7 Graphic Tees for Developers (2025 edition)

If you’re a developer, programmer, coder, engineer, or whatever we’re calling ourselves these days, these will be the perfect shirts for you to wear while on Zoom calls, developer conferences, or just to show off your profession outside of work. I guess also If you’re someone looking for a funny t shirt gift for a developer, then this is also a great list for you, though it might be harder for you to understand some of the inside-joke style humor. I'm the CTO now. When looking for a software developer shirt that gets a reaction, you won't have to go much further than this. If you're the CTO, it's funny. If you're NOT the CTO, it's even funnier. There are levels to this shirt, and different meanings. Maybe you're the guy the CTO always comes to to ask for advice. Or maybe you're the last dev left in a company and the defacto CTO. Maybe you're just the company clown that likes to stir the pot. In all cases, this one hits home every time. It's dangerous to go alone The intersection of gamer and developer is pretty high. And one of the most iconic games is and will always be Zelda. It's also a personal favorite here at Miserably Employed. That sweet sweet golden cartridge from the original NES is a memory that brings back a lot of joy for us, and countless others. As a homage to the game that started it all, and a lot of developers on that gaming journey which lead in a big way to the professions we have, we've created a shirt for developers like us who were inspired to quest endlessly against all odds and finish the tasks put before us. Which, is pretty much all software development. AI is just fine We have a love/hate relationship with AI. We use it in various portions of our workflows and even in some design elements here at Miserably Employed, and as developers it's helped us speed up and lower friction by becoming a better autocomplete for code we were already going to write in that specific way. But, it's a dual edged sword in software engineering with broken vibe coded spaghetti everywhere, poor decisions based on faith instead of experience, and slews of laid off devs that will be replaced with code that will need twice as many in the years to come to fix. This shirt is our answer, with an AI created background that mocks ourselves in the same way we satirically mock our entire industry. I code naked This shirt speaks for itself, there's not really much more to say. It's become a running joke that you never know if someone is wearing pants on a Zoom call, and developers are no exclusion. Heck, I'm not even wearing pants as I write this. I peaked at onboarding We're all most excited within that early period of a new position at a company. The code is new, you're not sure if it's a microservice avro schema mess yet, you haven't learned about how your product manager and project manager hate each other, and you haven't been tricked 7 times by HR into clicking scam links that "gotcha". All you have is hope because of the unknowns and you're as happy as you'll ever be there. There's a saying about boats: "the two happiest days of a boaters life is when you buy the boat and sell the boat" and while there's debate about the truth of that saying it's pretty applicable to software developers. The two happiest days of a developer's life is the day you get hired, and the day you quit. Probably some nuance in there with promotions, bonuses and raises that aren't 2.7%. But we don't bring facts into things here. I push to prod on Fridays It's a meme, but it's a meme because there's truth to it. For some reason (spelled "marketing") there's this want to push things to production on Fridays. Nothing spells out disaster more than slack messages about downed services at 9pm on a Saturday. Developers don't want to be on-call. The pay bonus for it isn't worth it when the salaries are already so high, the hours so long, and the stress so tangible. This shirt wasn't made with love, it was made with spite. And that's how we wear it on calls with managment. The de-velopment process There's a famous principle (xkcd of course) called the Ballmer Peak. It's about how there's a sweet spot where when you've drunk just enough alcohol you become a super-human programmer. Whether or not there's any truth to the theory, it seems that a large portion of developers have either taken this as a challenge and began drinking either while coding or pushing code (one of the bad decisions) and then having to fix their mistakes after the fact. Though, it could just all be bad code, who knows. Looks the same. Want to see more shirts like these for developers (and other professions)? Head over to MiserablyEmployed.com and enjoy!

May 19, 2025 - 23:20

7 Graphic Tees for Developers (2025 edition)

If you’re a developer, programmer, coder, engineer, or whatever we’re calling ourselves these days, these will be the perfect shirts for you to wear while on Zoom calls, developer conferences, or just to show off your profession outside of work.

I guess also If you’re someone looking for a funny t shirt gift for a developer, then this is also a great list for you, though it might be harder for you to understand some of the inside-joke style humor.

I'm the CTO now.

When looking for a software developer shirt that gets a reaction, you won't have to go much further than this. If you're the CTO, it's funny.

If you're NOT the CTO, it's even funnier.

There are levels to this shirt, and different meanings. Maybe you're the guy the CTO always comes to to ask for advice. Or maybe you're the last dev left in a company and the defacto CTO. Maybe you're just the company clown that likes to stir the pot. In all cases, this one hits home every time.

It's dangerous to go alone

The intersection of gamer and developer is pretty high.

And one of the most iconic games is and will always be Zelda. It's also a personal favorite here at Miserably Employed. That sweet sweet golden cartridge from the original NES is a memory that brings back a lot of joy for us, and countless others.

As a homage to the game that started it all, and a lot of developers on that gaming journey which lead in a big way to the professions we have, we've created a shirt for developers like us who were inspired to quest endlessly against all odds and finish the tasks put before us. Which, is pretty much all software development.

AI is just fine

We have a love/hate relationship with AI. We use it in various portions of our workflows and even in some design elements here at Miserably Employed, and as developers it's helped us speed up and lower friction by becoming a better autocomplete for code we were already going to write in that specific way.

But, it's a dual edged sword in software engineering with broken vibe coded spaghetti everywhere, poor decisions based on faith instead of experience, and slews of laid off devs that will be replaced with code that will need twice as many in the years to come to fix.

This shirt is our answer, with an AI created background that mocks ourselves in the same way we satirically mock our entire industry.

I code naked

This shirt speaks for itself, there's not really much more to say. It's become a running joke that you never know if someone is wearing pants on a Zoom call, and developers are no exclusion.

Heck, I'm not even wearing pants as I write this.

I peaked at onboarding

We're all most excited within that early period of a new position at a company. The code is new, you're not sure if it's a microservice avro schema mess yet, you haven't learned about how your product manager and project manager hate each other, and you haven't been tricked 7 times by HR into clicking scam links that "gotcha".

All you have is hope because of the unknowns and you're as happy as you'll ever be there. There's a saying about boats: "the two happiest days of a boaters life is when you buy the boat and sell the boat" and while there's debate about the truth of that saying it's pretty applicable to software developers.

The two happiest days of a developer's life is the day you get hired, and the day you quit. Probably some nuance in there with promotions, bonuses and raises that aren't 2.7%. But we don't bring facts into things here.

I push to prod on Fridays

It's a meme, but it's a meme because there's truth to it. For some reason (spelled "marketing") there's this want to push things to production on Fridays.

Nothing spells out disaster more than slack messages about downed services at 9pm on a Saturday. Developers don't want to be on-call. The pay bonus for it isn't worth it when the salaries are already so high, the hours so long, and the stress so tangible.

This shirt wasn't made with love, it was made with spite. And that's how we wear it on calls with managment.

The de-velopment process

There's a famous principle (xkcd of course) called the Ballmer Peak. It's about how there's a sweet spot where when you've drunk just enough alcohol you become a super-human programmer.

Whether or not there's any truth to the theory, it seems that a large portion of developers have either taken this as a challenge and began drinking either while coding or pushing code (one of the bad decisions) and then having to fix their mistakes after the fact.

Though, it could just all be bad code, who knows. Looks the same.

Want to see more shirts like these for developers (and other professions)? Head over to MiserablyEmployed.com and enjoy!