For those in workplaces that treat you well. One suggestion that is not in OP: Tell others, explain, expand, give presentations on what you went through. Not only will it help your environment understand WHAT you are doing, they then are also able to understand the WHY. I've had my share of colleagues with afflictions. Your environment must know to understand! Otherwise, you are only allowing them to react to resulting situations, without understanding of the why. Second order benefit is that if people would do this more, general kindness towards how personal situations influence business situations would rise. We need more kindness, from understanding each other. (I understand this is an advice that does not work for those workplaces where HR is the enemy, the boss is their to get you, co-workers are in a free for all for bonuses and promotions. I hope most of us are not in that kind of work situations.)
Suffered a stroke in 2004 (migrainous infarction). Became half blind. Rested for a good year.
Became a photographer for 8 years, then switched back again to software development.
From then on, the limits were: WFH only, limit stress, run away from job if things go bad again. Nap if brain feels exhausted. Sleep, more and better.
20 years later (53yo), I'd say I'm doing great! Also fitness helps remind me to take care of the body...
Tech has built literal industries of people trying to stress you out, and they mostly don't have actual tech skills or the empathy that comes with them so back it up.
For me, I usually try to avoid anything where the working practices are strongly defined. Agile has long been a bad word.
Reminds me of this Indian boss I had whose only agenda used to be calling me up and telling me that others had complaints about my work. After 2 years of listening to his stories, I had tell him off one morning. I quit about 4 months later. The guy was a completely talentless aggregator. I don't get how some Indian firms promote people and this wasn't a small firm either. He ended up being promoted upwards.
Unfortunately while the intentions around agile were noble it's pretty much a direct way to burnout or worse. The human mind is not designed to "sprint" run a marathon, metaphorically speaking, forever.
I see older devs being active in the trade well into their 60s but even as I much younger person I don't see how agile development is sustainable for a ~50-year career.
The thing is, the core agile points from the manifesto are pretty much universally fine and can pretty much be boiled down to, "make changes fast, get feedback, gain more understanding faster".
Pretty much everything that's been layered on top though has either nothing to do with the manifesto, or actively breaks it. i.e. there's a burning issue, I'll get to that after my sprint commitment, which was sold to let me finish work, but now only exists to stress me out to squeeze more widgets per unit of time, where the widgets pretty much never actually map back to anything actually tangible.
Scrum is like Spaghetti Carbonara in America. The ingredients are simple and there's a tiny bit of technique involved that anybody can figure out after a few tries. For some reason though almost everybody that makes it decides that they know better than the people that invented it and so adulterates it with peas and onions and garlic and cream and cream cheese and Italian seasoning and parsley and chives until it ends up being Olive Garden Alfredo. If they wanted Carbonara then they would have cooked the Carbonara, not the waterfall with a bunch of JIRA workflows and four-hour meetings layered on top. They just did what they would have done anyway while attempting to sound fancy via obfuscation.
Any principle or practice falls apart when tied to an economy. See also: religion, politics, society at large. I don't foresee that changing in our lifetimes, so make money doing it the wrong way, and do it the right way in your free time.
I have seen Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) work in multiple real program teams. Doing it successfully requires total commitment at multiple levels and many organizations are culturally incapable of making the transitions.
To be clear I am not claiming that SAFe is necessarily the best possible methodology. There is certainly room for improvement. But empirically it can work in real life.
That is why more advanced agile methodologies such as SAFe use the neutral term "iteration" rather than "sprint". It doesn't imply anything about team velocity or individual workload.
In my experience of it though (only two workplaces, but not one) it's used for higher level planning, rather than being a 'more advanced agile'. I.e. a SAFe iteration spans some number of sprints greater than one. What are we going to deliver this quarter versus how are we going to break down and monitor progress of the quarter's deliverables week by week. (Don't read that like I like it.)
You say that, but it was way more stressful pre agile with the fixed date, fuck around for a few months planning, then dev, run out of time then death march to finish, etc.
A lot of young guys like that D-Day style work, then goof off for a while, but not me. Continuous sustainable work is much preferred.
Why is anything supposed to be sustainable for a ~50-year career? That’s a long time! Things change and people change.
It’s not like my great grandparents had a passion for farming in South Dakota and that’s why they did it until they dropped dead. It’s all they knew and what they did to survive.
If you gave them the option to tap on a keyboard in an air-conditioned room for 10 or 20 of those years they would’ve taken it.
Agile (or rather modern management) converts human capital into capital as fast as possible. Considering the endless supply of developers and lack of accountability there is no downsides to doing that, you are an externality.
> For me, I usually try to avoid anything where the working practices are strongly defined.
I'm grateful I've managed to avoid this so far. My favorite place to work has been more akin to "we need X done in Y system before Z date, but how and when it's done is up to you".
> WFH only, limit stress, run away from job if things go bad again
I’m facing a similar set of health-based restrictions, it’s edifying and impressive how you’ve pushed through. I’m curious: how do you broach this with potential employers and shape your job search/career path around it?
Applying for pure remote positions puts one in direct competition with younger people who can pull obscene hours with no accommodation needs. Leading with disability/accommodation needs feels like the opposite of the ‘best foot forward’ honeymoon phase salesmanship associated with new jobs, and kinda soul crushing regurgitating the circumstances for chronic illness while hoping for a job. And uncontrollable management changes can eliminate medical protections and acceptable working environments, leading to an enhanced need to be able to hop jobs (exacerbating both the previous situations).
I’m fortunate my primary skills are amenable to straightforward accommodations, but you gotta get the job to do the job…
> kinda soul crushing regurgitating the circumstances for chronic illness while hoping for a job
I have to do this every time now because I have a resume gap. I don’t have to explain in detail, but even revisiting those three years for a brief explanation sucks.
I’m sure there’s an implicit realization that I will likely ask for accommodations when I explain the gap which likely reduces my chances of being hired.
As a migraine sufferer this sounds scary and only today I have learned about it. What was it like? If I may ask. Is there a way to prevent it? I googled it and it seems to appear rather arbitrarily and suddenly.
Why do you guys downvote - is it because the comment sounded snarky? It wasn't meant to be, I think it is (obviously) an impressive feat to work as a photographer when your eye sight is severly limited.
This feels like a very naïve viewpoint.
The reality being that you can't rely on insurance at all. You might have insurance but that certainly doesn't guarantee you'll be financially supported through health issues. You'll also be required to engage in legal battles with your insurance company which might be prohibitively complicated after a brain injury.
No, at least in Germany (pretty sure other western countries too) you are covered after stuff like this. You won't be rich, but enough housing food and your camera.
Given enough kids to take care of, a mortgage and other financial/dept obligations, your insurance money might be just a drop in a bucket and your only destination will be a social welfare system. And even that might not save you from having to sell your house or apartment.
Had a stroke 2 months ago at 55, after an entire life (professionally since I'm 16) as a dev. I mostly followed these rules apart from when I got dragged into a project that was sufficiently interesting that I started overworking. 12-14h days.
Just don't do that. I used to do that just fine and that's why I thought I was OK. I mean, I USED to go on in huge coding benders, did'nt I ? Well apparently not at 55, when the pressure has been on for months instead of weeks.
Other things to watch -- diet! With the work came less free time, put on weight etc and all the good habits I had built for years, disappeared.
And the worst bit you can think of is "Oh but I'm so CLOSE to being done, I'll just fix it up later when I can relax". Just don't.
I lost all sensation on the right side. It is coming back slowly. I can still work, didn't lose speech or mobility or strength, I consider myself super-mega-lucky in that.
> when I got dragged into a project that was sufficiently interesting that I started overworking
This is what bites. I have some really narrow interest areas that I can end up being obsessive about, to my own detriment. We have to be careful.
Glad you didn't lose mobility and speech! I also feel lucky. I met others in neuro-rehab in far worse situations. For three months I couldn't walk and now thankfully do so with a stick and ankle brace. The hard stuff isn't the stuff you can see visually though. People see my floppy leg, and might presume that's the main thing, but nope. The big thing is the epilepsy, this constant monster present in the background. It's the invisible stuff that's often hard.
Interesting to see all the people in this thread who had a stroke. I had a mild and then moderate cerebellar stroke within a 7 day span about two years ago. I remember being on the stroke neurology floor of the hospital with a lot of bed ridden people who had also suffered them. I know because, within 24 hours, I was doing hourly walking laps with my nurses because I was bored. In other words, I was one of the lucky ones. Within a week I was back at work — not because I felt pressured to by them, they were completely understanding, but because I had no more symptoms that were experienced simply because I was sitting down to work.
I also see some advice about listening to your body after the fact, which I fully agree with. In my case, without going into too much detail, the stroke might not have happened if I had listened to my body beforehand, as it was caused by an injury I could have prevented.
So if I could give any advice from this place of experience it would be to listen to your body, and try to hear it when your fears and ego are shouting.
I know a vascular neurologist who says that the average age of his patients has dropped by nearly a decade in the last five years. Many more "young" (<60) men with minor strokes, and more frequent serious strokes in the 40s for both sexes. He's treated as many under 30 y/o stroke patients in the last two years than he did in the first two decades of his career. He's a few years from retirement and basically completely rattled by this sudden shift.
Strikes close to home. 8 years ago I was in a bike accident that took me out for 4 months. I instantly felt dumber. The headaches became a fact of life, and the need to get out of the house early in the day to avoid brain fog creeping in became a routine.
It... sucks. I've still progressed my career and made significant strides, and come to appreciate things that I never would have noticed if I kept on my previous trajectory, and while I don't think about it much anymore, for years it ate at me.
I have not had a stroke, but a few years ago I noticed my eyesight was getting strange. There were many other things including a very fuzzy brain, and wanting to stay in bed for weeks. I thought I was just sad until the eyesight issue.
It turned out I had Advanced Neurological Lyme disease. It took a couple years to recover from it. I also have Cluster Headaches, one of the most painful medical conditions known to science. Losing my the ability to think clearly, was worse.
As someone who uses my brain for work, the depression that arose from losing my mental faculties was very significant. I searched TFA for depression and did not see a mention. If anyone is dealing with a neurological issue like this, I would imagine that second order effects like depression are common, correct?
I had a stroke roughly eleven years ago. When the stroke started, I got really creeped out. I was in an elevator and I thought a stranger was reaching around me from behind to grab me. It was my right arm. I cracked a joke about it, I didn't know it, but I wasn't soeaking. Just mumbling and making creepy gutteral noises when I thought I was laughing. Then the face droop. Followed by my right hand becoming locked in a fist. It took months on rehab to get it open. And it lost a lot of function.
I haven't had a stroke but I did get a nasty tropical mono when I was young. You never quite recover from that one. I've got ibs since. My stomach just gets tired and stops. My mental focus feels the same. I sleep 9 hours a night, often 10 and I'm still tired.
I feel I always have less stamina than other people.
So this list is close to what I have always preached.
Time as in energy is my most precious resource.
Don't let processes suck the life out of you. They're there to serve the people not the other way around.
Gut directed hypnotherapy has worked wonders for my IBS. The research on it is really solid and was recommended to me by a registered dietician. The one I followed is called Nerva. Might be worth a try for you.
Oh gosh, even with the laws that should provide cover, the pushback you’ll encounter in academia from so many individuals with limited life experience who are trained only to rigidly follow blanket policies.
But if you feel like you won’t speak up because it’s not that bad, remember the next person who will come after you. When you have the capacity to push systems to do better, it’s better for everyone if you exercise it.
All of that and parenting. Notifications off, camera off, WFH to the max and keeping the journal of where you were before attention was hijacked by the usual suspects.
Thank you for sharing this. Keep up the good work and healing, OP! It's incredible that you've continued to be polite and to do as much as you can through your health struggle. Setting and enforcing boundaries can be difficult for some, especially when you're feeling hazy and not operating at 100%. I like that you pointed out being polite can be expensive sometimes.
This is excellent advice for anyone with knowledge based work though. Distractions, messages, pop-ups, asks, meetings, etc. are the leading reason I don't get as much done as I could. Some of your items could definitely help here.
> HEADPHONES, blinders, and 'No'. Eliminate unwanted inputs at the earliest point of entry.
Open-floor offices, non-stop emails and chat messages, several meetings scattered throughout the week and the day.
This kills productivity and increases stress and fatigue for people that need to concentrate to work on complex stuff. There's also the time you need to properly switch contexts.
I'm terrified by the possibility of a stroke that would disable me, not in a way that would let me write here about my experience with it, but leaving me dependent on the care of others. I'd prefer to shuffle off of this mortal coil, but such a sudden event may not allow that choice. So I fantasize about writing a suicide program that would take care of business if I fail to pass a bespoke Turing (delichon) test. But I doubt my ability to write that with enough nines of reliability to be willing to deploy it. I tried to implant that algorithm into my brother, but he declines to go to prison for me, the jerk. If I live long enough maybe AI tech will become reliable enough for this application, but I doubt it will be soon.
This is essentially my greatest fear as well. Most of my supplementation stack revolves around the desire to prevent this. I take ~30 supplements a day.
This advice could be translated 1:1 to ADHD (at least in my experience). You have to be very mindful with your attention and energy levels.
I'm wondering if some underlying mechanism in the brain is similar between having ADHD and having suffered a stroke. Or maybe it's just the conscious effort how to handle the symptoms that's similar.
In my experience it feels more like the latter - a similar way to manage symptoms rather than a similar root cause. From the article it sounds like OP knows exactly where to spend attention and focus, but needs to guard it carefully (and manage expectations) or else risk falling from their island of stability.
Pre Texting, Pre Email in the 90s I believe this kind of work was normal. All this self motivated, hyper context switching jobs we all do are relatively new compared to human evolvement. And we see the tax on us.
How strange to come across someone whose medical stuff so mirrors my own. I was just a decade older and don’t have epilepsy symptoms with meds. I can get behind all the advice here. Running out of “juice” and needing a break is very much thing. Before too but more so now. And taking a lot of semi stream of consciousness notes to help my more limited memory is too.
Good advice. I didn’t have a stroke but a couple months ago I developed blindness in my left eye. It came down to my optic nerve being inflamed. I was later diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition called MOGAD which “attacks” the optic nerve. Thankfully my vision is approx 95% recovered by now. But I still can’t read, eg code on my laptop, which is scary (my right eye is basically making up for it). And I’m scared of another attack happening. So I’ve been really looking after my health and trying not to do the 12+ hr coding benders I used to do. I appreciate these tips!
Even when I was young, I discovered that after a certain level of fatigue my coding became garbage, and after a night's sleep I had to delete it and redo it. After this tipping point, I just stop doing the hard stuff. If I still want to work, I work on routine things that didn't take much concentration.
I never understood how people can write complex code when fatigued. I just get negatively productive trying that.
> I discovered that after a certain level of fatigue my coding became garbage, and after a night's sleep I had to delete it and redo it.
My best work happens at 2am, at about 4am I am too tired and get slow and get stuck, I think even then code quality suffers only a little bit.
That's just my experience, I believe it happens because if I am working at that time, I am hyped and or in the zone. There is a sort of second wind involved. The lack of distractions also helps I guess.
Thanks for sharing! I feel the fear of another attack with epilepsy too. It is terrifying. The doom and the walking on thin ice constantly hoping you're not gonna over-step or do the wrong thing. And all that at the same time as trying to live your life fully. Do you have any devices or aid software to help with the not-reading thing? I imagine it's all really fresh still and you're just taking it a day at a time?
Good advice. I had one young too; I worked long days and had no life outside my company; it was in an economic downturn so I was also burning out (hindsight). I figured out what was important to me and that all changed everything.
Could honestly change the title to "Tips for stroke-surviving software engineers (or anyone trying to avoid one)". All of us need these fresh little reminders that our brains are very different than the tech we regularly interact with every now and then. Recognize and respect your organic hardware!
This is applicable to far more than stroke victims. Any manner of brain interference should have the same ruleset. Reading through the comments, this ruleset should apply to everyone regardless of their medical situation. Chiming in with a +1 to fitness, and diet. It helps, massively.
Good tips. Not a stroke survivor but I developed epilepsy as a young adult… Not sure if work/stress had anything to do with it, but stress certainly triggers it!
I’m still able to work as a software engineer, and my career has progressed, but the condition has held me back in a lot of ways.
Question to the OP or anyone else that has experienced something similar.
Have you tried grey area or Peptide space medications like Dihexa, P-21, Semax, etc to see if there are any benefits there?
Very much self experimentation but they do work in mouse models as well as Russian medicine. I'm not encouraging anyone to experiment, just interested to see if anyone that has undergone experiences like OP's has experimented.
I have not experienced a stroke or similar but I just started a 6 - 8 week Dihexa course, low dose to test tolerance and I find I am experiencing benefits such as improved recall. I am learning guitar as my test suite. Something I have attempted multiple times before and given up on relatively quickly. 2 weeks in so far.
My intention is to drop the Dihexa at week 8 and then switch to Semax. The theory being that Dihexa improves synaptogenesis but inhibits pruning. Semax allows for pruning but optimizes the efficiency of existing used synapses. Dihexa is an experimental Alzheimer's medication and Semax is a Russian post stroke drug
It's very depressing how the article says "you don't have to do it alone! use AI"
ah this age where "not alone" means "AI"...
How about, enjoy good connections with nice people. Both in personal and work. Maybe those people can even see the warning signs and tell you to stop before you have a stroke.
Reading this, I'm reminded of the idea that we should all care about accessibility, because barring death or radical advances in restorative medical technology, we will all rely on accessibility tech in some way eventually.
Besides what is listed here, have you observed anything that your coworkers or managers can do to help accommodate you? i.e. Is there a version of this for folks working with stroke-surviving software engineers?
The accessibility field is pretty mature, with useful and thorough guidelines like WCAG. But many people in the software industry either ignore accessibility completely, or think it's "only" about the blind, slap some alt text on images, and call it a day.
I think AI as it's currently implemented is a plague upon humanity, but I do appreciate it helping me to locate the word that's on the tip of my tongue and which my battered brain can't seem to draw a neural route to, so that I'm not sitting there for 20 minutes trying to fight the Einstellung effect and brain fog.
Another thing if you are recovering and have limited dexterity in your hands, after trying pretty much ALL the voice recognition I could find, the VScode/copilot assistant is the best by far!
I've now recovered enough that I can type/edit faster, but I still use it; I keep a Worksheet.md tab around and keep a whole running log of stuff, LLM prompts etc
Maybe it is better to invest cognition budget into more valuable things. Let AI write that test while you learn how Postgres Indexes work, for example.
But if you are sick you cant do X "healthy thing for normal people". If you are sick you cant get that hour of exercise a day and do weight lifting and work out your brain etc.
Would remove that keto part, otherwise agree. Keto is great for lowering fat levels but long term effects can be terrible if unsupervised professionally, ie permanent internal organs damage, more than negating any benefits gained.
Not sure why some people can only (mentally but brain drags rest of the body along) exist in extremes, when basically always some sort of moderate middle path is best in all aspects of life.
> Is being part of a minority prerequisite for personal health care?
Discrimination doesn’t have to be racial. You can be discriminated because of a handicap.
From Cambridge dictionary
> discriminate verb (TREAT DIFFERENTLY)
> to treat a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc.
For those in workplaces that treat you well. One suggestion that is not in OP: Tell others, explain, expand, give presentations on what you went through. Not only will it help your environment understand WHAT you are doing, they then are also able to understand the WHY. I've had my share of colleagues with afflictions. Your environment must know to understand! Otherwise, you are only allowing them to react to resulting situations, without understanding of the why. Second order benefit is that if people would do this more, general kindness towards how personal situations influence business situations would rise. We need more kindness, from understanding each other. (I understand this is an advice that does not work for those workplaces where HR is the enemy, the boss is their to get you, co-workers are in a free for all for bonuses and promotions. I hope most of us are not in that kind of work situations.)
Suffered a stroke in 2004 (migrainous infarction). Became half blind. Rested for a good year. Became a photographer for 8 years, then switched back again to software development. From then on, the limits were: WFH only, limit stress, run away from job if things go bad again. Nap if brain feels exhausted. Sleep, more and better. 20 years later (53yo), I'd say I'm doing great! Also fitness helps remind me to take care of the body...
Tech has built literal industries of people trying to stress you out, and they mostly don't have actual tech skills or the empathy that comes with them so back it up.
For me, I usually try to avoid anything where the working practices are strongly defined. Agile has long been a bad word.
I'm glad you're doing well now.
Reminds me of this Indian boss I had whose only agenda used to be calling me up and telling me that others had complaints about my work. After 2 years of listening to his stories, I had tell him off one morning. I quit about 4 months later. The guy was a completely talentless aggregator. I don't get how some Indian firms promote people and this wasn't a small firm either. He ended up being promoted upwards.
Unfortunately while the intentions around agile were noble it's pretty much a direct way to burnout or worse. The human mind is not designed to "sprint" run a marathon, metaphorically speaking, forever.
I see older devs being active in the trade well into their 60s but even as I much younger person I don't see how agile development is sustainable for a ~50-year career.
The thing is, the core agile points from the manifesto are pretty much universally fine and can pretty much be boiled down to, "make changes fast, get feedback, gain more understanding faster".
Pretty much everything that's been layered on top though has either nothing to do with the manifesto, or actively breaks it. i.e. there's a burning issue, I'll get to that after my sprint commitment, which was sold to let me finish work, but now only exists to stress me out to squeeze more widgets per unit of time, where the widgets pretty much never actually map back to anything actually tangible.
> Pretty much everything that's been layered on top
...and that /is/ topic of discussion every time this discussion happens
Every agile criticism conversation goes like this
A: agile as practiced is bad
B: but the manifesto is solid
It's predictable as the sun rising
Because it's true.
Scrum is like Spaghetti Carbonara in America. The ingredients are simple and there's a tiny bit of technique involved that anybody can figure out after a few tries. For some reason though almost everybody that makes it decides that they know better than the people that invented it and so adulterates it with peas and onions and garlic and cream and cream cheese and Italian seasoning and parsley and chives until it ends up being Olive Garden Alfredo. If they wanted Carbonara then they would have cooked the Carbonara, not the waterfall with a bunch of JIRA workflows and four-hour meetings layered on top. They just did what they would have done anyway while attempting to sound fancy via obfuscation.
Any principle or practice falls apart when tied to an economy. See also: religion, politics, society at large. I don't foresee that changing in our lifetimes, so make money doing it the wrong way, and do it the right way in your free time.
And usually:
C: Therefore you’re doing it wrong.
And once an “agile guru” enters the conversation:
D: You need my book / seminar / services.
Is agile the socialism of software development methodologies?
(Not for any deeper reason, only that whenever socialism fails, people tell you that 'real socialism' hasn't been tried, yet.)
Agile isn't sustainable for younger people either. But they just get replaced by more younger people. Burn-out in IT is way too common.
That's not really Agile's fault. That's PMs overcommitting the team. Those bad PMs would also make unrealistic waterfall schedules.
I mean if something doesn't ever work in real life then its not good. Intentions aside.
I have seen Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) work in multiple real program teams. Doing it successfully requires total commitment at multiple levels and many organizations are culturally incapable of making the transitions.
To be clear I am not claiming that SAFe is necessarily the best possible methodology. There is certainly room for improvement. But empirically it can work in real life.
That is why more advanced agile methodologies such as SAFe use the neutral term "iteration" rather than "sprint". It doesn't imply anything about team velocity or individual workload.
In my experience of it though (only two workplaces, but not one) it's used for higher level planning, rather than being a 'more advanced agile'. I.e. a SAFe iteration spans some number of sprints greater than one. What are we going to deliver this quarter versus how are we going to break down and monitor progress of the quarter's deliverables week by week. (Don't read that like I like it.)
SAFe is not "advanced" Agile. It's training wheels Agile for managers and execs who can't give up control and devs who want to be told what to do.
You say that, but it was way more stressful pre agile with the fixed date, fuck around for a few months planning, then dev, run out of time then death march to finish, etc.
A lot of young guys like that D-Day style work, then goof off for a while, but not me. Continuous sustainable work is much preferred.
I have never seen Agile used correctly in practice. Its just mini waterfall with additional annoying ceremonies lumped on top.
Why is anything supposed to be sustainable for a ~50-year career? That’s a long time! Things change and people change.
It’s not like my great grandparents had a passion for farming in South Dakota and that’s why they did it until they dropped dead. It’s all they knew and what they did to survive.
If you gave them the option to tap on a keyboard in an air-conditioned room for 10 or 20 of those years they would’ve taken it.
Not so sure they would if they knew what it means, beyond tapping keyboards.
Too much software and you start turning into a computer, which obviously doesn't work very well.
They know it's not backbreaking labor...
Agile (or rather modern management) converts human capital into capital as fast as possible. Considering the endless supply of developers and lack of accountability there is no downsides to doing that, you are an externality.
Where can you get an endless supply of (good) developers from?
> For me, I usually try to avoid anything where the working practices are strongly defined.
I'm grateful I've managed to avoid this so far. My favorite place to work has been more akin to "we need X done in Y system before Z date, but how and when it's done is up to you".
> WFH only, limit stress, run away from job if things go bad again
I’m facing a similar set of health-based restrictions, it’s edifying and impressive how you’ve pushed through. I’m curious: how do you broach this with potential employers and shape your job search/career path around it?
Applying for pure remote positions puts one in direct competition with younger people who can pull obscene hours with no accommodation needs. Leading with disability/accommodation needs feels like the opposite of the ‘best foot forward’ honeymoon phase salesmanship associated with new jobs, and kinda soul crushing regurgitating the circumstances for chronic illness while hoping for a job. And uncontrollable management changes can eliminate medical protections and acceptable working environments, leading to an enhanced need to be able to hop jobs (exacerbating both the previous situations).
I’m fortunate my primary skills are amenable to straightforward accommodations, but you gotta get the job to do the job…
> kinda soul crushing regurgitating the circumstances for chronic illness while hoping for a job
I have to do this every time now because I have a resume gap. I don’t have to explain in detail, but even revisiting those three years for a brief explanation sucks.
I’m sure there’s an implicit realization that I will likely ask for accommodations when I explain the gap which likely reduces my chances of being hired.
Whats your stack? (Software). Very impressive after 8 years to come back
Today it's Go-TS-react-node-K8s-mongo-PG-RabbitMQ
Well, I said "I'll never do IT again"... and when I say never, it usually happens in the end ;-)
As a migraine sufferer this sounds scary and only today I have learned about it. What was it like? If I may ask. Is there a way to prevent it? I googled it and it seems to appear rather arbitrarily and suddenly.
> Became half blind. ... Became a photographer
Impressive.
Why do you guys downvote - is it because the comment sounded snarky? It wasn't meant to be, I think it is (obviously) an impressive feat to work as a photographer when your eye sight is severly limited.
Usually one worded complements are frowned upon.
Did you work with something else during your rest period?
I don't think most people wouldn't be able to, financially.
> I don't think most people wouldn't be able to, financially.
Pretty sure you'd be covered in a lot of western countries, and if not you have relatively cheap insurances that cover these things.
This feels like a very naïve viewpoint. The reality being that you can't rely on insurance at all. You might have insurance but that certainly doesn't guarantee you'll be financially supported through health issues. You'll also be required to engage in legal battles with your insurance company which might be prohibitively complicated after a brain injury.
> This feels like a very naïve viewpoint
It's just an European viewpoint... I know for americans it's like a sci fi movie but it's very real here lol
In France you get ~67% of your salary for 36 months, after that it's case by case.
In Germany you get ~70% of your salary for 78 weeks, private insurances will cover more/longer too, for like < 50 euros a month
No, at least in Germany (pretty sure other western countries too) you are covered after stuff like this. You won't be rich, but enough housing food and your camera.
Note: only if you're a German citizen.
Nope, you just need an health insurance, which you'll have if you worked
Ah, I thought you meant the more general Bürgergeld.
Given enough kids to take care of, a mortgage and other financial/dept obligations, your insurance money might be just a drop in a bucket and your only destination will be a social welfare system. And even that might not save you from having to sell your house or apartment.
this means you are underinsured for your lifestyle.
> WFH only, limit stress, run away from job if things go bad again
Sounds like senior management
Had a stroke 2 months ago at 55, after an entire life (professionally since I'm 16) as a dev. I mostly followed these rules apart from when I got dragged into a project that was sufficiently interesting that I started overworking. 12-14h days.
Just don't do that. I used to do that just fine and that's why I thought I was OK. I mean, I USED to go on in huge coding benders, did'nt I ? Well apparently not at 55, when the pressure has been on for months instead of weeks.
Other things to watch -- diet! With the work came less free time, put on weight etc and all the good habits I had built for years, disappeared.
And the worst bit you can think of is "Oh but I'm so CLOSE to being done, I'll just fix it up later when I can relax". Just don't.
I lost all sensation on the right side. It is coming back slowly. I can still work, didn't lose speech or mobility or strength, I consider myself super-mega-lucky in that.
> when I got dragged into a project that was sufficiently interesting that I started overworking
This is what bites. I have some really narrow interest areas that I can end up being obsessive about, to my own detriment. We have to be careful.
Glad you didn't lose mobility and speech! I also feel lucky. I met others in neuro-rehab in far worse situations. For three months I couldn't walk and now thankfully do so with a stick and ankle brace. The hard stuff isn't the stuff you can see visually though. People see my floppy leg, and might presume that's the main thing, but nope. The big thing is the epilepsy, this constant monster present in the background. It's the invisible stuff that's often hard.
Interesting to see all the people in this thread who had a stroke. I had a mild and then moderate cerebellar stroke within a 7 day span about two years ago. I remember being on the stroke neurology floor of the hospital with a lot of bed ridden people who had also suffered them. I know because, within 24 hours, I was doing hourly walking laps with my nurses because I was bored. In other words, I was one of the lucky ones. Within a week I was back at work — not because I felt pressured to by them, they were completely understanding, but because I had no more symptoms that were experienced simply because I was sitting down to work.
I also see some advice about listening to your body after the fact, which I fully agree with. In my case, without going into too much detail, the stroke might not have happened if I had listened to my body beforehand, as it was caused by an injury I could have prevented.
So if I could give any advice from this place of experience it would be to listen to your body, and try to hear it when your fears and ego are shouting.
I know a vascular neurologist who says that the average age of his patients has dropped by nearly a decade in the last five years. Many more "young" (<60) men with minor strokes, and more frequent serious strokes in the 40s for both sexes. He's treated as many under 30 y/o stroke patients in the last two years than he did in the first two decades of his career. He's a few years from retirement and basically completely rattled by this sudden shift.
i don't know how to word it better than: there's much we don't know yet about the extent of ~"long covid", or "down the road covid outcomes"
Strikes close to home. 8 years ago I was in a bike accident that took me out for 4 months. I instantly felt dumber. The headaches became a fact of life, and the need to get out of the house early in the day to avoid brain fog creeping in became a routine.
It... sucks. I've still progressed my career and made significant strides, and come to appreciate things that I never would have noticed if I kept on my previous trajectory, and while I don't think about it much anymore, for years it ate at me.
Do you still have headaches?
I was also in a bike accident that resulted in brain trauma (not a stroke), and yes, still get headaches 5 years later.
But it does get better with exercise. I was able to reduce weekly headaches to about 1/month.
I have not had a stroke, but a few years ago I noticed my eyesight was getting strange. There were many other things including a very fuzzy brain, and wanting to stay in bed for weeks. I thought I was just sad until the eyesight issue.
It turned out I had Advanced Neurological Lyme disease. It took a couple years to recover from it. I also have Cluster Headaches, one of the most painful medical conditions known to science. Losing my the ability to think clearly, was worse.
As someone who uses my brain for work, the depression that arose from losing my mental faculties was very significant. I searched TFA for depression and did not see a mention. If anyone is dealing with a neurological issue like this, I would imagine that second order effects like depression are common, correct?
I had a stroke roughly eleven years ago. When the stroke started, I got really creeped out. I was in an elevator and I thought a stranger was reaching around me from behind to grab me. It was my right arm. I cracked a joke about it, I didn't know it, but I wasn't soeaking. Just mumbling and making creepy gutteral noises when I thought I was laughing. Then the face droop. Followed by my right hand becoming locked in a fist. It took months on rehab to get it open. And it lost a lot of function.
damn, sorry friend. Must be terrifying to feel your body essentially betraying you.
I haven't had a stroke but I did get a nasty tropical mono when I was young. You never quite recover from that one. I've got ibs since. My stomach just gets tired and stops. My mental focus feels the same. I sleep 9 hours a night, often 10 and I'm still tired.
I feel I always have less stamina than other people.
So this list is close to what I have always preached.
Time as in energy is my most precious resource.
Don't let processes suck the life out of you. They're there to serve the people not the other way around.
Gut directed hypnotherapy has worked wonders for my IBS. The research on it is really solid and was recommended to me by a registered dietician. The one I followed is called Nerva. Might be worth a try for you.
Oh gosh, even with the laws that should provide cover, the pushback you’ll encounter in academia from so many individuals with limited life experience who are trained only to rigidly follow blanket policies.
But if you feel like you won’t speak up because it’s not that bad, remember the next person who will come after you. When you have the capacity to push systems to do better, it’s better for everyone if you exercise it.
I think these are also good strategies for anyone who suffers from mental illness/burnout.
Which tips would you apply to burnout? Because certainly AFAIK, you don’t really get legal protections from burnout
All of that and parenting. Notifications off, camera off, WFH to the max and keeping the journal of where you were before attention was hijacked by the usual suspects.
ADHD...
Thank you for sharing this. Keep up the good work and healing, OP! It's incredible that you've continued to be polite and to do as much as you can through your health struggle. Setting and enforcing boundaries can be difficult for some, especially when you're feeling hazy and not operating at 100%. I like that you pointed out being polite can be expensive sometimes.
This is excellent advice for anyone with knowledge based work though. Distractions, messages, pop-ups, asks, meetings, etc. are the leading reason I don't get as much done as I could. Some of your items could definitely help here.
> HEADPHONES, blinders, and 'No'. Eliminate unwanted inputs at the earliest point of entry.
Open-floor offices, non-stop emails and chat messages, several meetings scattered throughout the week and the day.
This kills productivity and increases stress and fatigue for people that need to concentrate to work on complex stuff. There's also the time you need to properly switch contexts.
All excellent advice even if you haven't suffered some health issue like stroke.
I'm terrified by the possibility of a stroke that would disable me, not in a way that would let me write here about my experience with it, but leaving me dependent on the care of others. I'd prefer to shuffle off of this mortal coil, but such a sudden event may not allow that choice. So I fantasize about writing a suicide program that would take care of business if I fail to pass a bespoke Turing (delichon) test. But I doubt my ability to write that with enough nines of reliability to be willing to deploy it. I tried to implant that algorithm into my brother, but he declines to go to prison for me, the jerk. If I live long enough maybe AI tech will become reliable enough for this application, but I doubt it will be soon.
This is essentially my greatest fear as well. Most of my supplementation stack revolves around the desire to prevent this. I take ~30 supplements a day.
OP thank you for this generous text. I would add that these tips are amazing for people with post-covid/long-covid/brain-fog too
Yup! I follow these and I also take walks, those can be helpful to relax and let the mind rest for a bit.
This advice could be translated 1:1 to ADHD (at least in my experience). You have to be very mindful with your attention and energy levels.
I'm wondering if some underlying mechanism in the brain is similar between having ADHD and having suffered a stroke. Or maybe it's just the conscious effort how to handle the symptoms that's similar.
In my experience it feels more like the latter - a similar way to manage symptoms rather than a similar root cause. From the article it sounds like OP knows exactly where to spend attention and focus, but needs to guard it carefully (and manage expectations) or else risk falling from their island of stability.
Most of the advice is good for pre-stroke persons too. Might even avoid having one.
I think it is good advice for everyone.
Pre Texting, Pre Email in the 90s I believe this kind of work was normal. All this self motivated, hyper context switching jobs we all do are relatively new compared to human evolvement. And we see the tax on us.
How strange to come across someone whose medical stuff so mirrors my own. I was just a decade older and don’t have epilepsy symptoms with meds. I can get behind all the advice here. Running out of “juice” and needing a break is very much thing. Before too but more so now. And taking a lot of semi stream of consciousness notes to help my more limited memory is too.
Good advice. I didn’t have a stroke but a couple months ago I developed blindness in my left eye. It came down to my optic nerve being inflamed. I was later diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition called MOGAD which “attacks” the optic nerve. Thankfully my vision is approx 95% recovered by now. But I still can’t read, eg code on my laptop, which is scary (my right eye is basically making up for it). And I’m scared of another attack happening. So I’ve been really looking after my health and trying not to do the 12+ hr coding benders I used to do. I appreciate these tips!
> 12+ hr coding benders
Even when I was young, I discovered that after a certain level of fatigue my coding became garbage, and after a night's sleep I had to delete it and redo it. After this tipping point, I just stop doing the hard stuff. If I still want to work, I work on routine things that didn't take much concentration.
I never understood how people can write complex code when fatigued. I just get negatively productive trying that.
> I discovered that after a certain level of fatigue my coding became garbage, and after a night's sleep I had to delete it and redo it.
My best work happens at 2am, at about 4am I am too tired and get slow and get stuck, I think even then code quality suffers only a little bit.
That's just my experience, I believe it happens because if I am working at that time, I am hyped and or in the zone. There is a sort of second wind involved. The lack of distractions also helps I guess.
Thanks for sharing! I feel the fear of another attack with epilepsy too. It is terrifying. The doom and the walking on thin ice constantly hoping you're not gonna over-step or do the wrong thing. And all that at the same time as trying to live your life fully. Do you have any devices or aid software to help with the not-reading thing? I imagine it's all really fresh still and you're just taking it a day at a time?
Doesn’t the immune system attack the eyes if not for a protective wall? Or is that just a myth.
Good advice. I had one young too; I worked long days and had no life outside my company; it was in an economic downturn so I was also burning out (hindsight). I figured out what was important to me and that all changed everything.
This was a very good to-the-point post! Applies to everyone, and you only truly seem to wake up to care for your health when you lost it first.
Yea this is my takeaway as well. All of the advice is applicable to everyone. Health should always come first.
I managed to wake up in my early 30s, by watching my parents' health slowly start failing starting in their 50s.
I haven't had a stroke, and many of these tips are, IMO, important for the unimpaired productive software developer.
Could honestly change the title to "Tips for stroke-surviving software engineers (or anyone trying to avoid one)". All of us need these fresh little reminders that our brains are very different than the tech we regularly interact with every now and then. Recognize and respect your organic hardware!
This is applicable to far more than stroke victims. Any manner of brain interference should have the same ruleset. Reading through the comments, this ruleset should apply to everyone regardless of their medical situation. Chiming in with a +1 to fitness, and diet. It helps, massively.
This is good advice for non brain damaged engineers too (or maybe I am?)
I don’t know if this is as niche as the author thinks: there’s a lot of great advice for non-stroke survivors in there too.
Good tips. Not a stroke survivor but I developed epilepsy as a young adult… Not sure if work/stress had anything to do with it, but stress certainly triggers it!
I’m still able to work as a software engineer, and my career has progressed, but the condition has held me back in a lot of ways.
Didn't have a stroke, but in addition to developing software, I developed "software" brain issues too.
https://stroke.jonasr.app/dates/
Quite a recovery. No it's not me, just a dev that works in the same field.
Excellent advice, for everybody. Thank you!
I haven't had a stroke (yet) but I find all that to be generally good advice. Good read!
Question to the OP or anyone else that has experienced something similar. Have you tried grey area or Peptide space medications like Dihexa, P-21, Semax, etc to see if there are any benefits there?
Very much self experimentation but they do work in mouse models as well as Russian medicine. I'm not encouraging anyone to experiment, just interested to see if anyone that has undergone experiences like OP's has experimented.
I have not experienced a stroke or similar but I just started a 6 - 8 week Dihexa course, low dose to test tolerance and I find I am experiencing benefits such as improved recall. I am learning guitar as my test suite. Something I have attempted multiple times before and given up on relatively quickly. 2 weeks in so far.
My intention is to drop the Dihexa at week 8 and then switch to Semax. The theory being that Dihexa improves synaptogenesis but inhibits pruning. Semax allows for pruning but optimizes the efficiency of existing used synapses. Dihexa is an experimental Alzheimer's medication and Semax is a Russian post stroke drug
Reminds me of Fefe, hope he'll recover one day, too.
Wha? Felix had a stroke? <schocked> Didn't know that.
Good read. Recovery takes time, and steady small steps help rebuild skill and focus.
DMSO can allegedly help some people improve after stroke, if applied soon enough.
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/dmso-could-save-millions-...
It's very depressing how the article says "you don't have to do it alone! use AI"
ah this age where "not alone" means "AI"...
How about, enjoy good connections with nice people. Both in personal and work. Maybe those people can even see the warning signs and tell you to stop before you have a stroke.
He says to use AI as a knowledge offloading tool. He literally says that he enjoys meetings.
wow I should have expected it to get only more depressing from replies I guess)
I'm not talking about meetings. relationships do not reduce to zoom meetings
and this is not about "knowledge offloading". that's a text file can do it. the key word is "help". the thing people did for each other;)
> You, too, have a limited context window.
Love this!
Thank you for sharing.
Reading this, I'm reminded of the idea that we should all care about accessibility, because barring death or radical advances in restorative medical technology, we will all rely on accessibility tech in some way eventually.
Besides what is listed here, have you observed anything that your coworkers or managers can do to help accommodate you? i.e. Is there a version of this for folks working with stroke-surviving software engineers?
The accessibility field is pretty mature, with useful and thorough guidelines like WCAG. But many people in the software industry either ignore accessibility completely, or think it's "only" about the blind, slap some alt text on images, and call it a day.
We should try to do better.
I feel like any such advice would also be good advice for protecting the health of any of your staff.
Good ME/CFS engineer advice too. Thanks for writing up OP
Stay away from vibe coding. It will cause more stress and provoke aneurysms -;)
I think AI as it's currently implemented is a plague upon humanity, but I do appreciate it helping me to locate the word that's on the tip of my tongue and which my battered brain can't seem to draw a neural route to, so that I'm not sitting there for 20 minutes trying to fight the Einstellung effect and brain fog.
Another thing if you are recovering and have limited dexterity in your hands, after trying pretty much ALL the voice recognition I could find, the VScode/copilot assistant is the best by far!
I've now recovered enough that I can type/edit faster, but I still use it; I keep a Worksheet.md tab around and keep a whole running log of stuff, LLM prompts etc
> Let it hold state so your brain can judge rather than store and needlessly cogitate on stuff.
Isn’t that needless cogitation something that helps creating new links in your brain and helps against cognitive decline in later ages?
Maybe it is better to invest cognition budget into more valuable things. Let AI write that test while you learn how Postgres Indexes work, for example.
But if you are sick you cant do X "healthy thing for normal people". If you are sick you cant get that hour of exercise a day and do weight lifting and work out your brain etc.
I would add: 1. Go strictly keto 2. Walk as much as you can
Would remove that keto part, otherwise agree. Keto is great for lowering fat levels but long term effects can be terrible if unsupervised professionally, ie permanent internal organs damage, more than negating any benefits gained.
Not sure why some people can only (mentally but brain drags rest of the body along) exist in extremes, when basically always some sort of moderate middle path is best in all aspects of life.
The permanent internal organ damage is pure bs and scare-mongering.
Obviously you also get those on non-keto diets since non-keto people also get strokes, heart disease, fatty liver...
I don't get it, why is this mentioning "anti-discrimination legislation". Is being part of a minority prerequisite for personal health care?
> Is being part of a minority prerequisite for personal health care?
Discrimination doesn’t have to be racial. You can be discriminated because of a handicap.
From Cambridge dictionary
> discriminate verb (TREAT DIFFERENTLY) > to treat a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc.
Employers in most countries are required to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities.
FYI that article is rendering light-grey text on a cream background color here (Safari, iOS), it’s barely readable
Something may be off on your end. I’m on iPhone/Safari, and it’s white on black here.
(Can always try reader mode, if you just want to read the content without worrying about fixing it.)
it's very helpful though i did'nt suffered a stroke until now