AI 蜜月期结束：科技 workforce 正悄然分成两半

主持人 Bad news for the tech community. 科技行业传来坏消息。

Noam Seagull Burnout at work is a major problem and AI could add to this already overwhelmed employee problem. 职场 burnout 已经是个大问题，AI 可能让本就不堪重负的员工处境更糟。

主持人 The honeymoon period with AI is over. When people are asked, what what are you afraid of? Losing my job to AI is actually second to last. What we saw rise up to the top is the expectation to do more for the same pay. We did this survey on how people are feeling in tech right now. Burnout is increasing significantly. Optimism is declining. It's never been crazier. When are we going to get to the optimistic part of this uh of this episode? 人们与 AI 的蜜月期结束了。问大家最害怕什么时，“工作被 AI 取代”其实排在倒数第二。真正升到首位的是：公司期望你拿同样的薪水做更多事情。我们做了这项调查，想了解科技从业者现在的感受。 Burnout 正显著增加，乐观程度正在下降，局面从未如此疯狂。这期什么时候才会讲到乐观的部分？

Half of the people in tech are feeling incredible. And the other half told us,"My brain is rotting. My work feels worse." Elon had this really interesting way of describing it. We're definitely living in a simulation if we're alive right now when we're about to start building data centers in space and AI is going to be as smart as human. What does this tell us we should be doing if we can do anything? We're in the second inning of a massive shift. [笑声] 科技行业有一半人感觉棒极了，另一半则告诉我们： “我的大脑正在腐烂，工作体验变差了。 ”Elon 有个很有意思的说法：如果我们恰好活在一个即将把 data center 建到太空、AI 也将达到人类智能水平的时代，那我们肯定生活在 simulation 里。这对我们有什么启示？如果还能有所行动，我们应该做什么？

No one knows how it will end, but all you can do is Today, my guest is Noam Seagull. Noam and I go a long ways back. We worked together at Airbnb for many years where he was my research partner. Since then, he went on to be a research leader at Intercom, Twitter, Wealthfront, Meta, Zapier, and Figma. Gnome is so amazing, and over the past couple years, I've been lucky to partner with him on a bunch of research projects. 这场巨变才进入第二局，没人知道最后会怎样，但你所能做的只有——今天的嘉宾是 Noam Segal。 Noam 和我认识很久了，我们曾在 Airbnb 共事多年，当时他是我的 research partner。此后，他陆续在 Intercom、Twitter、Wealthfront、Meta、Zapier 和 Figma 担任 research leader。

The most ambitious of which has been a tech worker sentiment survey, which we plan to run every year. This is the second time we've run it, and the results are so interesting. I believe this is the largest survey of its kind looking at how people in tech feel about their jobs and AI and layoffs and burnout and the future of their careers. There's so much in this and basically this episode is a conversation about the results. Noam 非常出色，过去几年我很幸运能和他合作多个研究项目，其中最有雄心的是 tech worker sentiment survey。我们计划每年开展一次。这是第二次调查，结果非常有意思。我相信，这是同类调查中规模最大的一项，考察科技从业者如何看待自己的工作、AI、layoff、burnout 和职业未来。

At the end of the conversation, we go through a bunch of advice on what you might do if you are currently on the struggle bus and trying to figure out what to do. I am so excited for this episode. I'm so excited for this report. A big thank you to Noam for doing the work to create the survey, run the survey, analyze the survey, and write the post that we will link to. It is so good. 本期内容非常丰富，基本就是围绕调查结果展开的讨论。对话最后，我们还会给出一些建议，帮助那些目前处境艰难、正在思考下一步该怎么办的人。我非常期待本期节目和这份报告。非常感谢 Noam 设计、执行并分析调查，还撰写了我们会附上链接的文章，质量真的很高。

Before we get into it, do not forget to check out lennisproass.com for a free year of the hottest and most well-crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Noam Seagull. 开始前别忘了访问 lennysproducts.com；Lenny's Newsletter 订阅者可以独家免费使用一年目前最热门、制作最精良的一批 AI 产品。下面欢迎 Noam Segal。

Noam, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Lenny. It's such an incredible experience to be here. Thanks for having me. Uh, it's my pleasure. We've actually worked together for a long time. And no, few people know this. We, you were the researcher on our team. Uh, when I was at Airbnb, this was like 10 years ago. Decades ago, a decade ago, Lenny, so much has changed. So much has changed. Noam，非常感谢你来做客，欢迎来到节目。非常感谢，Lenny。来到这里是一次非常棒的体验，谢谢邀请。是我的荣幸。其实我们一起工作了很久，但很少有人知道，你当时是我们团队的 researcher。那是我在 Airbnb 的时候，大约十年前。像是几个时代以前了。十年间变化太多。

Uh, which is a great segue to what we're going to be talking about today, which is we did this survey on how people are feeling in tech right now. Uh, it's never been crazier. And so we did this report on just how are people feeling. And this is the second time we've done this. We ran this a year ago. And the idea here is we're going to have this yearly tech sentiment survey that's going to track how tech people are feeling. 确实变化太多，这正好引出我们今天要。讨论的主题。我们调查了科技从业者此刻的感受，因为局面从未如此疯狂。我们用这份报告回答“大家现在感觉如何”。这是第二次调查，一年前做过第一轮；我们的想法是每年进行一次 tech sentiment survey，持续追踪从业者的感受。

Before we get into the takeaways, what's kind of the give us a little context just on this survey like how how you ran it, how what were we looking at? Anything people need to know? 在谈主要结论前，请先介绍一下调查背景：你们如何执行，具体观察什么？听众还需要知道什么？

Noam Seagull Yeah, so to your point, this is the second time we're running this survey, which I really feel is unique in the tech industry. I appreciate you for giving me the opportunity and giving us an opportunity as a community to learn more about how we're all feeling in tech. I'm not aware of any survey like this at this scale looking at these things. Last year when we ran the similar tech sentiment, the first inaugural tech sentiment survey, the title was burnt out but optimistic. 正如你说的，这是我们第二次开展调查，我认为它在科技行业很独特。谢谢你给我、也给整个社区这个机会，让我们进一步了解科技从业者的共同感受。据我所知，没有其他同等规模的调查考察这些问题。去年我们进行首届 tech sentiment survey 时，标题是“Burned Out but Optimistic”。

We were seeing fairly high levels of burnout but also fairly good levels of optimism about where things are going. And we actually followed up on the burnout point and we created the armor framework if you remember. And uh I'm really glad we we did that. This year we surveyed about 6,000 people from product, engineering, design, research, pretty much uh any role, marketing, pretty much any role in tech. And the results were very interesting. 当时观察到相当高的 burnout，但人们对未来仍较为乐观。后来我们还围绕 burnout 做了后续工作，创建了 ARMOR framework，你应该记得。我很高兴我们做了这件事。今年我们调查了约 6,000 人，覆盖 product、engineering、design、research、marketing 等几乎所有科技岗位。

So I'm very excited to jump into them. 结果非常有意思，我很期待深入讨论。

主持人 Yeah. I just remember when you shared the first draft of the analysis uh and I was just like reading it, I was like, "Holy this is so interesting." and it just feels like it's putting words to the way I feel, the way that I hear a lot of people feel. So, I'm really excited that we're doing this. This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, Work OS. 我还记得你发来第一版分析时，我边读边想：“天啊，这太有意思了。 ”它像是把我和许多人一直以来的感受准确说了出来，所以我很高兴能做这期节目。本季节目由 presenting sponsor WorkOS 赞助。 OpenAI、Anthropic、Cursor、Vercel、Replit、Sierra、Clay 以及数百家领先公司有什么共同点？

What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Versel, Replet, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? They are all powered by work OS. If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single signon, skim,arbback, audit logs, and other features required by large companies. Work OS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SAS. 它们都由 WorkOS 提供支持。如果你为 enterprise 构建产品，一定经历过集成 single sign-on、SCIM、RBAC、audit log 和其他大型企业必需功能的痛苦。 WorkOS 把这些阻碍成交的问题变成可直接接入的 API，并提供专为 B2B SaaS 构建的现代 developer platform。

Literally, every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand up market ends up working with Work OS. And that's because they are the best. Whether you are a seedstage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, work OS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unblocking growth. It's essentially Stripe for enterprise features. 我投资的 startup 中，几乎每一家开始向 upmarket 扩张时最终都会使用 WorkOS，因为他们确实是最好的。无论你是想拿下首个 enterprise customer 的 seed-stage startup，还是正在全球扩张的 unicorn，WorkOS 都是最快的enterprise-ready 路径，可以解除增长阻碍。

Visit works.com to get started or just hit up their Slack where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions. Workos allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to works.com to make your app enterprise ready. Today we're going to go through the top 10 takeaways. What's kind of the like the big picture takeaway from the report overall? If someone could take one big takeaway away. 它本质上就是 enterprise feature 领域的 Stripe。访问 workos.com 即可开始使用，也可以直接进入他们的 Slack，那里有真正的 engineer 回答问题。 WorkOS 通过易用的 API、完整文档和流畅的 developer experience 帮助你更快构建。

Well, first I'll say that you and I both noticed an incredible post from Elena Vera a couple of days before this pod was recorded and she's talking about the AI confidence theater and how in conversations these days in tech everything is dead. First of all, engine coding is dead, design is dead, SAS is dead, etc. Obviously, that's not true. 访问 workos.com，让你的 app 达到 enterprise-ready。今天我们会逐一讨论十大结论。整份报告最重要的总体结论是什么？如果只能记住一件事，会是什么？

So, what you're about to see in these results is the best picture we could provide and probably the best picture anyone's provided so far of how people are really feeling about AI. And to me, this also ties to the fact that if you were if you're watching this and you work in tech, you probably answer some sort of bianual culture amp style survey about how you're feeling. 首先说，我们在录制前几天都看到了 Elena Verna 一篇很精彩的文章。她谈到 AI confidence theater：如今科技圈的讨论里，好像所有东西都已经“死了”——engineering 死了、coding 死了、design 死了、SaaS 也死了。但这显然不是真的。接下来这些结果，是我们能提供的、也可能是迄今任何人提供过的最真实的 AI 感受图景。

But the questions don't really dive any deeper than the effectiveness or of your manager or leadership at the company you work at. Whereas the big picture in this survey and and I think the the thing that stood out to us the most is how bifocated the workforce is right now. 它还与另一件事有关：如果你在看节目并且任职于科技公司，大概每半年都要填写某种 Culture Amp 式员工调查，回答自己的感受。

And what you're going to see is that AI has an outlier level outsiz impact on how people feel about their work more so than any other uh characteristic of their job whether it's their role, the company they work for, the company size, their level etc. Half of the people in tech are feeling incredible, energized,amplified, excited about the technology and the future of, you know, their role. And the other half feel like the future is unclear. They feel destabilized. 但这类问题通常不会深入到直属 manager 或公司 leadership 是否有效之外。而我们的调查呈现出的总体图景，也是最让我们吃惊的一点，就是当前 workforce 出现了多么明显的分化。接下来会看到，AI对人们工作感受的影响异常突出，超过岗位、所在公司、公司规模、级别等任何其他工作特征。科技行业有一半人感觉极好：精力充沛、能力被放大，对这项技术和自身岗位的未来感到兴奋。

主持人 They feel diminished. Um, other negative emotions around that. It's uh it's a very interesting picture that really cuts the tech workforce in half and that's what we'll see in a second. 另一半则认为未来并不清晰，感到不稳定、能力被削弱，并伴有其他负面情绪。这幅图景很有意思，几乎把科技 workforce 一分为二，稍后就会看到。

Noam Seagull It feels so like yes, this feels correct as we we look at people in tech. Like it just uh is so clear that this happening and what's interesting is it's 50/50 in the results. I didn't expect to be so even. That was a really interesting takeaway. 这真的很符合我们观察到的科技从业者状态，显然确实正在发生。最有意思的是结果恰好接近 50/50，我没想到会如此平均。

主持人 It's 50/50. When you dive a little bit deeper into the data, there is some nuance there. So, we're looking at this slide with the question that you and I both decided to answer the survey, which is, how has AI shifted your professional identity, if at all? And I'll actually call out first of all that only 3% of people reported that AI hasn't shifted their identity. So, clearly AI has changed how we each view ourselves. That's first of all. 的确是 50/50，但深入数据后还有一些 nuance。现在这张 slide 对应的问题是——你和我也都填写了调查—— “AI 是否改变了你的 professional identity？如果有，是怎样改变的？ ”首先，只有 3% 的人表示 AI 没有改变自己的身份认知，可见 AI 已经改变了几乎每个人看待自己的方式。

But then to your point, the most prominent thing here is that 50% of people in tech are feeling amplified. They feel like they can do more. They feel like they can do better. It's a wholly positive uh emotion. And it's great. It's great. It's great for them. But the other half of tech divide into three distinct groups. The first group is people who feel like their role is being redefined. 最突出的是，50% 的科技从业者认为自己被 amplified，觉得能够做更多、做得更好，这是一种完全正面的情绪，对他们而言当然很好。但科技行业的另一半又分成三个不同群体。

They don't, that group doesn't actually have that much clarity or specific positive or negative emotions around what's happening. They just don't really understand it. It's a very mixed bag type of emotion where it's very clear to me that my role is fundamentally changing, but I don't really know what it means. And that's 27% of our sample. Then as we go down the line, we have two groups who have clear negative emotions around what's going on. 第一组认为自己的岗位正在被重新定义，他们对于正在发生的变化没有太多清晰认识，也没有明确的正面或负面情绪。这是一种非常混杂的感受：我很清楚自己的岗位正在发生根本变化，却不知道这意味着什么。这一组占样本的 27%。再往下，还有两个对当前变化持明确负面情绪的群体。

The first group, 14% of people feel destabilized. You know, the the ground is shaking beneath them. They have very little clarity on what's going on. They have high anxiety levels. They report having uh very negative and and uh pessimistic views of what's to come. And then 5% of people feel diminished. 第一组占 14%，他们感到 destabilized，仿佛脚下的地面正在震动。他们几乎不清楚正在发生什么，焦虑程度很高，对未来持非常负面、悲观的看法。还有 5% 的人觉得自己被 diminished。

They feel like the great powers of AI have taken something away from them. Uh and something that obviously is never going to come back because what's the saying? Uh AI and air models are the worst today that they'll ever be. They're only getting better. So people who who feel diminished now will only feel more diminished in the future probably. Super. So, following that thread, 他们觉得 AI 的强大能力夺走了自己的一部分，而这部分显然再也回不来。不是有句话说，AI 和 AI model 今天是它们最差的时候，以后只会越来越好。因此现在就感觉被削弱的人，未来可能只会更明显。很好，沿着这个话题——

Noam Seagull sewing for the bad news. Sewing for the the bad news. 接下来是坏消息。接下来是坏消息。

主持人 There's there's some good news here. So, following the thread, uh this these buckets correlate super strongly with basically every other measure of how people are doing. So, this kind of regression on just like every other core uh question you asked and and it's so interesting to see how connected these are. 这里也有一些好消息。沿着刚才的话题，这几个群体与几乎所有其他衡量工作状态的指标都高度相关。你对其他核心问题做了类似 regression，看到它们联系得如此紧密，很有意思。

Noam Seagull Yeah. And just to put a couple of statistical terms on this to to clarify how big the effect is in tech we are somewhat obsessed with the notion of statistical significance. But the thing about statistical significance is that if you have a large enough sample you can sort of reach that type of significance regardless of how much the effect matters practically. A better way to look at things is using an effect size measure like Coen's D in in this case. 对。用几个 statistical term 来说明这个影响在科技行业有多大：我们多少有点沉迷于 statistical significance。但问题是，只要样本足够大，无论实际影响多小，都可能达到统计显著。更好的方法是看 effect size，例如这里使用 Cohen's d。

And what effect size tells you is practically how much does this thing matter. So for example last year a couple of the largest effects we saw were number one your manager. Who your manager is and how effective they are matters a ton to how much you're enjoying your job and how optimistic you are and how burnt out you are or not. And we'll see some of that later on. And the second large effect we found was the founder happiness effect. Effect size 告诉你的是，某个因素在现实中究竟有多重要。比如去年观察到的最大几个效应中，第一是 manager：你的 manager 是谁、工作是否有效，会极大影响你是否喜欢工作、对未来是否乐观，以及是否 burnout。后面还会看到这部分。第二个大效应是 founder happiness effect。

Founders, at least people who are currently founders and in their journey of running a startup, are incredibly happy probably because they have a lot of agency and autonomy relatively to um the typical employee. this finding, this insight around the impact of AI on your identity and on every single other variable around your job is about three times as large as those other effects. Founder，至少是目前正在经营 startup 的 founder，幸福程度非常高，可能。因为相较普通员工拥有更多 agency 和 autonomy。而这次关于 AI 如何影响 identity，以及它如何关联工作中其他每个 variable 的发现，。

So this technology, this era that we're in is having an outlier level, outsized impact on how people are feeling about work more so than anything else we've seen. So let's actually look at that data of just how this sort of classification connects to just optimism, burnout, things like that. Uh because this is and we're going to come back to just like what exactly is that divide? Just a question to ask that tells you which side you're on. But let's look at this first. effect size 大约是前述效应的三倍。因此，这项技术和我们所处的时代，对人们工作感受产生了异常突出、远超其他因素的影响，是我们此前从未见过的。现在来看看这套分类如何关联 optimism、burnout 等数据。之后还会回到一个问题：究竟是什么分界？有没有一个问题能判断你位于哪一边？但先看这张图。好。稍后还会深入讨论其中几项。

Yeah. So we'll dive into some of these things in a little more depth later on. But just to put it all together, what you're looking at here is the AI identity stance and then a breakdown by your AI identity around career optimism, burnout, layoff, worry, and an interesting one for me and we'll talk about this further. Would you recommend your role to someone coming into the industry now? 先把它们放到一起：这里展示 AI identity stance，再按不同 stance 拆解 career optimism、burnout、layoff worry，以及一个我觉得很有意思、之后还会进一步讨论的问题：“你会向现在进入行业的人推荐自己的岗位吗？

And what you can see is that as you move from the people who feel amplified to the people who feel diminished, career optimism goes down significantly. Burnout or reports of burnout go up significantly. ”从感觉 amplified 的人一路到感觉 diminished 的人，career optimism 显著下降，自报 burnout 显著上升。

Layoff worry also rises significantly. And perhaps the most significant finding of them all is that people would not recommend junior people, early career people entering into the tech workforce at this moment given what's happening with AI. 对 layoff 的担忧也显著增加。或许最重要的发现是：考虑到 AI 带来的变化，人们不愿建议 junior 或 early-career 从业者此刻进入科技行业。

And you're seeing these very linear, clear, and organized effects, which just demonstrates to you the impact that AI is having on all of these different variables. And what I love is you took all of this kind of all these data points and you've created these kind of four archetypes of people today. And uh I feel like everyone listening is going to be like, okay, that's me. So let's go through that. 这些效应呈现出非常线性、清晰而有序的变化，说明 AI 对所有这些 variable 的影响。我很喜欢你把这些 data point 归纳成当下科技从业者的四种 archetype；每位听众大概都会说“这就是我”。我们逐个讲讲。

主持人 Yeah. So, we're seeing these 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, right? 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. 好，我们观察到四类 tech worker。分类来自调查后段的一个问题：我们请参与者报告具体感受，可以选择任意多种 emotion。顺便说个有意思的数据：平均每人选择了五种不同 emotion。还有几个人选择了 13 种，真的很多。

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 product 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, etc. These people are very energized about the technology and about their their careers. 第一类是 energized tech worker，占样本的 41%。他们会说：“做 product 又变得有趣了。我在探索各种东西，感觉自己身处科技游乐园，所有设施都向我开放，可以尝试各种新方法。我现在是 builder，拥有过去从未有过的能力。 ”这群人对技术和自己的职业都充满能量。

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. 第二类被称为 conflicted，也就是 ambivalent middle，占样本的 35%。他们一方面正享受职业生涯中最有趣的 builder 体验，无论是 PM、designer、engineer 还是其他岗位；另一方面，又经历职业生涯中前所未有的不确定。

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 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 to that era. 他们完全不明白事情将走向何处，也不知道自己正在构建的。东西最终是否会终结自己熟悉的职业。第三类是 disoriented，觉得自己的岗位不断变化。一位 respondent 说：“我们就像 industrial revolution 前夜的 farmer，看不到接下来会发生什么的清晰路径。

And these are people who are feeling very disoriented around what's going on in their career and where things are 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. ”这是个很有意思的时代类比。这群人对职业中正在发生的变化，以及未来走向感到非常迷失。最后，我们把样本中的 12% 归为 resentful：他们觉得被施压，已经抽离，不再享受现在的工作。

You know, I I hate having to leverage this technology rather than do my own my own thing and maybe ignore the technology, which obviously none of us can ignore at this point. 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 the vice versa. So I think this is uh just like uh really interesting to see that some many people are very different from you. 他们会说：“我被迫使用 AI，否则就会丢掉工作；即便使用 AI，我还是看见有人失业。我讨厌这件事。我讨厌被迫利用这项技术，而不能按自己的方式做事、甚至忽略它。 ”当然，现在我们谁都不可能忽略这项技术。显然很多人非常不快乐、resentful 或 disoriented。我猜这群人很难想象，还有很多人感到极其 energized；反过来也一样。

Uh 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 uh way to remember that and give 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 like what that energized groups look group looks like but I think that's just an important point like a lot of people are having a really hard time. 所以，看到许多人与自己的体验完全不同很重要：很多人过得非常好，也有很多人过得非常糟。这提醒我们要对另一半保持 empathy，尤其是状态不佳的人。不是每个人都同样 energized；后面会讨论 energized 群体的特点，但这里的重要事实是：很多人正经历非常艰难的时期。

I I really agree with you Lenny and I think that given the pace of change of the technology. I 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, uh loop engineering, whatever the next thing will be next week. 我非常同意，Lenny。技术变化如此之快，而我们的注意力似乎过多放在掌握技术、试图理解这些新 release、新 model、新 capability、loop engineering，以及下周又会出现的下一件事。

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, you know, work with this technology thrive with it, succeed with it, and 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 is being uh perceived. 我们却没有花足够时间关注职场关系，没有真正看见同事、支持同伴，让他们也能与这项技术一起。工作、成长并取得成功，也没有学会与那些对技术看法不属于同一类别的人良好相处和协作。

主持人 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 allin focus on whatever the next thing is with with AI. Let's go to the next takeaway. Let's talk about burnout and optimism. 我个人很希望大家，尤其是 energized 的人，把部分能量用在身边的人身上，而不是把全部注意力投向 AI 的下一个新东西。进入下一个结论：burnout 和 optimism。

Noam Seagull 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 ARM framework around how to deal with burnout and fight burnout. And this time around I'm not sure what I was expecting necessarily. 去年我们考察了二者。 Burnout 已经达到令人担忧的水平，促使我们发表后续研究，并提出 ARMOR framework，讨论如何应对 burnout。这一次，我不确定自己原本预期什么。

Um, I think I was hoping that optimism would hold steady and that burnout wouldn't go up because supposedly with uh new abilities and even better models, perhaps you might think that we wouldn't have to work as hard or or 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. 我大概希望 optimism 能保持稳定，burnout 不再上升。毕竟有了新能力和更好的 model，人们也许不必如此努力，不必投入那么多精力，以至于 burnout。但结果并非如此。对于高于 moderate 的 significant burnout，比例从 2025 年的 44.7% 上升到 2026 年的 54.7%。

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. I don't know what to say about this other than that sucks. I don't like this. Uh I get it fully. Like I can completely understand why people are feeling this. Burnout 正急剧增加，超过半数样本目前感到显著 burnout。与此同时，对岗位和职业未来的 optimism 从 2025 年的 54.8% 降到 2026 年的 48.7%。这对科技社区是个坏消息。除了“这太糟了”，我不知道还能说什么。我不喜欢这个结果，但完全理解人们为什么这样感觉。

Uh pretty worrisome. the the rise to like a massive jump like over 10% increase in burnout in just in a year. 仅一年，burnout 就大幅增加超过 10 个百分点，确实令人担忧。

主持人 Yeah. And and it's interesting, you've had several guests on in the past who who've talked about things related to this. I loved your conversation with uh Jeff uh from RAMP. Um, 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 uh to burnout. And I think that maps for me with certain theories around burnout where stagnation leads to burnout. 对。很有意思的是，你过去邀请过几位嘉宾，讨论过与此相关的问题。我很喜欢你和 Ramp 的 Geoff 进行的对话。他说自己最严重的 burnout 发生在 velocity 最低的时候。当你把精力投入到毫无进展的事情上，感觉很糟，也会导致 burnout。这和某些 burnout 理论很一致：停滞会导致 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, you know, a couple of PRs a day to 30 PRs uh a day or or just doing so much more. In some ways, that might be fun, but we are burning out more than than we did before. And and we're not working any less hard, clearly, right? 但我认为现在发生的是相反情况。这些数据显示，我们的 shipping 速度前所未有，从每天几个 PR 变成 30 个 PR，或者只是完成了多得多的事情。这在某些方面也许很有趣，但我们比以前更 burnout，而且显然并没有少工作，只是承担了更多：更多任务、prototype、PRD、PR、campaign、agent 和 ad。

We we we're just taking on more stuff, more stuff, more prototypes, more PRDs, more PRs, more campaigns, more agents, more ads,

Noam Seagull and it's leading to more burnouts. 于是导致更多 burnout。

主持人 Yeah. And that's actually one of the takeaways which we'll get to. Uh I don't know if you have this in this deck, but the 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. 对，这。其实也是。后面会谈的一个结论。我不知道这张 deck 里有没有，但你指出的一线希望是：人们对工作的 enjoyment 仍然很高。虽然 burnout 了，但享受工作的程度与去年一样。

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 um 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. You know, if if you're currently a PM by role, but you have a a designer within you or you're a marketer, but really inside you have that engineer that's been really wanting to to come out. Now, you can, right? 我认为最能带来希望的是，人们提到 enjoyment 时主要说了几件事。首先，人们现在能展现过去无法展现的 identity 和 passion。比如你的岗位是 PM，但内心也有 designer 的一面；或者你是 marketer，内心一直有个 engineer 想要走出来。

Um, 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. 现在你能做到。各种现有工具让你可以展现这些 personality 和 professional aspiration，这是人们非常享受的。我们正摆脱传统 swim lane，一部分岗位也在转化成别的形态。

And then the second thing that people are saying that they're finding enjoyable is that um they are able to manifest things that they've wanted to build that seemed impossible not very long ago, you know, um and that and that's whether it's in their main job or things that they're doing on the side, etc. 人们觉得愉快的第二件事，是能够把不久前还觉得不可能的想法真正构建出来，无论是在主业中，还是个人 side project。

Uh, so it is still for many people in tech an exciting time and an enjoyable time because we can do things that we never thought 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. And this is another data point in the at the end of this you have a bunch of recommendations of what to do with all this information and that connects to something that you recommend later. 因此对很多科技从业者来说，这仍是令人兴奋、让人享受的时代。我们能做过去认为自己做不到的事情，无论因为它超出原有岗位边界、超出当时觉得技术可行的范围，还是其他原因。这又是一个 data point。节目最后有一系列如何运用这些信息的建议，其中一条就与此相连。

But before we get there, uh, one of the other really interesting takeaways was around layoffs and how layoffs impact fear of layoffs impact burnout. Talk about that. We did ask people how worried they are about being laid off. And as you can see, 72% of our sample are worried to a certain extent about being laid off and 41.2% are at least moderately worried about being laid off. 不过在那之前，另一个很有意思的结论与 layoff 有关：对 layoff 的恐惧怎样影响 burnout？请谈谈。我们确实问了参与者有多担心被裁员。数据显示，72% 的样本在某种程度上担心 layoff，41.2% 至少达到中等担忧程度。

So it is clear that people are feeling that they might be uh cutting the branch that they're sitting on uh when it comes to using AI. Um people are reporting that their companies going all in on agents all in on these technologies and it does feel like they may be pushed out at some point. So the the worry level is is high. 很明显，人们觉得自己在使用 AI 时可能正砍断坐着的树枝。他们说所在公司全面投入 agent 和这些技术，因此感觉自己可能在某个时刻被排除出去，所以担忧程度很高。

And I think if you're watching this, you're starting to notice that there's a ton of ambivalence right now in the community and a ton of uh clashes between emotions, feeling energized and enjoying my job and at the same time not being very optimistic about it and feeling tired from it and feeling worried that all of that enjoyment is going to end one day when the company I work for decides that I'm no longer needed. 如果你正在观看，应该已经注意到，社区中充满 ambivalence 和彼此冲突的 emotion：我既感到 energized、享受工作，同时又不太乐观，感到疲惫，。还担心所有 enjoyment 会在某一天结束，因为公司决定不再需要我。我想很多听众都有这些感受，也会觉得自己的声音终于被听见。

I feel a lot of people listening are probably feeling all this and uh feeling heard. Uh so what's interesting is so far the kind of two takeaways. One is this bifurcation that's happening and these kind of archetypes that break that group a little bit further. At the same time just broadly burnout is increasing significantly. Optimism is declining. 有意思的是，目前有两个结论：一是 workforce 正在 bifurcate，并可进一步分成几种 archetype；与此同时，整体 burnout 显著增加，optimism 正在下降。

Talk about just those two kind of how you think about those two side by side. this idea of many people are much happier and having the best time of their life, many people are having a really bad time, but then broadly this optimism and burnout shift. 你怎样把这两件事放在一起理解？很多人更快乐、正经历人生中最好的时光，也有很多人过得很糟；但总体 optimism 和 burnout 指标仍在恶化。

Noam Seagull I think there's something addictive about this technology. And I I'll speak for myself for a second and say that, you know, I've also never had as much fun in my career as when using these technologies. And I've been using it for too many hours a day playing about and building. I think many of us, even those who aren't as energized about the technology, we still feel like we're in this fascinating technological playground. 我认为这项技术带有某种 addictive 特征。说说我自己：职业生涯中从未像使用这些技术时这么快乐。我每天花太多小时玩和构建。我想即使没有对技术那么 energized 的人，也会觉得自己置身于一个迷人的技术游乐场，很难与它断开，去 touch grass，读书，或者做你闲暇时喜欢的其他事情。

And it's very very hard to disengage from that technology and touch grass,read a book, whatever you love to do in your spare time as well, Lenny. And so, yes, we're enjoying using this technology because it's opened up avenues that we've never had. But on the other hand, it's tiring. 所以，是的，我们享受使用它，因为它打开了过去没有的道路；但另一方面，这很累。

It's tiring to be constantly learning this technology and constantly trying to apply it in different contexts and constantly try to take on more than what your traditional role dictated because again there aren't any traditional roles anymore. We're just all builders uh these days whether that's an official thing within a company or not. 你要不断学习技术、不断尝试把它应用到不同情境，又不断承担超出传统岗位定义的更多工作，因为已经不存在所谓传统岗位了。如今我们都是 builder，无论公司是否正式这样定义。

And so I think that naturally this leads to these these clashing emotions, these exciting feelings around what's possible and how fun it is to use AI. And on the other hand, the realization that the reason this technology is so exciting is because it's so powerful. And because it's so powerful, it might be coming for us and to take our jobs, right? Did you Did you grow up on the Terminator movies? I keep thinking about the Terminator movies. 因此，这自然产生彼此冲突的情绪：一方面对 AI 的可能性和使用乐趣感到兴奋；另一方面又意识到，这项技术之所以令人兴奋，正是因为它非常强大；而它如此强大，也就可能来抢我们的工作，对吧？你小时候看 Terminator 系列吗？我一直想到它。

主持人 I don't know about growing up, but yes, I I watched them early in my 不知道算不算从小看，但很早就看过。

Noam Seagull Oh my gosh, I love those movies and I just can't help but wonder, you know,when the robots are coming for us. So, uh, incredible technology might be coming for us at some point. Skynet Skynet is being built right now. 天啊，我很喜欢这些电影，总忍不住想，。 robot 什么时候会来找我们。因此，这项惊人的技术也许有一天会冲我们而来。Skynet 正在被建造。

主持人 Skynet is coming. Skynet 要来了。

Noam Seagull So, there's a there's going to be a really great takeaway around this. Before we get to that one, actually, uh it's like every single one is so interesting and just like, man, this one's interesting, but they're all interesting. Let's get to the next takeaway around people's sense of their own career and whether they recommend it. This is a wild one for me because at least within the research community, I am known as the net promoter score hater. 稍后会有一个很好的相关 takeaway。不过先谈下一项——每一项都太有意思了。接下来讨论人们如何看待自己的职业，以及是否愿意向别人推荐。这个结果让我震惊，因为至少在 research 社区，我以讨厌 Net Promoter Score 闻名。

I even built a website dedicated to fighting NPS. NPS is the worst.com. 我甚至建了一个专门反对 NPS 的网站，叫“nps is the worst.com”。

主持人 It's an actual website. Fun fact, by the way, I I dislike NPS so much that I even brought the domain NPSthebest.com and I forward people from that to NPSW.com. That's how committed I am to fighting NPS. But but you and I were both genuinely curious about whether people who are, you know, already a few years in and they're maybe senior or above senior in their roles, what would they say to the person entering the industry now? 这真的是一个网站。顺便说，我厌恶 NPS 到甚至买下了“NPSthebest.com”这个 domain，再把访问者重定向到那个反 NPS 网站。我对反对 NPS 就是这么投入。但你和我都真心好奇：已经入行几年、可能做到 senior 或更高级别的人，会对现在刚入行的人说什么？

Or what would they say to a person considering entering the industry now? would they recommend their role and and the tech industry more broadly to a friend or a relative of theirs? And the answer was shocking. Absolutely shocking. So, let me show you the data around this. And let me pre preface this with a quick explanation on NPS because it's not so easy to understand. 又会对正在考虑入行的人说什么？他们会向朋友或亲属推荐自己的岗位，乃至整个科技行业吗？答案令人震惊，真的非常震惊。来看看数据。先快速解释 NPS，因为它并不容易理解。 NPS 会问你是否愿意向朋友或家人推荐某个 product，在这里则是推荐你的岗位。

NPS is this question around whether you would recommend a product or in this case your role to a friend or family member, right? And the scale goes from 0 to 10. 10 being you would absolutely recommend your role and zero being you would absolutely not recommend your bowl. But then NPS as a whole when it's calculated goes from minus 100 which is absolutely terrible to plus 100. And the zero point represents neutrality. It represents that the sample as a whole is neutral. 评分从 0 到 10；10 表示绝对愿意推荐，0 表示绝对不愿意。但计算整体 NPS 时，结果范围是 -100 到 +100，-100 极其糟糕，0 表示中立，也就是整个样本既不是 promoter——用 NPS 术语说，就是会向别人推广、推荐自己岗位的人——也不是 detractor，。

It's not a promoter to use NPS uh speak meaning I would promote my role to other people. I would recommend it to other people. and they're not detractors either, which means I'm not negative about my role. So that's the zero point. What you're seeing here is that no one is a promoter of their role in tech right now. Not even founders who are by far the happiest happy go-lucky people in in tech right now. Founders would not recommend their roles. 也就是对岗位持负面态度的人，这就是零点。现在的数据表明，科技行业目前没有任何一个群体是自己岗位的 promoter。即使是远比其他人快乐、最无忧无虑的 founder，也不会推荐自己的岗位。 Sales 或 go-to-market 人员也不会。

Neither would people in sales or go to market. PMs, operations, engineering, and the worst of all, designers and researchers, my community are the least likely to recommend their role to other people coming into tech. It's sort of like saying, you know, I'm kind of swimming in this pool. The water's kind of okay, but you shouldn't come into these these tech waters. They ain't for you. My god, what an interesting takeaway and part of this research. PM、operations、engineering 亦然；其中最糟糕的是 designer 和 researcher——我自己的社区——他们最不愿向准备进入科技行业的人推荐自己的岗位。这有点像说：“我正在这个泳池里游，水温还行，但你不该进入这片科技水域。

So, just looking at this chart just as people are seeing this uh just like nobody everyone's like, "Nope, don't do what I do." It's interesting. Like, you know, we're going to talk about how founders are the happiest people in tech, but still it's like a very stressful hard job. Uh I'm surprised it's like I'm surprised it's the least like you would think many founders would be like this the craziest, gnarliest job. You should not do this sucks. But it's interesting. ”他们不适合你。天啊，这是研究中多么有意思的结论。看这张 chart，所有人几乎都在说：“别做我做的工作。 ”很有意思。我们后面会说 founder 是科技行业最快乐的人，但这仍是一份压力极大、非常艰难的工作。我原本以为很多 founder 会说：“这是最疯狂、最艰苦的工作，千万别做，太糟了。

They're the least unhappy. They're the least least likely to recommend. There's a strong narrative right now that there's never been a better time to be a founder. You're a lot less reliant on other people to build. There's a ton of conversations around the soloreneur or the duoropreneur, right? It says a ton of conversations around how this is the era to be a founder and yet people who are currently in that role aren't very excited about recommending it to other people. ”可有意思的是，他们已经是最不不快乐的一群，却仍不太愿意推荐。现在有一种很强的叙事：成为 founder 的时机从未像今天这么好，因为构建产品对他人的依赖大幅降低。人们大量讨论 solopreneur 和 duo entrepreneur，也就是说，这是创业的时代；但目前身处这个岗位的人却并不热衷于向别人推荐。

There's also another layer to this which is as you go down in seniority you're less likely to recommend your role. So execs, VPs,maybe even directors are sort of more likely to recommend their role than people who are ICes. That's an interesting one. And I I've seen all sorts of explanations for that. 还有另一层：seniority 越低，越不愿推荐自己的岗位。因此 executive、VP，可能还有 director，比 IC 更愿意推荐自己的岗位，这很有意思。

Um, some one explanation for example is that at the top of the pyramid VPs are benefiting more from AI because they're getting all of this stream of information and knowledge being processed by AI making their jobs a lot easier. Whereas IC's are each scrambling to build all of these micro SAS products within the companies they work for. No one knows what anyone else is doing. There's a lot of duplicative work. 我看过各种解释。比如有一种说法是，位于金字塔顶端的 VP 从 AI 中获益更多，因为 AI 能处理源源不断的信息和知识，让他们的工作容易很多。与此同时，IC 却在各自公司里拼命构建各种 micro-SaaS product，没人知道其他人在做什么，重复劳动很多。

It's a lot easier to build products these days, but a lot harder to maintain them. And so I think a lot of IC's are feeling like um there's a saying um full gas on neutral, right? Like you're pushing the pedal to the metal in your car, but you're in neutral gear. You're not going anywhere. I think that that's the feeling that a lot of IC's are having these days with these technologies. like I keep building these things but I'm not having the impact I want. 现在构建产品容易多了，维护却难得多。因此很多 IC 感觉像一句话说的“挂空挡踩满油门”：汽车油门踩到底，但变速箱在 neutral，哪儿也去不了。我想这正是很多 IC 使用这些技术时的感受：不断构建东西，却没有产生想要的 impact；其他人也都在构建，造成大量。

Everyone else is building to there's a lot of confusion and it's just not worth it anymore. There's like this interesting also trend this, you know, there's this whole meme of uh don't become part of the permanent underclass. And I feel like there's like a few of these threads throughout this and here it's like okay I'm like a PM but like it's too late. Don't do this. like the door is closing for this role. Things are changing and that's it's not just PM, it's every role. 混乱，感觉不再值得。还有一个有趣趋势：现在流行一句 meme，“不要成为 permanent underclass 的一员”。这份调查中有几条类似脉络。比如有人想：“我已经是 PM，但现在太迟了；你别再做这个。这个岗位的门正在关闭，事情正在改变。

Everyone's just like maybe should do something else. ”而且不只是 PM，所有岗位的人都在想，也许应该做点别的。

Noam Seagull Yeah, I would agree with that and I think it's uh it's unfortunate. I feel like in the past uh people were pushed to CS to learn to code. I know that these days for myself as a parent, you know, I don't know what to tell my kids to do anymore. I'm not sure what roles will be there for them in just a few years. These are very confusing times and I think tech employees are being that as well. Um they don't understand what's in line for them in the future. 我同意，这很不幸。过去人们被鼓励读 CS、学习 coding。如今作为家长，我也不知道该建议孩子以后做什么，不确定短短几年后还有哪些岗位存在。这是个极其混乱的时代，tech employee 也有同感，不明白未来等待自己的是什么。

We certainly don't know to recommend to others like yeah you know in 5 years it's going to be great plastics like it's like no one knows it's just like just like zoom out for a moment. It's just it's so insane how much change we're living through right now. We would not have like this is not a result we would have seen a year or two ago. This is like so un unstable and uncertain and this is very new for for people in tech I think. 我们当然更不知道该向别人推荐什么，好像说：“五年后一定会很好——去做 plastics 吧。 ”其实没人知道。拉远一点看，我们此刻经历的变化幅度实在太疯狂。一两年前绝不可能出现这样的调查结果。现在如此不稳定、不确定，对科技从业者而言很新鲜。

Yeah, I like to use uh certain uh metaphors or or or sort of uh examples from you know other other uh areas in my life to explain these things. So, I believe you spoke in the past to uh Scott Woo, the co-founder and CEO of Cognition. 我喜欢借用生活其他领域的 metaphor 或 example 来解释。我记得你以前采访过 Cognition 的 co-founder兼 CEO Scott Wu。

主持人 Mhm. Devon 对，Devin。

Noam Seagull and uh and yeah, the makers of Devon. And I recall that when he described the product, he talked about this this ladder that the product progressed on. It went from a high school CS student to a college intern to a junior engineer and at this point probably a senior or a staff level engineer. I would say that we are all watching this technology climb the rungs of this ladder and advance and we feel like the technology is pulling those rungs from under us. 也就是 Devin 的开发者。我记得他介绍产品时谈到一架进步的 ladder：它从 high-school CS student，进步到college intern，再到 junior engineer，如今大概已经达到 senior 或 staff engineer 水平。我们都在看着这项技术一级级爬上 ladder，同时感觉它正从我们脚下抽走那些 rung。

And so the further we've gone up the ladder, the better we feel about our careers and the more stability we have. But the lower we are on that ladder, those rungs getting pulled under our feet. And so it makes lots of sense that we wouldn't recommend, you know, being on that ladder to anyone else because the rungs are disappearing. 所以你在 ladder 上爬得越高，对职业的感受越好、稳定性也越强；越靠下，脚下的 rung 越容易被抽走。因此不愿推荐别人登上这架 ladder 很合理，因为台阶正在消失。

Man, there's so much to talk about with Elise, but let me point out a couple things as I look at this and then we can move on to the next takeaway. 天啊，这里有太多可以聊。先指出两点，再进入下个结论。

One is just like you know at the it's interesting that sales and PM are the least uh bad at don't get into this role like that's interesting I did not I wouldn't have expected that sales people not as scar scared about the future of the role PM interesting that's a big audience here not as scared uh as you said research design the most don't do this as a researcher you touched on this a little bit but I'm just curious how does it feel seeing this seeing this thought 第一，sales 和 PM 在“不建议进入本岗位”这件事上没那么糟，这很有意思，也出乎我意料。 Sales 对岗位未来没那么害怕；PM 也一样，而这里有很多 PM 听众。正如你说的，research 和 design 最不建议入行。你已经稍微谈过，但我还是想问，看到这个结果，你有什么感受？

主持人 it's it's tough. I think the research community has lived with uh a lot of concerns and trauma and anxiety over the years around having a seat at the table around finding meaning in our work around topics like the democratization of research and you know other people taking on our roles and eventually replacing us. It it definitely hurts a lot to see this. I think there's a very important role that research needs to play in the future of building products. 很难受。多年来，research 社区一直伴随着许多担忧、创伤和焦虑：是否能在决策桌上拥有一席之地，能否从工作中找到意义，以及 research democratization 等话题——。其他人开始承担我们的职责，最终取代我们。看到这个结果确实很痛苦。我认为，在未来构建产品的过程中，research 仍有非常重要的作用。

I think that as this technology progressive, we should become even more thoughtful about what we build uh rather than than less thoughtful. I've heard the narratives around, you know, it's so cheap to build just build a thousand prototypes and see what works. I think you heard this in a recent conversation uh as well. I would suggest that we're just going to get even more burnt out that way. I would not recommend that approach personally. 随着技术进步，我们应当更谨慎地思考要构建什么，而不是更少思考。我听过一种叙事：“构建成本这么低，做一千个 prototype，看看哪个有效。 ”你好像最近也在一次对话中听到过。我认为这样只会让我们更加 burnout，个人并不推荐。

I think research has a very and design has a very important part to play in raising the ceiling of what's possible. Um whereas AI has mostly lowered the bar, but it hasn't hasn't raised the ceiling. And I can also tell you that PMS being somewhat more likely to recommend their roles, even though they're they're not likely to recommend their roles, does actually make sense to me. It's more of a generalist role, I would claim, than some of these other roles. Research 和design 对提高可能性的上限至关重要。 AI 到目前为止主要降低了门槛，却没有提高上限。至于 PM 虽然也不太愿意推荐自己的岗位，但相对更愿意一些，我觉得说得通。与其他一些岗位相比，PM 更像generalist；如果问我，AI 时代就是 generalist 的时代。

And this is the era of the generalist, if you would ask me, the the AI era. I'm the most surprised by sales and go to market. Uh because if we are indeed in some sort of SAS apocalypse, which I don't personally believe we are, but you know, it's been said, then I don't think uh sales and go to market people should be feeling too great about recommending their roles. Um but but maybe they believe that, you know, sales at this point cannot be done by AI. 最让我惊讶的是 sales 和 go-to-market。如果我们真的处于某种 SaaS apocalypse——我个人并不相信，只是有人这么说——那么 sales 和 go-to-market 从业者按理不该太愿意推荐自己的岗位。也许他们认为现阶段 sales 还无法由 AI 完成。

Noam Seagull Yeah, there's just like so much I want to talk about here. Uh it's important to note this is a very important note that I'm going to say here. This doesn't mean design is going away or research is going away. This is just saying people in that role right now the narrative in their head is don't do this. 这里太多内容想谈。有一点必须特别强调：这不表示 design 或 research 正在消失。它只表示身处这些岗位的人，现在脑中的叙事是“别来做这个”。

Does not mean this is over because it could just be all this hype that we keep hearing like you know guilty of uh adding to it from various guests but you know this may this is just how people feel doesn't mean this what's happening. 100%. This entire unique project in tech is all about how people feel. It's not about the realities of working in tech. It's about people's emotions, about how people feel. 它不意味着这个职业已经结束，因为也许只是我们不断听到的 hype——我邀请的某些嘉宾也助推了这种 hype。这只是人们的感受，不代表事实正在如此发展。完全正确。这个独特项目研究的是科技从业者怎么感觉，而不是科技行业工作的客观现实。它关注的是人的 emotion。

Um, I really do think no one other than us has really captured these emotions in the way that we have. But yeah, that's a great reminder. This is not an image of reality. This is an image of how people are feeling in tech right now. 我的确认为，除我们之外，没人以这种方式捕捉过这些情绪。但提醒得很好：这不是现实本身的图像，而是当下科技从业者感受的图像。

主持人 Another quick data point that we want to make sure to communicate here. touched on this, but I don't know if you actually made this as as uh clear to people as it should be is uh so this is looking at would you get would you recommend people get into my role you we also asked just how are you feeling about your role like are you happy being in this role and the result there was I'm actually doing okay I'm happy I'm a PM I'm happy a designer researcher so as you said it's this kind of like the water's fine but don't get in talk a little bit about that just to make sure that point is clear 还有一个需要明确传达的数据点。刚才提到过，但也许还没有说得足够清楚：前面问的是“你会不会建议别人进入自己的岗位”；我们也问了“你现在如何看待自己的岗位，待在这里开心吗？”结果是：“我其实还不错。做 PM 很开心，做 designer 或 researcher 也开心。”正如你说的，是“水温还好，但别进来”。请再解释一下，确保这点清楚。

Noam Seagull when we asked people things like uh are they enjoying their their job as we talked about earlier. Uh most people said that overall yes, you know, they're having fun uh in in their role. I think what's going on here is that again people are lacking optimism compared to what they were, right? Optimism has gone down. 当我们问人们是否享受工作时，。正如之前提到，大多数人总体回答“是”，他们在自己的岗位中很开心。我认为问题在于，相较过去，人们缺乏 optimism；optimism 已经下降。

So there's a big difference between how people are feeling now about their role given what they've achieved in their careers and where they are on the ladder compared to what they're extrapolating might happen in a year in 3 years in 5 years and what people are extrapolating might happen is clearly more negative than their current experiences. So yeah, I mean all in all we're doing okay as an industry. We're enjoying we're trying new things. 因此，一个人基于已经取得的职业成就和目前所在的 ladder 位置，对当前岗位的感受，与他对一年、三年、五年后可能发生什么的 extrapolation 之间存在巨大差异。人们推测的未来明显比当前体验更负面。总体而言，行业现在还过得去；我们享受工作，也在尝试新事物。

We're experiencing uh a a a complete paradigm shift in how we work and that's fun for a while but it it seems like people feel like this is not going in the best of directions. And of course I hope we're all wrong. I hope we're all wrong. 我们正经历工作方式的彻底 paradigm shift，这在一段时间内很有趣，但人们似乎觉得事情没有朝最好的方向发展。当然，我希望大家都错了。

主持人 Me too. As a natural optimist, I'm like, it's gonna be all right. So, we'll see. I'll see. 我也是。作为天生的 optimist，我会想：“一切都会没事。”等着看吧。

Noam Seagull I'm a natural optimist, too. And I'm realizing like so far we haven't been in too much of optimism mode. So, I hope we manage to get to some of that as well. This episode is brought to you by Mercury, radically different banking, loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs, and now with command. I've been a customer of Mercury's for over 6 years. I have never once thought about leaving. Mercury is basically what happens when banking is built by product people, not by bankers. 我也是天生的 optimist，不过。我意识到目前为止，我们还没怎么进入 optimistic mode，希望后面能谈到一些。本期节目由 Mercury 赞助，这是一种 radically different banking，受到超过 30 万 entrepreneur 喜爱，现在还推出了 Command。我使用 Mercury 已超过六年，从没想过离开。

They make it so easy, dare I say fun, to send invoices, move money around, set up virtual cards for folks on my team. Does your bank have an API, a terminal native CLI or an AI ready MCP server? I don't think so. And just recently, they launched Command, a conversational interface built directly into Mercury, which acts as your financial operator. Mercury 基本就是让 product people 而不是banker 来构建 banking 会得到的产品。它让发送 invoice、转账、给团队成员设置 virtual card 都变得非常简单，我甚至敢说很有趣。

I've been using Command to transfer money around to figure out what categories I've been spending the most money in, analyze my cash flows, and just today I used it to find out how much I've made from a specific sponsor over the past year. I just ask, "How much have I made from X over the past year?" 10 seconds later, I have an answer. It is so freaking cool. Visit mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. 你的 bank 有 API、terminal-native CLI 或 AI-ready MCP server 吗？我想没有。最近，他们推出了直接内置于 Mercury 的 conversational interface Command，它像你的 financial operator。我一直用 Command 转账、查看哪些 category花费最多、分析 cash flow。

Noam Seagull Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA members FDIC. Let's talk about takeaway four. Looked at productivity, looked at quality, look at just the kind of the upside of AI. This was a very interesting one to me. 就在今天，我还用它查询过去一年从某个 sponsor 赚了多少钱。我只要问：“过去一年我从 X 赚了多少？ ”十秒后就得到答案，真的太酷了。访问 mercury.com 了解详情，并在几分钟内在线申请。

In last year's survey um that we did on the impact of AI specifically on productivity and quality, people were rather bullish about the technology and how much better it makes them not just more efficient but better. And this time around we saw some some interesting findings. Let me start with with this and this is sort of the initial view but it leads to something very different than I thought would happen. Mercury 是 fintech company，不是 FDIC-insured bank；banking service 由 FDIC member Choice Financial Group 和 Column N.A. 提供。下面谈第四项结论：我们考察了 productivity、quality，也就是 AI 的好处。

When we simply asked the question, how much better are you at your job thanks to AI? Unequivocally the answer was yes. You can see here that 97.2% 2% of people are saying that AI is making them better at their job and close to 50% of people are saying that AI is making them very much or extremely better at their job. So it's very clear that high level, however you interpret better, which we'll get to in a second, people feel like AI has had an impact. 这项结果对我很有意思。在去年的调查中，我们专门考察 AI 对 productivity 和 quality 的影响。当时人们对这项技术相当 bullish，认为它不只是让自己更高效，也让自己变得更好。这次却出现了一些有意思的发现。先从最初的表象讲起，它最终指向了与我预期非常不同的结果。当我们直接问“有了 AI，你的工作能力提高了多少？

But when you dive deeper into what that means and you go below the surface level, as you can see here, we're doing better actually means something rather different than what you might think. So when I heard people say they're doing better, I thought they meant that literally. I thought the quality of their work was better, that AI was contributing to better quality of work. In fact, it's the exact opposite. What we heard from people were two concerning things. ”答案毫不含糊地是“提高了”。数据显示，97.2% 的人认为 AI 让自己在工作中变得更好，接近 50% 认为改善程度是“很大”或“极大”。所以在 high level 上，无论怎样理解“更好”——马上会谈——人们确实觉得。 AI 产生了影响。但深入表层之下，“做得更好”的含义与想象中很不一样。听到人们说自己做得更好时，我以为是字面意思，以为工作的 quality 提升了，AI 正帮助他们产出更高质量的工作。

The first is that I can do more faster, but not better. So again, AI has sort of lowered the floor of what's possible and and enabled people to put out a lot more work than they ever have before, whatever that work is, whether it's uh PRs, PRDs, research projects, prototypes, but they're not the output isn't of higher quality. And perhaps the even more concerning effect which we heard about the the deeper cost of all of this is the cost of using AI on thinking and judgment. 实际却恰恰相反。我们听到两项令人担忧的反馈。第一，“我能更快做更多，却没有做得更好。 ”AI 降低了实现某种结果的门槛，使人们能产出远超以往的工作量，无论是 PR、PRD、research project 还是 prototype，但 output 的质量没有更高。更令人担忧的，可能是大家提到的深层代价：使用 AI 对思考和判断的影响。

People essentially told us my brain is rotting my work feels worse. And this is related to phenomenon I've heard about recently like um is it cognitive rot I think is what what I've heard. 人们基本是在说：“我的大脑正在腐烂，工作体验变差了。 ”这与我最近听说的 cognitive rot 等现象有关。

Basically this phenomenon where you sort of see the initial output of an AI model and you sort of just accept it. You don't apply your judgment to it. You don't apply thinking to it and you slowly let your your mind, your involvement in your work, your agency sort of collapse into this rotting state, so to speak. 它指的是：看到 AI model 的第一版 output 后就直接接受，不再运用自己的 judgment，也不再认真思考。慢慢地，你的心智、对工作的参与和 agency 都坍缩进一种所谓“腐烂”的。状态。

主持人 This Yeah, this is such an interesting takeaway just uh like this is a positive there's a positive note to this. As you said, I'm looking at the numbers here. 82% of people say AI is making them at least moderately better at their job and nearly 50% say very much or extremely better which may correlate with that original just this bifurcation like the people that feel like AI is making them better at their job probably the people feel like most energized 这个结论非常有意思，不过也有积极面。正如你说的，82% 的人认为 AI 至少让自己的工作能力有中等程度提高，近 50% 认为提高很大或极大。这也许与最初的 bifurcation 相呼应：认为 AI 让自己做得更好的人，可能就是最 energized 的人。

Noam Seagull so whether it's true or not so I think there's a couple happy points that's one people feel AI is making them better they like they feel that so that's you know that's real even if it may not be and at the same time I think they're self-aware the quality is an issue And also I'm just maybe my I'm atrophying in my ability to say code or write strategy docs. So at least people are self-aware that this is happening. Not just I'm killing it. 不论客观上是否真的如此。我觉得有几个积极点。第一，人们真心觉得 AI 让自己变得更好，这种感受本身是真实的，即使实际情况未必如此。同时，他们对质量问题也有 self-awareness，也会想：“我的 coding 或写 strategy doc 能力是不是在萎缩？

All my stuff is higher quality and it's much better than ever. ”至少人们意识到这一点，而不是只觉得自己所向披靡、所有产出都比以前质量更高。

主持人 They are self-aware but you know among other things I'm a certified coach and I would suggest that beyond being self-aware we need to act on this. There are several explanations I could give to this phenomenon. One of them might be that the honeymoon period with AI is over. You know, we thought it was perfect and, you know, the the best thing that ever happened to us since sliced bread or whatever typical Americans say. Um, but we've realized it's not quite there yet. 他们有 self-awareness。但我还是 certified coach，所以会说：除了意识到问题，我们还需要采取行动。这个现象可以有几种解释，其中一种是 AI honeymoon period 已经结束。过去我们以为它完美无缺，是 sliced bread 以来最棒的东西，或者美国人常说的那种表达。

And yes, the models are the worst they're ever going to be. They're only getting better, but there's still so much they need to get better before we can really say, "Yeah, like my work is just so much better." and I don't need to be as involved with it. Uh you had Simon Willis on on this show talking about how people are worried about skill atrophy. Um that they're not learning enough and that we need to be consciously resistant to this and not let ourselves cognitively rot. 但现在意识到它还没到那个程度。没错，model 今天是以后最差的一天，只会不断改善；但在我们真能说“我的工作好太多了，不再需要深度参与”之前，它仍有许多地方必须提高。你曾请 Simon Willison 来节目，他谈到人们担忧 skill atrophy：自己学得不够。我们需要有意识地抵抗，不能任由自己 cognitive rot。

And I think this data suggests that we're losing that fight a little bit. We need to put to put a little bit more energy into it into fighting this cognitive rot that that we're feeling and to make sure that as the bar continues to rise and this technology continues to evolve that we're meeting that with deliberate practice, deliberate thinking, deliberate judgment. People are just so bad at that. Just like if I have an easy button, I will press it. 我认为数据表明，我们在这场对抗中稍微落了下风，需要投入更多精力，抵抗正在感受到的 cognitive rot。随着门槛不断提高、技术继续演进，我们要用 deliberate practice、deliberate thinking 和 deliberate judgment 与之匹配。

I no I shouldn't, but I'm just going to going to eat those Doritos. So that's the challenge I think for people is just like because you could do it the easy way. It's so hard to resist. And that connects again to this ladder that's being raised that people are just getting into this stuff. It's just they have to make themselves do it the hard way to learn how to do it for real. 人非常不擅长抵抗这种诱惑。如果有个 easy button，我就会按；我知道不应该，但还是会吃那包 Doritos。这就是挑战：明明可以用简单方式完成，就太难抗拒。这也和不断升高的 ladder 有关。刚进入这一领域的人，必须强迫自己用困难的方式做，才能真正学会。

And I'm really curious how that plays out with junior folks in the market learning how to actually code, how to do writing, how to write a PRD from scratch with your fingers versus talking to Clott about it. 我很好奇市场中的 junior 最后会怎样学习真正 coding、写作，怎样亲手从零写 PRD，而不是直接和 Claude 对话。

Noam Seagull Yeah, there's so much to say here. I think um the the more I think people miss feeling smart sometimes, you know. 这里有很多可以说。我想，人们有时会怀念觉得自己聪明的感觉。

I think I I thought once upon a time about myself that I'm smart and then you encounter these models, most recently Fable Five that just came out for the second time and you don't feel that smart anymore and you sort of lose this sense of self-efficacy that that you used to have. 我曾经以为自己很聪明，但遇到这些 model——最近是字幕识别为“Fable Five”的新模型，又发布了第二次——你就不再觉得自己那么聪明，还会失去过去拥有的 self-efficacy。第二点是，每当你自己而不是 AI。

And and the second thing to say about this is that every time you you not the AI solve a problem and get over a barrier, it increases it raises your baseline of self-efficacy, of self-confidence, of self-belief. And every time you offload that to your favorite AI model, you're lowering that baseline and your thinking and your judgment is watching. And that's a serious problem. So maybe to just wrap up this takeaway, the sentence used in this report I love. 解决问题、跨越障碍，self-efficacy、self-confidence 和 self-belief 的 baseline 都会提高；每当你把问题 offload 给最喜欢的 AI model，就会降低这个 baseline，你的 thinking 和 judgment 也随之旁观。

I'll just read the productivity gains are real, but the quality of the work and the sharpness of the person producing it are taking a hit. 这是个严重问题。作为这项结论的总结，我很喜欢报告中的一句话，读一下： “Productivity gain 是真实的，但工作质量和产出者的敏锐程度正在受损。 ”

主持人 Absolutely. And well, maybe we'll get to this in the end, but we should keep a close eye on this and really try to work on our own self-efficacy. 完全正确。也许结尾还会再谈，但我们应该密切关注，认真维护自己的 self-efficacy。

Noam Seagull We need like evals for people like are humans becoming 我们需要给人类做 eval，看看人是否正在变——。

主持人 eval for people. Let's let's do that. 人类 eval，好，就这么做。

Noam Seagull Your smartness. Okay, let's talk about takeaway number five, which I also thought was extremely interesting. My god, so much so much interesting in this. Let's talk about the fifth takeaway. Yeah. So, I think the dominant narrative right now in in our community is is the fear of being replaced. And as we talked about, a lot of people in tech do fear and are worried that they're going to be replaced, that they're going to be laid off. 测测你的聪明程度。下面谈第五项结论，也非常有意思。天啊，里面太多有意思的内容。第五项。目前社区的主导叙事是害怕被取代。正如我们说的，很多科技从业者确实担心自己被替代、被裁员。因此，如果一道题的选项里有“我担心工作被 AI 取代”，按理说它应该排得很高。

And so it would make sense that if we had a question and one of the options to respond to that question were, I'm worried about losing my job to AI, that it would rank fairly high. But when we look at this slide and when we look at when people are asked, you know, what are your concerns and what's bothering you right now? What are you afraid of in tech? Losing my job to AI is actually second to last on that list. 但看这张 slide，当我们问“你现在担忧什么？科技行业里最害怕什么？ ”时，失去工作给 AI 其实排在倒数第二。真正升到首位的是“同样薪水却被期望做更多”。

And instead, what we saw rise up to the top is the expectation to do more for the same pay. It's almost as if we we're all feeling like we're being squeezed and squeeze and squeeze some more to accomplish more things in less time for the same pay. And so that fear of being overworked is by far the the dominant fear alongside the second item in this list which is that the pace is becoming unsustainable. 我们似乎都觉得自己不断被压榨，要用更少时间完成更多事情，薪水却不变。因此，对 overwork 的恐惧远远排在第一；列表第二项是“节奏正变得不可持续”。这里的 pace 既指工作节奏和对工作 velocity 的预期，也就是每天必须产出多少，还指技术变化速度。

Noam Seagull And by pace I mean both the pace of the work and the expectation of work velocity just how much you have to put out a day every single day and the pace of change of the technology which requires you to invest a significant amount of time in learning the new model the new framework the new way to use the technology which of course takes away from your core focused working time. 你必须投入大量时间学习新 model、新 framework 和新的使用方式，这当然又占用了核心的 focused work time。

So,it's sort of an evil downward spiral that really prevents you from uh feeling like you're able to accomplish anything of of meaning. You just feel very overworked, very tired. I'm confident everybody listening uh understands exactly what you're describing here. Uh obviously connects to that burnout point we made earlier. Uh I'll close this takeaway with uh another quick read from your post. 这形成一种恶性的 downward spiral，让你很难觉得自己完成了任何有意义的事情，只觉得过度劳累、极其疲惫。我相信所有听众都完全理解你描述的状态，它显然也与前面的 burnout 结论相连。最后我再读一段你文章里的话。

You're such an amazing writer, Nom. I love read I love reading your uh your summaries of of what you learned. So, I'll just read this. The speed AI unlocked got plowed straight back into expectations. Every game becomes the new baseline and the people expected to hit it are running out of room to breathe. When are we going to get to the optimistic part of this uh of this episode? Maybe we'll find something. Okay, let's talk about 6, which has a little bit of optimism. Noam，你真的很会写作。我很喜欢读你对研究发现的总结：“AI 解锁的速度，被直接重新计入了工作预期。每一次收益都会变成新的 baseline，而被要求达到它的人，已经快没有喘息空间。”这期节目什么时候才能进入乐观部分？也许能找到一点。好，谈第六项，稍微有一点optimism。

主持人 Oh, yeah. Okay. a lot of ambival ambivalence is another way you put it. 太好了。你也称它为大量 ambivalence。

Noam Seagull Yeah, I mentioned this earlier. The industry is definitely in a state of ambivalence. We we try to capture all of the emotions that people are feeling at work right now. And I am happy to report as you can see here that the top two emotions are positive emotions,curiosity and excitement. And that's wonderful. that is optimistic. I'm glad that's the case. 对，之前提到过。整个行业确实处于 ambivalent 状态。我们试图捕捉人们当下在工作中的全部 emotion。很高兴地报告，如图所示，排名前两位的是正面情绪： curiosity 和 excitement。这很棒，也很乐观，我很高兴结果如此。

People are sharing that they're excited about the technology, about the the capabilities, about what they're able to achieve. They're feeling curious about what the future might bring and what else they could do as these models and systems continue to evolve. So, that's wonderful. But as you go down this list, you can see that there's this very interesting mix of positive, negative, and neutral emotions. People are also feeling overwhelmed. People are feeling conflicted. 人们表示，自己对技术、能力和能够实现的成果感到兴奋，也好奇随着 model 和 system 继续演进，未来会带来什么，还能做到哪些事情。但顺着列表往下，会看到 positive、negative 和 neutral emotion 的有趣混合。人们也觉得 overwhelmed、conflicted；有些方面又感到 relieved，比如 AI 以好的方式替他们拿走了什么，让他们能够offload 哪些任务。

People are feeling relieved in certain ways um about, you know, what AI has taken from them in a in a good sense, you know, what they've been able to offload to AI. And then people are feeling tired, burnt out, just working hard and hard as we said, uneasy, anxious, and then hopeful. So, as you can see, there is a wide variety of of emotions here. And it's uh it's really tough to figure out what exactly is going on. 然后人们又觉得 tired、burned out，正如刚才所说，工作越来越辛苦；还感到 uneasy、anxious，同时又 hopeful。可以看到，这里存在非常多样的 emotion，很难弄清究竟发生了什么。

But one thing I I definitely wanted to mention which uh Nikil Singal mentioned in an episode with you, I know he's a friend of the pod and such an incredible leader in in product and in general in the tech community. He talked about smiling exhaustion. 但有件事一定要提。 Nikhil Singhal 在你的一期节目中说过“smiling exhaustion”。我知道他是节目的朋友，也是 product 乃至整个科技社区里出色的 leader。

And I just love that term because I think it captures this ambivalence. the the old type of emotion, the old type of burnout was just completely grim, you know, it it's it it was all about these negative emotions that come from disengagement and exhaustion. Whereas now, when Kill talks about signing exhaustion, it's about people almost feeling reborn on the one hand. You know, I'm shipping again. I'm building. I'm creating these incredible things with AI. 我很喜欢这个词，因为它准确捕捉了这种 ambivalence。过去的 burnout 完全阴郁，都是 disengagement 和 exhaustion 带来的负面情绪。而 Nikhil 所说的 smiling exhaustion，是人们一方面几乎感觉获得新生： “我又开始 shipping、building，用 AI 创造惊人的东西；从来没有比现在更令人兴奋的时代。

There's never been a more exciting time, but there's no off switch. There's no off switch. And so, the tempo is absolutely brutal. The rules keep rewriting themselves every single day. It's a very relentless pace. ”但另一方面，没有 off switch，节奏极其残酷，规则每天都在重写，速度毫不留情。

And so, we're smiling through that exhaustion that that we're feeling. And I think that captures the ambivalence more than than anything really. 因此，我们只能带着微笑承受 exhaustion。我认为没有别的词比它更能概括这种 ambivalence。

主持人 I think it's also good to kind of come back to one of the core points you made earlier that half of people are actually feeling very like they are working very hard probably exhausted at times but they're also just like really into they're going all in uh feeling good energized about where things are going. So I think it's important to always remember like kind of come back to that as we share all these negative elements. 也应该回到你之前的核心观点：有一半人虽然工作非常努力、有时大概也很累，但他们真的完全投入，感觉很好，对未来方向充满能量。在分享这些负面因素时，始终。记住这一点很重要：确实有很大一群人热爱这个时代，而且状态非常好。是的。我最想强调的是，我们太常用 black-and-white 的方式思考。

There's actually a large group of people that are actually loving this time and doing super well. There are I think more than anything what I would like to highlight here is that you know we tend to think of things way too often in black and white Yeah. terms. We see people as either people who are just full of hype or people who are is it doomers would that be the right you know or haters or whatever you want to call it. 对。我们把人看成纯粹 hype 的人，或者。 doomer、hater 之类。但调查显示，和生活中一贯的情况一样，事情没有这么简单。在 Elena Verna 所说的 facade 和 theater 背后，我们每个人心里都同时有 hype person 和一定程度的 doomer。

What we're seeing here is that as always in life, if you ask me, things aren't as simple. Um, behind that facade, behind the theatrics that Elena Bernard discussed,we all have both the height person within us and the doomer to a certain extent. And the only difference between us is that we have different amounts of each. But we're not just one or the other. 人与人之间的区别，只是两者比例不同，而不是只属于其中一边。确实存在大量 ambivalence。

And there really is a ton of ambivalence and and I just want people to know that it's okay, you know, it's okay to be excited and curious, but also feel overwhelmed. It's okay to feel relieved and tired. It's okay to feel resentful. Even if all in all you feel positive about the technology, those emotions can coexist within us. It's very natural. 我希望大家知道：既 excited、curious，又 overwhelmed，是可以的；既 relieved 又 tired，也可以；即使总体上对技术持正面看法，也可以感到 resentful。这些 emotion 能同时存在，非常自然。

Don't let this narrative that you're either or um to to dominate and to convince you that anything's wrong with how you feel because really all of these emotions are very understandable given the times we're in. Such an important point. I love that you said that. Okay. So the next takeaway what we did here is when we were looking at this bifurcation that you found, we looked at just which functions are having the best time and worst time. 不要让非此即彼的叙事占据主导，让你误以为自己的感受出了问题。考虑到我们所处的时代，所有这些情绪都完全可以理解。这点非常重要，我很喜欢。下一个结论是：在观察这种bifurcation 时，我们比较了哪些 function 状态最好、哪些最差。此前已经看到一些线索。事实证明，有两个群体目前总体体验最差、最不快乐。

主持人 And uh we had a hint at this earlier uh and it turns out there's a couple that are just overall having the worst time right now and feeling the least happy. So let's get into that. Yeah. So definitely definitely and we saw this last year by the way as well. We are seeing that designers and researchers are the most negative. 展开说说。对，而且去年也看到过。 Designer 和 researcher 最为负面。

And just to clarify what I mean by that, what you can see in this slide is that when it comes to AI identity shift, designers and researchers are the highest in feeling either destabilized or diminished. When it comes to emotions like feeling tired, overwhelmed, or anxious, researchers and designers uh lead the pack in in a negative way. Of course, when it comes to worries about losing Guan's job to AI, again, researchers and designers are pretty much as high as one can be. 具体来说，这张 slide 显示：在 AI identity shift 上，designer 和 researcher 感到 destabilized 或 diminished 的比例最高；在 tired、overwhelmed、anxious 等 emotion 上，他们也以负面方式排在最前。至于担心工作被 AI 取代，researcher 和 designer 同样几乎达到最高水平。

And then finally, when it comes to these NPS- like scores of whether people would recommend their role to a friend or to a colleague, researchers and designers are the least likely to recommend entering their role at this point. 最后，在类似 NPS 的“是否愿意向朋友或同事推荐自己的岗位”评分中，他们也是目前最不建议别人进入本岗位的群体。

Noam Seagull We talked about this earlier. I don't know how much more there's to add here. Basically, it's again, it's not that this function is in big trouble necessarily. It's this is how people in that function are feeling right now. You know, I'm not objective because I'm part of the research community and the design community. 前面谈过了，可能没有太多可补充。再次强调，这未必表示这些 function 正陷入巨大危机，只是描述其中从业者当前的感受。我并不客观，因为自己属于 research 和 design 社区。

Um, if I may, I just want to tell people that in this community that um, I truly and honestly believe that there's never been a more important time for our roles to manifest in the products that we build. Um, you've talked about this with many people, Lenny, in in previous interviews about concept like taste, about concepts like craft, about concepts like quality. 但请允许我告诉这个社区的人：我真诚相信，从来没有哪个时代比现在更需要我们的岗位体现在。所构建的 product 中。 Lenny，你过去与很多人谈过 taste、craft 和 quality。

I'm thinking of people like Kari Line's CEO who talked so beautifully about the importance of quality and how you build products. I'm thinking about people like uh uh like um Katie Dill comes to mind. She had a we had a whole conversation around taste and beauty and value. Katy D uh recently uh Jenny Wen who leads design uh for uh Claude at Anthropic and so many other people who talk about the importance of taste of judgment of design. 比如 Linear CEO Karri Saarinen 很精彩地谈过 quality 以及如何构建 product；我还想到Katie Dill，我们进行过一整场关于 taste、beauty 和 value 的对话；最近还有 Anthropic 负责 Claude design 的 Jenny Wen，以及许多强调 taste、judgment 与 design 重要性的人。

So I I honestly hope that designers and researchers make a comeback when it comes to how they feel about this industry because the industry needs them. The industry needs us. And so I hope we see a change next year and this is the call to all designers and researchers to get in there and do our thing because it's incredibly valuable at this era. 因此我真心希望 designer 和researcher 对行业的感受能够回升，因为行业需要他们，也需要我们。希望明年能看到变化。这也是对所有 designer 和 researcher 的呼吁：进入现场，发挥我们的作用，因为它在这个时代极其有价值。

主持人 Yeah, I've been I've had a few conversations recently about just design and in particular just why why is design not a huge value add and differentiator today knowing AI is just so bad at it. 我最近做了几场关于 design 的对话，尤其在想：为什么如今 design 没有成为巨大的。 value add 和 differentiator？

We just had the head of the Codex app on talking about why AI like AI is not good at design and you could clearly tell AI designed this thing and you would think this was the moment for design to become such a value add and differentiator for companies seeing all this AI slop that's being produced. So I'm optimistic that'll emerge as people are like I'm so sick and tired of all these generic things. I I want to actually build something great. AI 明明非常不擅长它。我们刚采访了 Codex app 的负责人，讨论 AI 为什么不擅长 design。一个东西是不是 AI 设计的，往往一眼就看得出来。面对大量生成的 AI slop，按理说此刻 design 应该成为公司的重要增值和差异化来源。

Yeah. And moreover, if I recall correctly, you you in that conversation talked about how some of the issues around AI doing design are perhaps tractable problems, but some of them are even intractable I I would say or definitely much much harder to solve for. It's still the case that creating incredible novel creative experiences not something that this technology is quite capable of. 我很乐观，随着人们厌倦这些千篇一律的东西，开始说“我想真正做出优秀的产品”，这种价值会显现。没错。而且如果我没记错，你们那次还谈到：AI 做 design 的某些问题也许可解，但还有一些甚至可能无法解决，至少要难解决得多。创造惊人、新颖、有创意的 experience，仍然不是这项技术目前真正具备的能力。

So, we'll see what happens, but I I really do hope that the designer research community turn around and change their minds about the industry next year. 未来如何还有待观察，但我真心希望明年 design 和 research 社区能扭转状态，改变对行业的看法。

Noam Seagull Yeah. Man, I can't wait to do next year already. What's it going to be? But if you actually look at the losing my job to AI bucket, there's actually a role that is even more worried about losing their job. And I believe that is data analytics. Our shades are kind of uh very similar to keep it to keep the message clear, but that's really interesting. the data anal data analysts basically are the most worried about losing their job. 我已经等不及做明年的调查了，不知道会变成什么样。不过具体看“担心工作被 AI 取代”这项，其实有一个岗位比其他人更担心，我认为是 data analytics。图中的色调有点相近，是为了保持信息清晰，但这个结果很有意思：data analyst 最担心失去工作。

主持人 I think we're we're seeing uh incredible capabilities coming out. 各种 model 在 data analysis 上展现了惊人能力。

Noam Seagull Makes sense. 说得通。

主持人 Yeah. With the different the different models out there to to run data analysis. I'm seeing this in the research realm as well. I would suggest that we're also seeing incredible advancements in coding. So I was expecting engineering to be higher in in certain places here and and it's not. Um but again this isn't about the objective reality of how far AI has come in terms of its capabilities doing each of these roles. 对。我在 research 领域也看到了这一点。我们当然也看到 coding 的惊人进步，所以我原本预期 engineering 在一些指标上会更高，但实际没有。

主持人 This is about how people are feeling in these roles and there isn't a onetoone correlation uh between between those things. 再次强调，这不是客观评估 AI 执行每种岗位任务的能力已经进步到什么程度，而是在描述这些岗位中的人如何感受；二者并不存在一一对应关系。

Noam Seagull Speaking of that, let's talk about who the happiest people are. Who's doing great? Who's doing best? 说到这里，谁是最快乐的人？谁状态最好？

主持人 So, the happiest people in tech. Um, this is something that did not change between last year's survey and this year's, it's still founders and people who are working in smaller companies. 科技行业最快乐的人和去年一样，仍是 founder 和小公司员工。

And I do feel the need to say that when it comes to founders to your point earlier being not that I know but being a founder is an incredibly challenging all-encompassing job and there is a certain selection bias here in the sense that these are people who are currently in the active role of a founder in a startup that is still running rather than founders who had to shut down their startup. purple, whatever it might be. 我需要说明，正如你之前提到，虽然我没有亲身经历，但 founder 是一份极其艰难、占据生活全部的工作。这里存在 selection bias：样本是当前仍在经营 startup 的 founder，而不是那些不得不关闭公司或已经退出的人。所以我只是想明确我们观察的是哪一群人。

So, I just want to make that clear around who we're looking at. But but yes, when we look at founders and when we look at in this case, you're looking at um company size as well, you can see that whether it's optimism, whether it's uh uh burnout, layoff worry, or whether people would recommend their job, uh you're just seeing these these uh increases or decreases depending on on the question. It's very clear that founders are top of nearly every measure. 尽管如此，看 founder 和 company size 的数据，无论 optimism、burnout、layoff worry，还是是否愿意推荐工作，随着类别变化都会看到相应的升降。 Founder 几乎在所有指标上排名第一：71% 持 optimistic 态度，最享受工作，burnout 和 layoff worry 最低，对 AI 最兴奋。

They're 71% optimistic. Uh they're enjoying their jobs the most. They have the lowest burnout, the lowest layoff worry, the most AI excitement. It's a it's a medium-sized effect compared to other effects we saw. Um but very significant. 与我们看到的其他 effect 相比，这是 medium-sized effect，但仍非常显著。

And and that said, you know, if we talk about founders, even having that ownership and even having that agency has its limits, um founders are still uh you know, many founders are still moderately or at least moderately burnt out. 47% of founders that would be um and as we said earlier, even founders aren't very likely to recommend being a founder to other people right now, which is very interesting. 不过即使拥有 ownership 和 agency，也有极限。很多 founder 仍至少达到 moderate burnout，比例是 47%；而且正如之前提到，即使 founder现在也不太愿意建议别人创业，这很有意思。

I think it's also important to note uh there's definitely this as you said this kind of meme of there's never been a better time to build. People may see this and be like I got to start a company. It's the best place to be. It may be this moment currently where people feeling most excited about it and then as the bubble you know I don't know if it's a bubble but as things start to get harder there may be a shift away from that. 还有一点很重要。正如你说的，现在有一种“从未有过更好的构建时机”的 meme。有人看到数据会想：“我得开公司，这里才是最好的位置。 ”但也许只是当前这个时刻人们对创业最兴奋；随着泡沫——我不知道是不是泡沫——或者随着事情开始变难，态度可能发生转变。

So this so far interesting that we've seen two years in a row founders are the happiest but I wonder if that changes if the market changes if some you know that kind of thing. So this isn't saying you're going to be happy if you become a founder but it is really interesting that two years in a row of all of the like the most uh clear one of the clearest takeaways is just founders seem to be happiest across every dimension. 连续两年 founder 都最快乐，这很有意思；但如果市场变化，结果是否也会改变？所以调查不是说“成为 founder 就一定快乐”，只是连续两年最清楚的结论之一，确实是 founder 在各个维度上似乎都最快乐。

Noam Seagull Yeah. And then company size uh as well. Again, uh optimism goes down if you're working for a larger company. Um you get more burnt out if you're working for a larger company. You're more worried about layoffs if you're working for a larger company. And you're less likely to recommend your role if you're working for a larger company. So that also remained consistent. 对。 Company size 也是如此：公司越大，optimism 越低、burnout 越高、越担心 layoff，也越不愿推荐自己的岗位。

And if we look just at burnout specifically, then you can see very clearly here that burnout climbs in very significant ways in between working for a small 1 to 10 person startup and working for a 5,000 or 10,000 person enterprise company. 这一点也与去年一致。只看 burnout，可以很清楚地看到，从 1–10 人的小 startup 到 5,000 或 10,000 人的 enterprise company，burnout 显著攀升。

主持人 It's so wild. It's wild how linear this is. like there's no bump and then those two at the end there as you point out here in the chart they're statistic 太夸张了，变化如此线性。中间没有凸起；最后两个类别的差异，正如图上标注——

Noam Seagull it's within margin of error yeah 在 margin of error 内。

主持人 it's like wild here just like only goes up there's not like a sweet spot and then it comes down again and then if you go back to the previous chart exactly the same thing it's just like very linear everything goes up uh and gets worse as your company size grows that's wild 对。它只会一路上升，不存在某个 sweet spot 后又回落。回到上一张 chart 也完全一样：随着 company size 增长，所有指标都线性变差，太惊人了。

Noam Seagull absolutely I would say one thing to highlight here like if you look at burnout for example is that even the the lowest is still fairly high, right? So, I would say people are feeling somewhat less burnt out, somewhat healthier working for a startup. But I I would view these levels of burnout, of worry as uh as worrisome. I'm worried about the level of worry right now in in tech. It is not a good vibe. You know, you mentioned how we met a decade ago at Airbnb. 没错。我要强调一点：以 burnout 为例，即使最低水平也仍然相当高。所以可以说，在 startup 工作的人相对没那么 burnout、稍微更健康；但这些 burnout 和 worry 水平仍令我担忧。我很担心当前科技行业的 worry 程度，整体氛围并不好。

I do feel like the vibe was very different then in in tech. So, I am a bit concerned about the numbers that we're seeing here. But yes, from a relative sense, a relative point of view, um perhaps one should consider doing a shift and starting your own thing or working for a smaller company. 你提到我们十年前在 Airbnb 相识，那时科技行业的 vibe 很不一样，所以眼前这些数字让我有些担心。不过从相对角度看，也许可以考虑转变，开始做自己的事情，或者去小公司工作。

主持人 Yeah, exactly. That'll be one of the takeaways. You know what would be awesome is if we do one of these for non tech. I'm really curious just like you think people are scared and worried in tech. I'm so curious how that would compare to you know like say the blue collar folks or other functions like I don't know if we have the audience to do that but that'd be really interesting. 对，这会是最后的 takeaway 之一。如果能对非科技行业也做一次调查，会很棒。我很好奇：大家觉得科技从业者害怕、焦虑，那与 blue-collar worker 或其他 function 相比如何？不知道我们有没有足够受众完成，但会很有意思。

主持人 I mean I think my uh HVAC technician is feeling pretty great about his career right now burning hot in Florida. Everyone needs air conditioning. That's not going to change anytime soon. U take a hack. Yeah. To start a company,we should do that. Start a filming business. Oh, man. So, what I love about this doing the survey again is we're starting to find things that are consistently true. 我觉得 Florida 天气炎热，我的 HVAC technician 现在应该对职业感觉很好。人人都需要 air conditioning，短期内不会改变。这也是一个做法。我们应该研究。开一家 plumbing business。天啊。我喜欢重复调查的一点，是我们开始发现持续成立的规律。

And the next takeaway is another really good example that we saw last year, too, uh,around managers. Let's get into that. Yeah. So, I mean, perhaps people are aware of this. Managers matter a ton. who your manager is probably matters more than most other characteristics of your role. And we found this very explicitly last year and this year again um manager effectiveness. So we basically asked people how effective is your manager? How would you rate your manager? 下一个结论围绕 manager，也是去年看到的很好例子。展开说说。大家也许已经知道，manager 极其重要。你的 manager 是谁，可能比岗位的绝大多数其他特征都更重要。去年和今年都很明确地看到 manager effectiveness 的影响。我们问参与者：“你的 manager 有多有效？

And what you can see here is that the more effective your manager is, the less burnt out you feel and the more you enjoy your job. And this is a massive massive effect that we're seeing. So if you have an extremely effective manager, for example, you're reporting around 65% higher job enjoyment and dramatically lower burnout. 会如何评分？ ”结果显示，manager 越有效，你越不容易 burnout，也越享受工作，而且 effect 非常巨大。如果你有一位 extremely effective manager，例如自报 job enjoyment 会高大约 65%，burnout 则大幅降低。

The problem is the the supply. um only about 25% of the sample rate their manager as highly effective and 36% of the sample rated their managers as ineffective which by the way is a very small change from from last year. So we're seeing managers be rated not so well and at the same time we're seeing that when managers are effective which is clearly uh not often enough the impact that has on people's enjoyment burnout and other aspects as well is incredible. 问题在于供给：只有约 25% 的样本认为 manager highly effective，另有 36%认为 manager ineffective；顺便说，这与去年相比变化很小。可见 manager 总体评分不高，但当 manager 真正有效时——显然还不够常见——对员工 enjoyment、burnout 和其他方面的影响都极其显著。

That's wild. like like I think we're adding new uh insight into the world here just finding this I like I've never seen this before just how impactful a manager is that we always hear anecdotes we always hear like you know people only leave they don't leave jobs they leave their manager but this is wild just how much that impacts you and clearly one of the takeaways might be go if you're having a bad time find a better manager as you said easier said than done yeah but there's a couple of things here I want to I want to also note before we move on. 太惊人了。我觉得这给世界增加了一项 insight，从未见过如此直观地呈现 manager 的影响。我们总听 anecdote，说人们离开的不是工作而是 manager；但影响竟如此之大。一个明显的 takeaway 也许是：如果过得不好，去找更好的 manager。不过正如你说，知易行难。对。但进入下一个话题前，我还想指出两点。

First of all, we are in the era of the great flattening. We're in the era of founder mode. People have more direct reports now than ever before. Um, we're trying to keep things as flat as possible and remove hierarchy. I'm concerned about this. I think, um, obviously there are good arguments for flatness and lack of hierarchy. Um but I am curious to see where this goes given the importance of who your manager is on your well-being. 首先，我们正处于 great flattening 和 founder mode 的时代。人们拥有的 direct report 比以往更多，组织试图尽量扁平并移除 hierarchy。我对此感到担忧。当然，flatness 和减少 hierarchy 有合理理由；但考虑到 manager 对 well-being 如此重要，我很好奇这种趋势会走向哪里。

And then the second thing is we talked earlier about being overworked about this squeeze that AI has on us. Who's the person more than anyone else who kind of manages that squeeze? It's your manager, right? It's your manager who protects you. It's your manager who in many ways almost dictates uh how much you may be overworked or not. And so yeah, this this matters more than ever before. 第二，之前谈到 AI 带来的过度工作和 squeeze。最直接管理这种 squeeze 的人是谁？就是你的 manager。 Manager 会保护你，也在很大程度上决定你是否会 overwork。

And I'm definitely concerned that some of the negative phenomenon we're seeing are a function of what we're doing to managers in tech and how we're building out our organizations. 所以，manager 比以往任何时候都更重要。我确实担心，我们看到的一些负面现象，是科技公司如何对待 manager、如何搭建组织的结果。

Such an interesting point. we whether we do it now or next time just looking at these metrics for managers like how much more burned out are they how much less happy and optimistic are they would be really interesting there's a couple notes here in in the actual post that I want to highlight that I thought are really interesting one is just core takeaway here is the biggest lever you have to increase retention in your company is improve your managers put people on with connect people with better managers basically so interesting that's like a thing you can do obviously easier said than done but that's the biggest lever of things you can change. 这个结论非常有意思。无论这次还是下次，如果能单独看 manager 的指标——他们多大程度 burnout、少了多少 happiness 和 optimism——都会很有意思。文章里还有几项值得强调。核心 takeaway 是，公司提高 retention 最大的 lever，就是改善 manager，基本上要让员工与更好的 manager 共事。这一点很有意思，虽然知易行难，但确实是你能改变的事情中影响最大的。

And then the other thing you noted is the worst rated managers cluster in data analytics and design poor design. Yes. So, and I'm not sure there's a clear explanation uh for that. 另一个发现是，评分最差的 manager 集中在 data analytics 和 design。可怜的 design。对，目前没有非常清楚的解释。

Um I think one possible explanation is that again you know managers are just people too and so design managers and data and analytic managers are are in design and in analytics they are suffering clearly based on what we saw and I think it's hard to separate how you feel in tech from your job as a manager, it's hard not to put some of your negative energy onto your team and the people you work with. 一种可能是，manager 也只是普通人。 Design manager、data 和 analytics manager 本身就身处 design、data 与 analytics；根据刚才的数据，他们显然也很痛苦。很难把一个人对科技行业的感受与 manager 工作分开，也很难不把部分负面能量传递给团队和同事。

And and so I I have a lot I have a lot of empathy for design managers, research managers, data and analytics managers, and other managers in tech who are having a hard time right now and they're not feeling energized. And unfortunately, some of that is being pushed on to their direct reports. 我很理解现在处境艰难、缺乏 energized 感受的 design manager、research manager、data/analytics manager，以及其他 tech manager。

And then and then I very much appreciate in some of the companies I've worked for having the opportunity to go through manager training which is something that's still all too rare I feel within organizations. If you're listening to this and you're a leader in an organization, if you're seuite at a company, please invest more in your managers. 不幸的是，其中一部分情绪会传递给 direct report。我也非常珍惜过去在一些公司获得 manager training 的机会，而这在组织中仍然太少见。

And if you're looking for a job right now, consider carefully who your manager might be because probably nothing will have more impact on your well-being than who that person ends up being. 如果你正在收听，并且是某个组织的 leader 或公司 C-suite，请在 manager 身上投入更多。如果正在找工作，也请认真考虑未来的 manager 可能是谁，因为可能没有其他因素比这个人更影响你的 well-being。

And to build on how uh difficult things are for companies right now, the level of poaching and offers throwing out thrown out at the best people, just imagine how sucky it is to find a great manager, train people to become awesome managers, and then they get, you know,only to lose them to, you know, the labs, people with infinite money. 再考虑公司当前的处境：最优秀的人不断被 poach、收到各种 offer。想象一下，找到优秀 manager、把人训练成出色 manager 已经很难，结果他们又被那些拥有近乎无限资金的 lab 挖走，真的很糟，难度进一步增加。

So, it's just extra hard. which is a good segue to our final takeaway, which is a really good summary of just what is what people are feeling right now. Yeah, it is the the wildest it's ever been. We asked people to describe the state of the tech industry right now. We got thousands of responses. These were essentially open-ended responses, and we just sort of clustered those descriptions into this uh this word cloud. I still love wordcloud. 这正好引出最后一项 takeaway，也很好地总结了大家此刻的感受。是的，这是有史以来最疯狂的状态。我们请参与者描述当前科技行业的状态，收到了数千条 open-ended response，再把描述聚类成这张 word cloud。

Some researchers are sort of anti-wordcloud. I love I'm not gonna apologize for the word cloud. 我仍然很喜欢 word cloud；有些 researcher 反对它，但我喜欢，不会为此道歉。

Noam Seagull No, this is amazing. 不，这张图太棒了。

主持人 It's like such a clear. Look at this. Just look at this. This is exactly what it feels like. 它非常清楚，看看这张图，这正是现在的感受。

Noam Seagull Yeah. We're seeing change. We're seeing chaos. We're seeing speed. We're seeing excitement, flux, hype, a lack of stability, a potential bubble, but also crazy opportunities. Everything's evolving. Everything's unstable. It comes with costs. It's better. It's worse. It's huge. It's confusing. All smooshed together into a more chaotic industry than it's ever been. Um, I don't understand anything about baseball or maybe it's cricket, but we got this quote. 对。我们看到 change、chaos、speed、excitement、flux、hype、缺乏 stability、可能存在 bubble，但也有疯狂的 opportunity。一切都在演变，一切都不稳定，也都伴随 cost。它更好了，又更糟了；规模巨大，又令人困惑。所有东西挤在一起，让行业比以往任何时候都更 chaotic。

Do you understand baseball? Does hopefully if you're watching you understand these things, but we got this quote. We're in the second inning of a massive shift. No one knows how it will end, but all you can do is keep taking at bats. Is that a cricket thing? A baseball. That's baseball. I think it's I don't know how many innings. I don't know if there's innings in cricket, but it's definitely baseball. Uh it works for baseball at least. 我不懂 baseball——也许这是 cricket——但我们收到这样一句话。你懂 baseball 吗？希望看节目的听众懂：“我们正处于一场巨大变革的第二局。没人知道最后如何结束，你能做的只是继续上场击球。 ”这是 cricket 吗？是 baseball。我不知道 cricket 有没有 inning，但肯定是 baseball，至少用在 baseball 上说得通。

Yeah. Basically, it's just saying keep trying. Just keep taking shots. Shots on goal. A lot of metaphors. Yeah. So many good quotes. Another one I I see here which was which was good one. Tech is manic. Half out of touch, clinging to the bandwagon, porbing into the overhype. The other half are exhausted by the first half that came from a senior PM. Um yeah, fascinating stuff. 它基本就是叫你继续尝试，不断出手、不断射门，metaphor 太多了。对。还有一句也很好：“科技行业进入 manic 状态。一半人脱离现实，死死跟着 bandwagon，继续制造过度 hype；另一半人被前一半累坏了。 ”这来自一位 senior PM。

When we look at this overall, it's crazy how we see again this bifocation that 37% of the words used when we ran sentiment analysis were positive, 37% were negative, and the the remaining 26% or so were neutral. Basically, an even split. We're all seeing the same thing, but half of us find it thrilling, the other half find it terrifying. Um, I was I was, you know, rather taken aback when I saw these data. It's pretty wild how equally uh uh divided we are. 很有意思。总体看，再次看到这种bifurcation。对这些词做 sentiment analysis 后，37% 是 positive，37% 是 negative，剩下约 26% 是 neutral，基本平均分开。我们都在看同一件事，但一半人觉得 thrilling，另一半觉得 terrifying。看到数据时我相当震惊，大家分裂得如此平均，真的很夸张。

主持人 Yeah, man. And uh I think you used this quote earlier that this is the most normal it's ever going to be. 是啊。你前面好像引用过一句话：“现在已经是未来最正常的时候。”

Noam Seagull I mean, I I don't know. Um, the prophecy was given to the fool, so I'm not going to try and be a be a prophet. But, um,yes, I I doubt it's going to get, you know, more normal and normalized statistically than than this. So, we'll we'll wait and see, I guess. 我不知道。Prophecy 会交给 fool，所以我不打算当 prophet。不过，我确实怀疑未来不会变得比现在更 normal，至少从统计上也不会更接近 normal distribution。只能等着看。

主持人 Yeah. Like, if we zoom out, we're living through history right now. The amount of change and like this is unprecedented. You know, the industrial revolution is always the metaphor people use, which is accurate. uh maybe crazy or maybe not, but it's that's the interesting part. 拉远看，我们正亲历历史。变化幅度前所未有。人们总用 industrial revolution 作类比，也许准确，也许疯狂，但这正是有意思之处。

Like what an interesting time to be living through. Elon had this really interesting way of describing it. Like we're definitely living in a simulation if we're if we're alive right now when we're about to start building data centers in space and AI is going to be as smart as human brains. Like what are the chances you are alive at that moment? Uh which is probably okay. Maybe some higher intelligence is simulating the most interesting time in history. 我们竟活在这么有意思的时代。 Elon 有个说法：如果我们恰好活在 data center 即将建到太空、AI 将达到 human brain 智能水平的时刻，那我们肯定生活在 simulation 里。一个人恰好出生在这个节点的概率有多大？也许某个 higher intelligence 正在模拟历史上最有趣的时代。

Uh, I don't know if that's a good rap,but listen listen, I have a lot of respect for for uh Elon. Um, people like Elon have chosen to focus on the universe and what's out there and the laws that govern the universe and that's their focus. I became a psychologist by academic training at least because my focus has always been on people. 我不知道这个结尾好不好。听着，我很尊敬 Elon。 Elon 这样的人选择关注 universe、宇宙之外有什么以及支配它的 law；至少从学术训练看，我成为了 psychologist，因为我一直关注 people。

And if I had to share a closing thought to wrap up all of this research, I would say that having the most advanced AI and the access to the best models in the world won't won't determine whether your organization succeeds. We have to remember that underlying all of this stuff are people. 如果要用一个 closing thought 总结全部研究，我会说：拥有最先进的 AI、能够使用全世界最好的 model，并不能决定组织能否成功。我们必须记住，所有这些事的底层都是 people。

People we as people are going through the most massive shift and changes that we ever have in our lives. And it's people who are feeling excited and exhausted and hopeful and scared often all at once. and we're all taking part in crafting and building this future that we hope still has a place for us in a few years. And so I keep that in mind all the time. Um, it's people driving these innovations. It's incredible people building these technologies. 作为人，我们正经历一生中最大规模的 shift 和 change。人们既 excited 又 exhausted，既 hopeful 又 scared，而且常常同时如此。我们所有人都在参与塑造和构建未来，同时希望几年后那个未来仍有自己的一席之地。

My focus will always be on on the people. And I hope that if you're out there watching this, you take care of yourself. You touch grass. You take a moment to reflect on what you want for yourself in your career. And you remember again that it's fine to feel all of the emotions and you should just uh do whatever works for you to get through this wild period in the tech industry. 我一直记着这一点。推动 innovation 的是人，构建这些技术的是出色的人，而我的关注点永远是 people。希望正在观看的你照顾好自己，去 touch grass，花时间思考自己想要怎样的职业。也要记住，拥有所有这些 emotion 完全没问题；请用适合自己的方式度过科技行业这段疯狂时期。

So, kind of building on that, you you spend a lot of time thinking through the results and what people can actually do with this data because it's one thing to just report. Here's what people are feeling. Okay, cool. Uh what should people do? So, there's a really important section at the end of the report that uh that we should spend a little time on, which is just what where do we go from here? 顺着这个思路，你。花了很多时间思考调查结果，以及人们能实际怎样运用数据。报告“大家现在如何感受”是一回事，但接下来该做什么？报告末尾有一节非常重要，我们应该花点时间谈谈：从这里往哪走？

What does this tell us we should be doing if we can do anything to kind of move ourselves basically into a happier place? So starting with if you're an employee, you know, especially if you're an IC working at a company, one thing we saw people who feel amplified and energized reporting is that they actually went deep on specific tasks and specific jobs to be done rather than trying to be the generalist who does everything. 这些结果告诉我们，如果还能采取行动，怎样让自己进入更快乐的状态？先从 employee，尤其是公司里的 IC 开始。我们看到，感觉 amplified 和 energized 的人，会深入完成特定 task 和具体 job-to-be-done，而不是试图做什么都会的 generalist。

I think it's the people who try to be or or lean too much into being a generalist who end up getting severely burnt out, right? And so I just want to caution people a little bit away from the narratives that you need to be a generalist at this point and just do all of the things and completely ignore the core parts of your role. I think that's a bad bad idea and based on what people are reporting, it's not going to end up with you at least feeling good, right? 我认为，过度追求 generalist 的人最终会严重 burnout。所以我想提醒大家，不要完全接受“现在必须做 generalist、必须包办一切、完全忽略岗位核心部分”的叙事。我认为这是个非常糟糕的主意。根据参与者报告，这至少不会让你感觉良好。

Um, I also would love for people to watch out for this squeeze being overworked for the same pay. We deserve better. We've linked in the article to a burnout test. Take the test. See where you're at on the burnout scale. And then, you know, based on that, reflect on where you are. Talk to your manager. 我还希望大家警惕这种 squeeze，也就是同样薪水却 overwork。我们值得更好的待遇。文章里附了一个 burnout test，去做测试，看看自己位于量表什么位置。

Scope out your work again. you know, reccalibrate, realign with your manager on your work and make sure that you're not being uh squeezed out of uh you know, being positive about your role and being successful in your role. Um, as you're going through this list, let me just make sure people fully understand the frame there were because you made these two buckets basically things you can do based on this results. 然后据此反思现状，和 manager 交流，重新界定工作 scope，重新校准、重新对齐和 manager 对工作的理解，确保这种 squeeze 不会挤掉你对岗位的正面感受和成功机会。你继续列举前，我想确保听众理解框架。

One is just if you're an employee, I think you have five pieces of advice. If you're a company, you have fiveish pieces of advice. So, just to be super clear, the first one is just uh pick a couple things you want AI to be useful for and just go deep on those couple things versus trying to spread it all around and AI has to be doing everything for you. Pick a couple things that you're most excited about and then just go really deep there. 根据结果，你们基本提出两组可采取的行动：employee 有五条建议，company 也有大约五条。先明确第一条：选几个最希望 AI 发挥作用的领域，深入钻研，而不是把它铺到所有事情上、要求 AI 处处代劳。选择最让你兴奋的几件事，真正深入。

The other is this what you said, just watch the squeeze. Watch you being squeezed and talk to your manager about, hey, my scope's increased, nothing's changed compwise, that kind of. 第二条就是你说的，警惕 squeeze；注意自己是否被压榨，并和 manager 讨论：“我的 scope 扩大了，但 compensation 没有变化。 ”

Noam Seagull Absolutely. And then speak of managers. Again, the third point is that your manager clearly matters more than pretty much anything else when it comes to how you feel about work. Protect that relationship. Invest in that relationship. Build up good communication lines with your manager. Learn to manage up. That investment in that relationship will pay off greatly in terms of how you feel. 完全正确。第三条也与 manager 有关：在工作感受方面，manager 显然比几乎任何其他因素都更重要。保护并投资这段关系，与 manager 建立良好 communication line，学习 manage up。这种投入会极大改善你的感受。

Um and then beyond that, um first of all, if you want to try out working for a smaller company or starting your own company, clearly there are some advantages to that and so it might be worth considering. And then if you're earlier in your career and you feel like the rungs of the ladder are slowly disappearing and it's becoming harder to climb that ladder, um I'm a huge believer in mentorship and the value of mentorship. 除此以外，如果你想尝试去小公司工作或自己创业，数据表明确实有一些优势，值得考虑。如果你处在 early career，觉得 ladder 的 rung 正逐渐消失，向上攀爬越来越困难，我非常相信 mentorship 及其价值。 Strong mentorship仍然极其有效。

Strong mentorship is still an incredibly effective thing. Seek the teams, seek the managers, seek the people who are willing to invest in developing you. Um it's incredibly valuable, especially in this era. So that's what we have for employees. And then if you're leading a team, if you're leading a company, then again, as we mentioned before, invest in your managers. It's probably some of the best money you'll ever ever spend. 主动寻找愿意投入资源培养你的 team、manager 和同事，这在当前时代尤其宝贵。这是给 employee 的建议。如果你领导 team 或 company，那么正如之前说过，要投资 manager，这可能是你最值得花的钱。只有四分之一的样本——也许同样代表一般 tech worker——认为 manager highly effective，这让我难过，也是个巨大的 red flag，是科技行业的重大问题。

Um it's sad to me that only a quarter of our sample and perhaps tech workers in general rate their manager as highly effective. That to me is a major major red flag. It's a major issue in tech. And so if you want to improve burnout, if you want to elevate enjoyment, if you want to improve retention with these crazy job offers flying around from from AI labs, you have to invest in your managers. Um, and then otherwise manage that squeeze. 如果想降低 burnout、提高 enjoyment，并在 AI lab 疯狂开出 job offer 的环境下改善 retention，就必须投资 manager。然后要管理 squeeze。

People are feeling how AI is raising bars in ways that aren't sustainable. So you have to figure out the right level of expectations and the right level of productivity. Um don't let that bottom rung of the ladder rot. You know, make sure that you're doing what you need to for entry- levelvel people to advance because those early career people are also probably some of the most AI native people you can find, right? 人们感受到 AI 正以不可持续的方式提高标准，所以公司必须找到合适的 expectation level 和 productivity level。不要让 ladder 最底层的 rung 腐烂。要确保 entry-level employee 能得到向上发展的必要支持，因为 early-career 人才也很可能是最 AI-native 的群体之一。

They find it very natural to use these technologies in some ways more so than people who have been uh you know too uh used to previous paradigms. So um and then selfishly I hope that leaders pay a little bit more attention to design and research and other roles who are feeling uh more negative than than other roles. And keep in mind that this technology AI is lifting some people and destabilizing others. And you really have to pay attention to that. 他们使用这些技术非常自然，某些方面甚至比已经习惯旧 paradigm 的人更自然。出于一点私心，我也希望 leader 更关注 design、research 以及其他感受比多数岗位更负面的群体。要记住，AI 正在托举一些人，也让另一些人失去稳定，必须认真关注。

We are clearly not experiencing this technology in the same way. 我们对这项技术的体验显然并不相同。

主持人 Amazing takeaways. I want to double down on that burnout survey that you um that you mentioned. I want to make we're going to link to it in the show notes,but I actually people like it sounds like dumb and why am I going to do that? 非常好的 takeaway。我想再强调你提到的 burnout survey。我们会在 show notes 放链接。有人可能觉得这听起来很傻，为什么要做？

I've like I've definitely gone through periods of burnout and wasn't aware that was was happening and it's so helpful to like oh wow this is not normal what I'm feeling right now and knowing this that you're okay you're extremely burned out right now you you then you can decide what you want to do with that information often it's you know talk to a coach talk to your manager take some time off if you can but just knowing that is actually really powerful and he made this really great uh quiz based on actual science and research that that uh that we'll link you 但我自己确实经历过 burnout，却没有意识到。测试能让你发现：“原来我现在的感受不正常，原来我已经严重 burnout。 ”之后就可以决定如何运用这个信息，通常包括找 coach、和 manager 谈，或者条件允许时休假。仅仅知道现状，就真的很有力量。 Noam 基于真实 science 和 research 做了一个很好的 quiz，我们会附上链接。

Noam Seagull 100%. 没错。

主持人 Awesome. Uh now, um is there anything else that we haven't talked about? Anything else you want to leave folks with? We've covered a lot, so I don't know if there's anything left. We'll obviously link them to the report where they can go deeper. 太好了。还有什么没谈到、想留给大家的吗？我们已经覆盖很多内容。会链接完整报告供大家深入阅读，也计划根据这次对话和 comment 中的反馈做后续，因为信息很多，既有令人害怕的，也有 optimistic 的。

We're also going to do a follow-up based on what comes out of this conversation, what we see in the comments because this is a lot of information and a lot of uh scary stuff, some optimistic stuff. um we can't, you know, we're not gonna have answers to everything, but we're planning to do a follow-up of just here's what came up. Let's see if we can find any answers. But other than that, is there anything else that you want to share? 我们无法回答一切，但会再做一期：“大家又提出了这些问题，我们能否找到答案？ ”除此以外，还有什么想分享？有一个有意思的现象：我们开始看到 AI guilt，尤其在。 early-career 人群中。

There's one interesting phenomenon that I wanted to mention. um we're starting to see this AI guilt and in particular amongst people who are early in their career in the sense that people who are early in their career feel like leveraging the technology is a little bit like cheating in a sense and that guilt declines with seniority. 他们觉得利用这项技术有一点像 cheating，而且这种 guilt 会随着 seniority 提高而下降。

Um, and in particular, we're seeing people in actually product marketing and data and analytics, which showed up previously in a couple of places, feeling the most guilt. Um, this is related to the well-known and well-established imposttor phenomenon, right? Like, I'm not good enough. Um, competent people feeling like their success isn't really theirs, it's someone else's. except this time we're putting that on AI on a technology rather than other people. 具体来看，product marketing、data 和 analytics——后者之前已经出现过几次——感受到的 guilt 最强。这与广为人知、证据充分的 impostor phenomenon 有关：“我不够好。 ”有能力的人觉得成功并不真正属于自己，而属于别人；只不过这一次，我们把功劳归给了 AI 技术，而不是其他人。

Um, I would say to all of you who might be feeling that guilt, AI is an incredible technology. Um, leverage it. Learn how to leverage it. I doubt it's going away. Um, it's the worst it's ever going to be today. It's only getting better. Um, so there's no no reason to feel guilty about leveraging it. on on the contrary. Um I I think inevitably we all are all the time. So 我要对所有可能感到 guilt 的人说：AI 是不可思议的技术，去利用它，也学习如何利用它。我怀疑它不会消失；今天是它最差的一天，以后只会更好。因此，没有理由因为利用 AI 而内疚，恰恰相反。我们最终都会一直使用它。

Noam Seagull well to close note, I just want to appreciate you. It's incredible the work that you've done here and the work that we've done together over the many surveys. Uh it's just like it's like a side thing you do with me. Uh running like I don't know one of the biggest surveys out there around this stuff. Maybe the biggest analyzing it, writing it uh so beautifully. Uh so, uh I think this is a really unique and and special report and I appreciate you for doing this with me. 最后，我想表达对你的感谢。你在这里完成的工作，以及我们合作开展的多项调查，都非常了不起。这只是你和我一起做的 side project，却运行了也许是这个领域规模最大的一项调查，还完成分析并写出如此漂亮的报告。我认为这是一份非常独特、特别的报告，感谢你与我一起完成。

It's uh I'm really uh I'm really happy about where this all goes and and just the what we're doing for folks. 我真的很高兴看到它的发展，也高兴我们能为大家做这些事。

主持人 Thank you so so much. 非常感谢。

Noam Seagull Well, with that, Noam, where can people find you online if they want to reach out, maybe follow-up questions, and how can listeners be useful to you? Noam，如果有人想联系你、追问问题，可以在哪里找到你？听众又能怎样帮助你？

主持人 Yeah, so the best places to find me are on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with anyone who wants to connect on LinkedIn or within Lenny's community within uh your Slack. Um I hang out there and always happy to talk to people within the community. So please catch me on LinkedIn or on Slack. That would be best. 最好的地方是 LinkedIn。我很愿意与任何想在 LinkedIn 联系的人交流，也可以在 Lenny's Community 的 Slack 找到我。我常在那里，也一直乐意与社区成员交流，所以请在LinkedIn 或 Slack 找我。

Noam Seagull How can listeners be useful to you? No one. 听众怎样帮助你，Noam？

主持人 If you're watching this, what I would like to convey is that um I hope this research has been helpful to you and more than anything I hope that you consider participating in future research projects of ours. Um, I'm really really glad that we get to do these things, Lenny. 如果你正在观看，我希望这项研究对你有帮助。更重要的是，希望你考虑参与我们未来的 research project。 Lenny，我真的很高兴我们能开展这些工作，也希望给每位观众机会，进一步了解科技行业正在发生什么，怎样在工作中做得更好、对工作感觉更好，以及两者之间的一切。

And and I want to give all of you watching the opportunity to learn more about what's going on in tech, how you can be better at your job, you know, how you can feel better about your job and all things in in between. We plan to continue conducting both um quick polls of the community in-depth longer form surveys, interviews, all sorts of things. And so if you get a message, an email, a Slack about a research project, please participate. 我们计划继续开展社区 quick poll、深入的 long-form survey、interview 等多种研究。因此，如果你收到关于 research project 的 message、email 或 Slack 通知，请参与。

Would love to hear your voices, hear your perspectives, and then share that back with the community. And hopefully it makes us all better at our jobs and also feel better about our jobs because I do hope that even though much of this was a little bit tough and perhaps negative, I too Lenny am an eternal optimist. I'm a techno optimist. I I believe this is going in good directions and I want to make sure we capture that accurately. So yeah, please participate. 我们很想听见你们的声音和观点，再把结果分享给整个社区。希望它让我们工作做得更好，也让我们对工作感觉更好。虽然本期很多内容有些艰难、甚至偏负面，但 Lenny，我也是永远的optimist，也是 techno-optimist。我相信事情正朝好的方向发展，也希望确保调查准确捕捉这一点。所以请参与，我们期待在下一项 research project 见到你。

We'd love to see you in our next research project. Excellent. Ask with that. Noam, thank you so much for being here. Thanks a bunch. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennispodcast.com. 很好。 Noam，非常感谢你来做客。谢谢。感谢大家收听。如果觉得有价值，可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify或你喜欢的 podcast app 订阅节目。也请考虑评分或留下 review，这会帮助其他听众发现本节目。所有往期节目和更多信息都可以在 lennysnewsletter.com/podcast 找到。

See you in the next episode. 下期再见。