义者。“请牢记，锻炼可以助你成为一位更好的企业家。”或者看看BuzzFeed的编辑们对“硅谷最热辣腹肌”的不吝赞美。在该地区书呆子气更浓的早期岁月（笔者绝无半点不尊重高科技先驱的意思），这种描述是难以想象的。

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?

这种时代潮流针对那些依然在适应“站立办公”理念，依靠数据驱动的笔记本电脑隐士，提出了一个有趣且新奇的悖论。多项研究表明，更健康的员工更值得信赖，更受尊重，更受欢迎，总之什么都好。那么，优化工作绩效怎么能够不考虑健身因素呢？

“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.”

“这是一套技能，”32岁的尼克o格罗夫纳说。这位洛杉矶CineGrain公司创始人和程序员表示，他是巴里集训营(Barry’s Bootcamp)的忠实信徒。巴里集训营的高强度间歇训练方案深受那些希望迅速获得肌肉线条的名人和华尔街“阿尔法狗”的青睐。“这表明，他们已经开始有条有理地处理问题了。这体现了决心、智慧和纪律性；这是一个获得效率，一种系统化生活，以及我们在编程世界所尊重的一切的线索。这几乎是一种平衡力，因为锻炼是久坐的对立面。”

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岁的巴里集训营（该集训营已于6月份进驻旧金山）教练考特尼o保罗通过他的Twitter标签#wearemachines传播这种心态。比如，他说，他知道平均步行速度为每小时3.1英里，并期望自己的客户每小时至少能走3.5英里。“这跟自尊、鼓励、加油，或者任何出自锻炼还是一门新科学那段岁月的老派思想无关，”他说。“现在，这仅仅是数字。就是这样，这些数字不会说谎。如果你这样做，这样吃饭，你就将获得这些结果。如果你没有获得这些结果，那就说明你在某件事上撒谎了。因为这些数字不会说谎，我非常了解这一点。”

“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.”

“体魄的强壮正在与精神的强壮相互交融，”32岁的旧金山Hint Health公司创始人扎克o霍尔兹沃思这样说道。他是另一位全面健身爱好者，一位风筝冲浪者（另据一家网站介绍，他还是新西兰最令人中意的单身汉）。霍尔兹沃思说，他采集了血液、唾液和尿液样本，用以构建他自己的“个人系统生物学基线”。

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.”

并非所有的严苛要求都是针对身体内部。比如，霍尔兹沃思的办公室允许吃一些精选小吃——牛肉干，或者用蟋蟀制作的营养棒。“在这间办公室的办公桌上，永远不会出现糖果碗，”他说。“如果没有其他选项，你就很难做出糟糕的决定。”

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?

随着软件工程师不断破解和优化他们的体能，身体在某个时点会不会成为一个行走的简历？如果你想知道一位程序员究竟有多么优秀，你不能仅仅要求他撩起自己的衬衫，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.”

“当我告诉人们我正在从事的工作时，几乎没有人相信，”30岁的沃恩o达布尼说。他是一位居住在华盛顿特区的自由软件开发者，还针对音频文件（和发烧友）创建了类似于地理位置应用Vine的Soundr公司。“他们没有料想到，有时候也不接受这一事实。因为我跟人们对程序员的固有印象不一样。但我从来没有查明在他们的心目中，我应该长什么样子。我告诉他们，我是他们遇到的最酷的书呆子。”

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.”

达布尼声称自己的身体是“运动型体格”。每个工作日，他都会从事一小时有针对性的锻炼。“事情正在发生变化。程序员不能只隐藏在幕后，”他说。“你必须得成为公司的脸面。投资者喜欢故事，希望看到活生生的面孔；就很多层面而言，你的身体就是你的品牌。身体健康是精神健康的补充。在《垄断大亨》游戏(Monopoly)中，拥有健康体魄的人正在获得所有属性：前端和后端，演示和编程——身体和心智。”

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

这意味着，要想成为高绩效技术人员，只有一条出路，那就是，练就八块腹肌。时不我待，赶紧锻炼吧。