Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:14:50 · Noam Segal
[00:14:50] S0: Yeah. So we're seeing these four tech workers, and the way we got to this is later on in the survey, we asked people about how they're feeling, and to report specific emotions. And people could choose as many emotions as they wanted. And by the way, fun fact, on average, people selected five different emotions, and I think a couple of people selected 13 emotions that they're feeling, which is a lot. So, the first archetype we found is the energized tech worker, and that's 41% of our samples. These are the people who were saying that products has become fun again. "I'm exploring things. I feel like I'm in the tech amusement park, where everything is open to me, and I can experiment with new approaches. I'm a builder now. I have powers that I've never had before," et cetera. These people are very energized about the technology and about their careers. The second group we called the conflicted, the ambivalent middle. These are 35% of the sample. These are people who are having, on the one hand, the most fun they've ever had as builders, as PMs, as designers, as engineers, whatever their role is. And on the other hand, they're feeling the most uncertainty that they've ever felt in their careers. They just don't understand where this is going, and whether they're building the things that will ultimately lead to the end of their careers as they know it. The third archetype are the disoriented people, the people who feel like their role keeps shifting. There's a quote that we saw from one of the respondents, "We're like farmers on the cusp of the industrial revolution and we just don't see a clear path to what's happening." Very interesting comparison to that era. And these are people who are feeling very disoriented around what's going on in their career and where things are leading. And then finally, 12% of the sample we categorized as resentful. They're feeling pressured, they're feeling checked out. They are not enjoying their work right now. They're saying things like, "I've been forced to use AI or lose my job. And even when I use AI, I'm still seeing people lose their jobs. I just hate it. I hate having to leverage this technology, rather than do my own thing, and maybe ignore the technology," which obviously none of us can ignore at this point.
00:17:45 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:17:45] S1: There's a lot of people clearly that are very unhappy, resentful, disoriented. I imagine that group can't imagine a lot of people are feeling extremely energized, and I think vice versa. So I think this is just really interesting to see that many people are very different from you. There are many people that are having a really good time, a lot of people that are having a really bad time, and it's just a good way to remember and basically have empathy for the other half, especially the folks not doing as well, because not everyone is as energized. And we'll talk about what that energized group looks like. But I think that's just an important point. A lot of people are having a really hard time.
00:18:28 · Noam Segal, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:18:28] S0: I really agree with you, Lenny. And I think that given the pace of change of the technology, I really do feel that too much of our focus is being spent on mastering the technology and trying to understand what the heck we should be doing with these new releases, new models, new capabilities, loop engineering, whatever the next thing will be next week. And we're not spending enough time and focus on our relationships at work, on seeing our colleagues, on supporting our peers in also being able to work with this technology, thrive with it, succeed with it, and get along and collaborate well with people who don't belong in the same bucket as us when it comes to how the technology's being perceived. So, I personally would love to see all of us, especially energized people, take some of that energy and spend it on the people around you rather than the all-in focus on whatever the next thing is with AI. [00:19:36] S1: Let's go to the next takeaway. Let's talk about burnout and optimism.
00:19:36 · Lenny Rachitsky, Noam Segal
[00:19:36] S1: Let's go to the next takeaway. Let's talk about burnout and optimism. [00:19:40] S0: Yeah. So, last year we looked at burnout and we looked at optimism, and burnout was at a worrying level, enough that we published further research on it. And we introduced the Armor Framework around how to deal with burnout and fight burnout. And this time around, I'm not sure what I was expecting, necessarily. I think I was hoping that optimism would hold steady, and that burnout wouldn't go up, because supposedly with new abilities and even better models, perhaps you might think that we wouldn't have to work as hard, or put as much energy into everything in a way that gets us burnt out. And yet, that's not what we're seeing. When it comes to significant burnout, burnout that's higher than moderate, we've gone up from 44.7% in 2025 to 54.7% in 2026. So burnout is surging. More than half of our sample are feeling significantly burnt out at this point. And at the same time, optimism around the future of our roles and our careers, is falling from 54.8% in 2025 to 48.7% in 2026. Bad news for the tech community. [00:21:11] S1: I don't know what to say about this other than that sucks. I don't like this. I get it fully. I can completely understand why people are feeling this. Pretty worrisome, the rise to a massive jump, over 10% increase in burnout, just in a year.
00:21:11 · Lenny Rachitsky, Noam Segal
[00:21:11] S1: I don't know what to say about this other than that sucks. I don't like this. I get it fully. I can completely understand why people are feeling this. Pretty worrisome, the rise to a massive jump, over 10% increase in burnout, just in a year. [00:21:28] S0: Yeah. And it's interesting, you've had several guests on in the past who've talked about things related to this. I loved your conversation with Geoff from Ramp, and he shared that his worst burnout happened when velocity was lowest. So when you put effort into things that don't actually move, it doesn't feel good and that leads to burnout. And I think that maps for me with certain theories around burnout, where stagnation leads to burnout. I think what's going on now, is the opposite. These data showcase to you that as we ship faster than ever, as we move from shipping a couple of PRs a day to 30 PRs a day, or just doing so much more, in some ways that might be fun, but we are burning out more than we did before. And we're not working any less hard, clearly. We're just taking on more stuff, more stuff, more prototypes, more PRDs, more PRs, more campaigns, more agents, more ads, and it's leading to more burnout. [00:22:54] S1: Yeah. And that's actually one of the takeaways which we'll get to. I don't know if you have this in this deck, but a glimmer of hope that you pointed out is that enjoyment of work is actually still very high, that it's burnout, but also people still at the same levels last year actually, really enjoying their work.
00:23:10 · Noam Segal
[00:23:10] S0: I think what we heard about enjoyment more than anything else, which does give me hope is, it's a couple of things I think. First of all, people are able to bring out certain aspects of their identity and of their passions that they weren't able to before. If you are currently a PM by role, but you have a designer within you, or you are a marketer, but really inside you have that engineer that's been really wanting to come out, now you can. Various tools that are available to us these days enable you to bring out those sides of your personality and those professional aspirations. And that's something that people are really enjoying. We're sort of escaping our classic swim lanes, and a certain percentage of our roles are transforming into something else. And then the second thing that people are saying that they're finding enjoyable is that they are able to manifest things that they've wanted to build, that seemed impossible not very long ago. And that's whether it's in their main job or things that they're doing on the site, et cetera. So it is still, for many people in tech, an exciting time and an enjoyable time, because we can do things that we never though we'd be able to do because they're outside of our role, because they're outside of what felt technically feasible, or for other reasons.