Why the tech workforce is quietly splitting in two | Annual AI sentiment survey (Noam Segal)
In a Nutshell
The tech workforce is splitting into two roughly equal groups: one feeling amplified and energized by AI, the other feeling destabilized or diminished, with AI identity impact outweighing every other job factor including manager quality. Burnout rose sharply to 55% while optimism fell to 49%, driven by scope creep—doing more for the same pay—rather than job loss fears, which ranked near the bottom of concerns. Designers, researchers, and data analysts are hit hardest with negative NPS scores and highest anxiety, while founders and small-company workers remain most positive; the core advice is to focus AI use narrowly, watch for unsustainable productivity expectations, and prioritize manager relationships.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Burnout at work is a major problem and AI could add to this already overwhelmed employee problem. The honeymoon period with AI is over. When people are asked what they are afraid of, losing their job to AI is actually second to last. What rose to the top is the expectation to do more for the same pay. Burnout is increasing significantly. Optimism is declining. Half of the people in tech are feeling incredible and the other half report their brain is rotting and their work feels worse. Elon had an interesting way of describing it: we are definitely living in a simulation when we are about to start building data centers in space and AI is going to be as smart as human.
Noam Segal worked with Lenny at Airbnb for many years where he was Lenny's research partner. Since then, he went on to be a research leader at Intercom, Twitter, Wealthfront, Meta, Zapier, and Figma. Over the past couple of years, they partnered on multiple research projects. The most ambitious of which has been a tech worker sentiment survey, which they plan to run every year. This is the second time they ran it. This is the largest survey of its kind looking at how people in tech feel about their jobs, AI, layoffs, burnout, and the future of their careers.
This is the second time running this survey, which is unique in the tech industry. Last year when they ran the similar tech sentiment survey, the title was "burnt out but optimistic." They were seeing fairly high levels of burnout but also fairly good levels of optimism about where things are going. They followed up on the burnout point and created the ARMOR framework. This year they surveyed about 6,000 people from product, engineering, design, research, marketing, and pretty much any role in tech.
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