The Soundtrack Of A Software Engineer’s Day

I had a few revelations after I watched way too many “day in the life of” videos on YouTube.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

In the UK there’s a television niche called property porn — all about the planning, building, buying, or doing up of property in one way or another and ending up either being rather smug about it on TV in one financial way or another.

In fact there are many niches, one of which I commented on already in a previous article, “A day in the life of a software engineer.” I think I’ve been watching too many of them lately as my daily life now has become something even more intensely depersonalising and remote (literally) than it already is.

I hear a bass driven soundtrack and feel the urge to pose in a chin up half smiling fashion when making coffee and regularly make sure that my screens and desks are equally spotless, polished ,and gleaming brightly to within an inch of their lives. In fact I feel really disheartened if I haven’t got something to talk to myself about (in the third person, natch) when walking between the kitchen and my desk— staring into space as if there’s an imaginative selfie-stick hovering around me.

It’s all become a bit surreal really — but the one thing that is certain is that the soundtracks used on the majority of these particular YouTube videos are all so predictably banal, lacklustre, and soulless.

This does not reflect well on our industry, the grand game, if you will.

I do realise that they’re all from the copyright free selections available, but surely there must be something other than the slow bass, soft piano, and lethargic drum lines that seem to dominate the “day in the life of” videos.

Happy Morning!

For instance, I definitely don’t have that relaxed coffeeshop jazz vibe going on when I on wake up in the morning.

It’s either some kind of deafening metal explosion to accompany the usual “where the hell am I?”,“what the hell am I doing with my life?”, or “oh no, not this again!”, extremely confused feelings or the straining incongruent gothic tones of deep existential fear, the dread ridden angst that accompanies any work related thoughts that early in the morning about meetings later in the day.