Why the tech workforce is quietly splitting in two | Annual AI sentiment survey (Noam Segal)

频道: Lenny's Podcast
视频: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cmpIveXnvE
原文语言: en
统计: 共 117 轮 · Lenny 50 · Noam 65

[0:00]

Bad news for the tech community.

对整个科技圈来说，这是个坏消息。

[0:03]

Burnout at work is a major problem and AI could add to this already overwhelmed employee problem.

职场倦怠本就是个大问题，而 AI 可能会让本已不堪重负的员工雪上加霜。

[0:10] Lenny

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 [music] increasing significantly. Optimism is declining. It's never been crazier. When are we going to get to the optimistic part of this [laughter] uh of this episode? 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. 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. 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 [music] and layoffs and burnout and the future of their careers. There's so much in this [music] and basically this episode is a conversation about the results. At the end of the conversation, we go through a bunch of advice on what you [music] might do if you are currently on the struggle bus and trying to figure out what to do. I am so excited for this [music] 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.

AI 的蜜月期已经结束了。当我们问大家「你最担心什么」时，「工作被 AI 抢走」其实排在倒数第二位。真正冲到榜首的，是那种「拿一样的钱、却被要求干更多活」的预期。我们做了这份调查，看看当下科技行业的人到底是什么感受。倦怠感在大幅上升，乐观情绪在下降。这个时代从没这么疯狂过。我们这期节目到底什么时候才能聊到乐观的那部分啊？科技行业里，有一半人感觉爽翻了，另一半却告诉我们：「我的脑子在烂掉，工作体验越来越糟。」Elon 有个特别有意思的说法——如果我们此刻还活着，眼看就要开始在太空里建数据中心、AI 又即将聪明到跟人类一样，那我们八成是活在一个模拟世界里。这一切到底在告诉我们，如果什么都做得到，我们该做什么？我们正处在一场巨大变革的第二局，没人知道它会怎么收场，你能做的只有——今天我的嘉宾是 Noam Segal。我和 Noam 是老交情了，当年在 Airbnb 共事多年，他是我的研究搭档。之后他先后在 Intercom、Twitter、Wealthfront、Meta、Zapier 和 Figma 担任研究负责人。Noam 太厉害了，过去这几年我很幸运能和他一起做了一系列研究项目，其中最有野心的，就是这份科技从业者情绪调查，我们打算每年都做一次。这是我们第二次做，结果非常有意思。我相信这是同类调查里规模最大的一份——研究科技行业的人对自己的工作、对 AI、对裁员、对倦怠、以及对职业前景的真实感受。里面的信息量太大了，这一整期节目基本就是围绕这些结果展开的对话。聊到最后，我们还会给出一大堆建议，如果你正卡在困境里、不知道该怎么办，这些建议或许用得上。我对这期节目太兴奋了，对这份报告也太兴奋了。非常感谢 Noam 付出的努力——设计调查、执行调查、分析数据，还写了那篇文章（我们会放进链接里）。真的太棒了。

[2:18] Lenny

Before we get into it, do not forget to check out lennisproass.com for a free year of the hottest and most well-crafted [music] AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Noam Seagull. 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.

在正式开始之前，别忘了去 lennyspro.com 看看——你能免费拿到一整年、全世界最热门也最精良的 AI 产品使用权，这是 Lenny's newsletter 订阅者专属的福利。好，接下来有请 Noam Segal。Noam，非常感谢你能来，欢迎做客播客。太感谢你了，Lenny，能来这儿是一次特别棒的体验，谢谢你邀请我。

[2:45] Lenny

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.

哪里，是我的荣幸。其实我们俩合作很久了——很少有人知道这段渊源——你当年是我们团队的研究员，那会儿我还在 Airbnb，差不多是十年前了。

[2:55] Noam

Decades ago, a decade ago, Lenny, so much has changed.

好几十年前……呃，是十年前了，Lenny，太多东西都变了。

[2:58] Lenny

So much has changed.

是啊，变化太大了。

[3:00] Lenny

So much has changed. 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. 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?

变化真的太大了——这正好引出我们今天要聊的话题。我们做了这份调查，看看当下科技行业的人是什么感受。这个时代从没这么疯狂过，所以我们出了这份报告，专门看大家的真实心态。这已经是我们第二次做了，一年前做过一次。我们的想法是，把这个科技情绪调查做成每年一次的固定项目，持续追踪科技从业者的心态变化。在进入正式结论之前，你先给大家交代点背景吧——比如你是怎么做这份调查的、我们具体看了哪些东西，有没有什么是大家需要先知道的？

[3:34] Noam

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. 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 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. So I'm very excited to jump into them.

对，就像你说的，这已经是我们第二次做这份调查了，我真心觉得它在整个科技行业里独一无二。很感谢你给我这个机会，也给我们整个社区一个机会，去更深入地了解大家在科技行业里的真实感受。据我所知，还没有哪份调查能在这样的规模上研究这些问题。去年我们做第一届科技情绪调查时，报告的标题是「倦怠，但依然乐观」——当时倦怠水平相当高，但大家对未来走向的乐观程度也相当不错。后来我们还专门就倦怠这个点做了跟进，你应该记得，我们提出了 ARMOR 框架，我真的很庆幸我们做了这件事。今年我们调研了大约 6000 人，覆盖产品、工程、设计、研究，还有市场——基本上科技行业里的各种岗位都有。结果非常有意思，我已经迫不及待想跟你一条条聊了。

[4:40] Lenny

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

对。我还记得你把分析初稿发给我的时候，我读着读着就想：「我天，这也太有意思了。」感觉它精准地说出了我自己的感受，也说出了我听到的很多人的感受。所以我特别兴奋我们能做这件事。本期节目由我们本季的冠名赞助商 Work OS 支持。OpenAI、Anthropic、Cursor、Vercel、Replit、Sierra、Clay，还有其他数百家成功公司，它们有什么共同点？它们背后都用了 Work OS。如果你在做面向企业客户的产品，你一定体会过那种痛——要集成单点登录（SSO）、SCIM、RBAC、审计日志，以及大公司要求的各种功能。Work OS 把这些「卡死交易」的门槛变成了即插即用的 API，它是专门为 B2B SaaS 打造的现代开发者平台。说真的，我投资的每一家开始往高端市场扩张的创业公司，最后都用上了 Work OS，就因为它们是最好的。不管你是想拿下第一个企业客户的种子期创业公司，还是正在全球扩张的独角兽，Work OS 都是让你「企业级就绪」、打通增长瓶颈的最快路径。它本质上就是「企业功能界的 Stripe」。去 workos.com 就能上手，或者直接去他们的 Slack，那儿有真正的工程师等着回答你的问题。Work OS 用好用的 API、完善的文档和顺滑的开发体验，让你构建得更快。去 workos.com，让你的应用达到企业级标准。今天我们要过一遍最重要的十条结论。整份报告最宏观的那个结论是什么？如果只能让人带走一条大结论的话。嗯，首先我想说，就在录这期节目的前几天，我们俩都注意到 Elena Vera 发了一篇特别精彩的帖子，她讲的是「AI 信心剧场」——现在科技圈的对话里，什么都「死了」：编程死了、设计死了、SaaS 死了，等等等等。显然这不是真的。所以接下来你会在这些结果里看到的，是我们能提供的、也很可能是迄今为止任何人提供过的、关于大家对 AI 真实感受的最好的一幅全景图。

[6:48] Noam

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. 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. 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. 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.

对我来说，这还牵扯到另一个事实：如果你正在看这期节目、又在科技行业工作，你八成填过那种一年两次、Culture Amp 风格的员工心情调查。但那些问题问来问去，无非是你的经理或公司管理层称不称职，再往深就没有了。而这份调查的大格局——我觉得最让我们震撼的一点——是当下这支劳动力大军已经严重两极分化了。你接下来会看到，AI 对人们工作感受的影响大得离谱，超过了他们工作中任何其他因素，不管是岗位、所在公司、公司规模，还是职级等等。科技行业里有一半人感觉好极了：干劲十足、能力被放大，对技术和自己岗位的未来都很兴奋。而另一半人却觉得前途不明，他们感到根基被动摇、自我价值被削弱，还有其他种种负面情绪。这是一幅特别有意思的图景，它几乎把整支科技劳动力大军一刀切成了两半——我们马上就会看到。

[8:22] Lenny

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.

这感觉……对，太对了，我们看看身边科技行业的人就知道。这件事正在发生，简直清晰得不能再清晰了。而有意思的是，结果居然是五五开。我没想到会这么对半分，这个结论真的很出人意料。

[8:36] Noam

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. 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. 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. 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. 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,

没错，五五开。但你要是往数据里再挖深一点，会发现里面还有些微妙之处。我们现在看的这张幻灯片，问的正是你和我当初一起决定放进调查的那道题：AI 到底有没有、又是如何改变了你的职业身份认同？我先要点出一点：只有 3% 的人说 AI 完全没有改变他们的身份认同。所以很明显，AI 已经改变了我们每个人看待自己的方式，这是第一点。然后，就像你说的，这里最突出的一点是——有 50% 的科技从业者感到自己被「放大」了：他们觉得自己能做得更多、做得更好。这是一种完全正面的情绪，很棒，对他们来说真的很好。但科技行业的另一半人，又分成三个截然不同的群体。第一个群体，是觉得自己的角色正在被重新定义的人。这群人其实没什么清晰的判断，也谈不上明确的正面或负面情绪，他们就是没太搞明白。这是一种很复杂的混合情绪：我很清楚我的角色正在发生根本性的改变，但我并不真的知道这意味着什么。这部分占我们样本的 27%。再往下走，有两个群体对眼下的变化抱有明确的负面情绪。第一个是 14% 的人，感到根基被动摇——脚下的地在晃，他们完全看不清状况，焦虑水平很高，对未来的看法非常负面、悲观。然后还有 5% 的人感到自我被贬低、被削弱：他们觉得 AI 那股强大的力量从自己身上夺走了某样东西，而且这东西显然再也回不来了——因为那句话怎么说来着？今天的 AI 模型是它们此生最差的一天，之后只会越来越强。所以现在感到被削弱的人，将来大概只会觉得更被削弱。很好。那顺着这个思路往下——

[10:59] Lenny

sewing for the bad news. Sewing for the the bad news.

看来是要准备接坏消息了……做好接坏消息的准备吧。

[11:01] Noam

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.

其实这里也有一些好消息。那顺着这条线说——这几个分类跟几乎所有其他衡量大家状态的指标都高度相关。它几乎能「回归」出你问的每一道核心问题的答案，看到这些东西彼此之间关联得这么紧密，真的特别有意思。

[11:20] Noam

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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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?

对。我再补几个统计学的术语，好让大家明白这个影响到底有多大。在科技圈，我们多少有点执着于「统计显著性」这个概念。但统计显著性有个问题：只要样本足够大，不管这个效应在现实中重不重要，你都能达到所谓的显著。更好的看法是用「效应量」这样的指标，比如这次我们用的 Cohen's D。效应量告诉你的，是这件事在现实中到底有多重要。举个例子，去年我们看到最大的几个效应，第一是你的经理——你的经理是谁、他称不称职，对你有多喜欢这份工作、有多乐观、有多倦怠，影响巨大，这个我们后面还会看到。第二大的效应，是「创始人幸福效应」：创始人，至少是那些眼下正在创业路上的人，幸福感高得惊人，大概是因为相对普通员工，他们拥有大得多的自主权和掌控感。而这一次的发现——AI 对你的身份认同、以及对你工作相关的每一个变量的影响——大约是上面那些效应的三倍。所以我们所处的这项技术、这个时代，对人们工作感受的影响大得离谱，超过了我们见过的任何其他因素。那我们就来看看数据，看看这套分类是怎么和乐观度、倦怠这些东西挂钩的。因为——我们等下还会回来聊「这道分界线到底是什么」，其实只要问一个问题，就能知道你站在哪一边。但我们先看这个。对，其中一些我们后面会更深入地展开。总的来说，你现在看到的是「AI 身份立场」，然后按这个立场拆解出职业乐观度、倦怠、对裁员的担忧，还有一个我个人觉得很有意思、待会儿会细聊的：你会不会推荐现在刚入行的人来做你这份工作？

[13:45] Noam

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. 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. 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.

你可以看到，从「感到被放大」的人一路移动到「感到被削弱」的人，职业乐观度显著下降，倦怠（或者说自报的倦怠）显著上升，对裁员的担忧也显著上升。而其中也许最耐人寻味的一个发现是：考虑到 AI 眼下的发展，大家不会推荐初级、职业早期的人在这个节点进入科技行业。你看到的这些效应非常线性、清晰、有条理，恰恰说明了 AI 正在对所有这些不同的变量施加影响。我特别喜欢的一点是，你把所有这些数据点汇总起来，勾勒出了当今四种典型的人物画像。我感觉每个在听的人都会想：「对，那说的就是我。」那我们就一个个来看吧。

[14:50] Noam

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. 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. The second group we called the conflicted, the ambivalent middle. These are 35% of the sample. These are people who are having on the one hand the most fun they've ever had as builders, as PMs, as designers, as engineers, whatever their role is. And on the other hand, they're feeling the most uncertainty that they've ever felt in their careers. They just don't understand where this is going and whether they're building the things that will ultimately lead to the end of their careers as they know it. The third archetype are the disoriented people. The people who feel like their role keeps shifting. There's a quote that we saw from one of the 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. 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.

对。我们看到了这四类科技从业者。我们是怎么得出这个分类的呢——在调查靠后的部分，我们问了大家的感受，让他们勾选具体的情绪，而且想勾几个勾几个。顺便说个有意思的小数据：平均每个人勾了五种不同的情绪，还有几个人勾了整整 13 种情绪，那可真不少。我们发现的第一种画像，是「充满干劲的科技从业者」，占样本的 41%。这些人会说：「做产品又变得好玩了，我在到处探索，感觉自己像进了科技游乐园，一切都向我敞开，我可以尝试各种新玩法。我现在是个 builder，我拥有了以前从没有过的能力」等等。这些人对技术、对自己的职业都充满干劲。第二个群体我们叫「纠结的中间派」，占样本的 35%。这些人一方面作为 builder、作为 PM、作为设计师、作为工程师——不管什么岗位——正体验着职业生涯里从未有过的乐趣；另一方面，他们又感到了职业生涯里从未有过的不确定。他们就是搞不懂这一切会走向何方，也不知道自己亲手打造的东西，会不会最终终结他们所熟悉的这份职业。第三种画像是「迷失方向的人」，他们觉得自己的角色一直在变。我们看到一位受访者的原话：「我们就像工业革命前夜的农民，根本看不清眼前正在发生的一切的出路。」这个跟那个时代的类比非常有意思。这些人对自己职业里正在发生什么、又会走向哪里，感到非常迷茫。最后，我们把 12% 的样本归为「心怀怨气的人」。他们感到压力重重，也已经心灰意冷、不想投入了，眼下根本享受不了工作。他们会说这样的话：「我被逼着用 AI，不用就得丢工作。可就算我用了 AI，还是眼睁睁看着人被裁掉。我就是恨透了这一切。」

[17:34] Noam

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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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.

「说真的，我很讨厌自己非得去借助这项技术，而不能去做我自己的事、甚至干脆无视它——当然，到了这个地步，我们谁都没法无视它了。」显然有很多人非常不开心、心怀怨气、迷失方向。我猜那个群体大概也想象不到——很多人此刻正干劲爆棚，反过来也一样。所以我觉得这一点特别有意思：会发现有那么多人跟你的状态截然不同。有很多人过得特别好，也有很多人过得特别糟。这是一个很好的提醒，让我们对另一半人多一些同理心，尤其是那些过得不太好的人——因为并不是每个人都像你一样干劲十足。我们等下会聊那群「充满干劲的人」具体是什么样，但我觉得这一点很重要：有相当多的人正处在很艰难的状态里。我特别同意你说的，Lenny。而且我觉得，考虑到技术变化的速度，我们太多的精力都花在了「掌握技术」上，花在琢磨「面对这些新发布、新模型、新能力，还有 loop engineering、以及下周又会冒出来的新玩意儿，我们到底该拿它们干嘛」上。我们却没花足够的时间和精力，去经营职场里的人际关系、去真正看见我们的同事、去支持身边的伙伴，让他们也能用好这项技术、借它成长、靠它成功，去跟那些在「如何看待这项技术」上和我们不属于同一阵营的人好好相处、好好协作。所以我个人特别希望看到我们所有人——尤其是那些充满干劲的人——把这份干劲分一点出来，投到你身边的人身上，而不是把全部注意力都押在「AI 的下一个新东西」上。我们进入下一条结论吧，来聊聊倦怠和乐观。

[19:40] Noam

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. 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. 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. Uh pretty worrisome. the the rise to like a massive jump like over 10% increase in burnout in just in a year.

对。去年我们看了倦怠，也看了乐观度。当时倦怠已经高到令人担忧，我们为此又发布了进一步的研究，还提出了应对和对抗倦怠的 ARMOR 框架。这一次，说实话我也不太确定自己原本期待什么。嗯，我大概是希望乐观度能保持稳定、倦怠别再往上涨——因为按理说，有了新能力、有了更强的模型，你或许会以为我们不用那么拼、不用把那么多精力砸进每件事、砸到把自己榨干的地步。然而，我们看到的并非如此。就「显著倦怠」——也就是高于中等程度的倦怠——而言，我们从 2025 年的 44.7% 涨到了 2026 年的 54.7%。倦怠正在飙升，此刻我们样本里超过一半的人都感到显著倦怠。与此同时，大家对自己岗位和职业前景的乐观度，却从 2025 年的 54.8% 跌到了 2026 年的 48.7%。对整个科技圈来说，这是个坏消息。我除了「太糟了」也不知道还能说什么，我真的不喜欢这个结果，但我完全懂——我完全能理解大家为什么会有这种感受。挺让人忧心的。这个涨幅可是个大跳跃，一年之内倦怠就上升了超过 10 个百分点。

[21:28] Noam

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

对。而且有意思的是，你以前请过好几位嘉宾，聊过跟这相关的话题。我特别喜欢你和 RAMP 的 Jeff 那期对谈。他分享说，他最严重的一次倦怠，恰恰发生在速度最低的时候——当你把力气花在那些其实推不动的事情上，感觉很糟，而这会导致倦怠。这跟我知道的某些倦怠理论对得上：停滞会带来倦怠。而我觉得现在的情况恰恰相反。这些数据向你展示：当我们比以往任何时候都发布得更快，从一天提交几个 PR，变成一天提交 30 个 PR，或者干的活儿多得多——某种意义上这可能挺爽，但我们比以前更倦怠了。而且我们显然一点也没少干，对吧？我们只是在不断地扛下更多东西：更多原型、更多 PRD、更多 PR、更多市场活动、更多 agent、更多广告——

[22:51] Lenny

and it's leading to more burnouts.

——结果就是带来了更多的倦怠。

[22:54] Noam

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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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.

对，而这其实正是我们待会儿会讲到的一条结论。我不确定这张幻灯片里有没有，但你之前点出过一线希望——工作乐趣其实依然很高。倦怠是涨了，可与此同时，仍有跟去年同等比例的人是真心享受自己工作的。我觉得，关于「乐趣」这件事，我们听到的最能给我希望的，主要是两点。第一，人们能够释放出自己身份和热情里、以前释放不出来的某些侧面。你想，如果你现在的岗位是 PM，但你心里其实住着一个设计师；或者你是做市场的，可内心深处一直有个工程师憋着想出来——现在你能做到了，对吧？如今我们手里各种各样的工具，让你能把性格里的那些侧面、那些职业抱负释放出来，而这正是大家特别享受的。我们某种程度上在挣脱各自固有的「泳道」，我们的角色里有一定比例正在转变成别的东西。第二，大家说让他们觉得享受的，是他们能把一些自己一直想做、而在不久前还觉得根本不可能的东西真正做出来——不管是在主职里，还是在副业里，等等。所以对很多科技从业者来说，这依然是一个令人兴奋、令人享受的时代，因为我们能做到那些原以为永远做不到的事——因为它们本在我们岗位之外，本在技术可行性之外，或者出于别的原因。这也是又一个数据点。到最后你会给出一大堆建议，告诉大家该拿这些信息怎么办，这跟你后面要推荐的东西也能对上。不过在讲到那儿之前——另一条特别有意思的结论是关于裁员的，是裁员、以及对裁员的恐惧如何影响倦怠。聊聊这个吧。我们确实问了大家有多担心被裁。

[25:23] Noam

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. 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. 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. I feel a lot of people listening are probably feeling 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. 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.

你可以看到，我们样本里有 72% 的人在某种程度上担心被裁，其中 41.2% 的人至少是「中等程度」地担心被裁。所以很清楚，一说到用 AI，大家会觉得自己可能正在亲手锯断自己坐着的那根树枝。有人反映，自己的公司正全力押注 agent、全力押注这些技术，那种「说不定哪天我就被挤出去了」的感觉是真实存在的。所以担忧程度很高。我觉得，如果你正在看这期节目，你会开始注意到，当下这个社区里充满了矛盾心理，各种情绪激烈交织：既觉得干劲十足、享受工作，同时又对它不太乐观、被它搞得很累，还担心这一切乐趣终有一天会结束——就在我所在的公司认定不再需要我的那一天。我感觉很多正在收听的人大概都能对号入座，也会觉得「被说中了、被理解了」。所以有意思的是，到目前为止大概有两条结论：一条是正在发生的这种两极分化，以及把这两大群体进一步拆分出的这些人物画像；与此同时，从大盘上看，倦怠在显著上升，乐观在下降。你能不能把这两条放在一起讲讲，你是怎么看的？就是「很多人过得开心多了、正经历人生最好的时光，很多人却过得很糟」这一层，和大盘上「乐观与倦怠此消彼长」这一层。

[27:03] Noam

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 [snorts] 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. And it's very very hard to disengage from that technology and touch grass, read a book, whatever you love to do in 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. 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. 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.

我觉得这项技术有种让人上瘾的东西。先说说我自己吧——老实讲，我这辈子的职业生涯里，从没像用这些技术时这么开心过。我每天花在上面的时间实在太多了，又是琢磨又是搭东西。我想我们很多人，哪怕是那些对这项技术没那么亢奋的人，也仍然觉得自己身处一个迷人的技术游乐场里。想从这种技术里抽身出来、出门走走、读本书、做点你业余喜欢做的事，真的太难了，Lenny，你应该也有同感。所以没错，我们享受用这项技术，因为它打开了我们从未有过的可能性。但另一方面，它也让人累。要不停地学这项技术、不停地想着把它塞进各种场景、不停地承担超出你传统岗位职责的活儿——因为说到底，现在已经没有什么『传统岗位』了。如今我们全都是 builder，不管公司里有没有给你这个正式头衔。所以我觉得这自然会催生出这些相互冲突的情绪：一边是对『可能性』的兴奋、对用 AI 的乐趣；另一边则是意识到——这项技术之所以这么让人兴奋，恰恰是因为它太强大了。而正因为它这么强大，它可能正冲着我们来、要来抢我们的饭碗，对吧？你是看《终结者》长大的吗？我脑子里一直在想《终结者》那几部电影。

[28:49] Lenny

I don't know about growing up, but yes, I I watched them early in my

长大倒谈不上，不过是的，我很早的时候就看过——

[28:52] Noam

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.

天呐，我超爱那几部电影，忍不住会想：机器人到底什么时候会冲我们来。所以说，这么厉害的技术，某个时刻真的可能会冲我们来。Skynet——Skynet 现在正被造出来。

[29:07] Lenny

Skynet is coming.

Skynet 要来了。

[29:08] Noam

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. I even built a website dedicated to fighting NPS. NPS is the worst.com.

关于这个，接下来会有一个特别精彩的发现。不过在讲那个之前——其实每一条发现都太有意思了，就像，哎呀这个好有意思，可它们个个都有意思。我们先说下一条发现，关于人们怎么看自己的职业、以及他们会不会推荐别人入行。这一条对我来说太劲爆了，因为至少在研究圈里，我是出了名的 NPS（净推荐值）黑粉——我甚至专门建了个网站来反对 NPS，叫 NPSistheworst.com（NPS 最烂网）。

[29:41] Noam

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? 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. 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. 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. 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 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 and part of this research.

这是真有其站。顺便说个好玩的：我讨厌 NPS 到什么程度呢——我连 NPSthebest.com（NPS 最棒网）这个域名都买下来了，然后把所有访问它的人全都转发到『NPS 最烂』那个站。我反 NPS 就是这么执着。不过呢，你和我当时都真心好奇：那些已经入行几年、可能已经做到高级甚至更资深岗位的人，会对现在刚要入行的人说什么？或者对正在考虑入行的人说什么？他们会把自己的岗位、乃至整个科技行业，推荐给自己的朋友或亲戚吗？结果令人震惊，绝对令人震惊。我给你看看这块的数据。先容我快速解释一下 NPS，因为它不太好懂。NPS 问的是：你有多大意愿把一个产品——在这里就是你的岗位——推荐给朋友或家人？打分从 0 到 10，10 分代表你绝对会推荐你的岗位，0 分代表你绝对不会推荐。但 NPS 作为整体算出来后，范围是从 -100（糟糕透顶）到 +100，而『0』这个点代表中立，代表整个样本整体上是中性的：既不是推荐者（用 NPS 的行话说，就是我会向别人安利、推荐我的岗位），也不是贬损者（意思是我对自己的岗位并不负面）。这就是那个零点。而你在这里看到的是：现在科技行业里，没有任何一个岗位的人是自己岗位的推荐者。连创始人都不是——他们可是目前科技圈里最快乐、最没心没肺乐呵呵的一群人了，创始人都不会推荐自己的岗位。做销售或 go-to-market 的也不会，PM、运营、工程也一样，而最惨的是设计师和研究员——我的同类，是最不愿意把自己的岗位推荐给新入行者的人。这有点像在说：我正泡在这个池子里，水嘛还凑合，但你可别下来趟这摊科技的水，这地方不适合你。天呐，这真是这项研究里特别有意思的一条发现。

[32:37] Lenny

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. They're the least unhappy. They're the least least likely to recommend.

就单看这张图，大家看到的那一刻——就好像所有人都在说『别，别干我这行』，挺有意思的。你知道，我们等下会聊到创始人是科技圈里最快乐的人，但这活儿依然又累又难。呃，我挺意外的，居然是最……你会以为很多创始人会觉得这是最疯、最硬核的活儿，你千万别干、这太糟了。可有意思的是，他们反倒是最不那么不快乐的一群，也是最不愿意推荐的一群。

[33:08] Noam

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.

现在有一种很强的说法：当创始人的时机从没这么好过，因为你在『搭建东西』这件事上，对他人的依赖大大降低了。

[33:17] Noam

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. 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. 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. 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

围绕 solopreneur（一人创业者）、duopreneur（两人创业者）的讨论铺天盖地，对吧？关于『这是属于创始人的时代』的讨论多得不得了，然而正身处这个岗位的人，却并不怎么乐意把它推荐给别人。这里面还有另一层：越往资历低的方向走，越不愿意推荐自己的岗位。所以高管、VP、甚至总监，相对来说会比一线的 IC 更愿意推荐自己的岗位。这一点挺有意思。对此我见过各种各样的解释。比如一种解释是：在金字塔顶端，VP 从 AI 中获益更多，因为所有信息和知识都被 AI 处理好、源源不断地喂给他们，让他们的工作轻松了很多；而 IC 们则各自手忙脚乱地在自己所在的公司里搭各种微型 SaaS 产品，谁也不知道别人在干嘛，重复劳动一大堆。如今搭个产品容易多了，可维护它们却难多了。所以我觉得很多 IC 的感受是——有句话叫『空挡踩油门』，对吧？就像你把车油门踩到底，可挡位却挂在空挡，你哪儿也去不了——

[34:56] Noam

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. 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. Everyone's just like maybe should do something else.

——哪儿也去不了。我觉得这就是如今很多 IC 用这些技术时的感受：我一个劲儿地搭这些东西，却带不来我想要的影响力。别人也都在搭，一片混乱，感觉不值当了。这里还有个挺有意思的趋势，你知道有个梗一直在传——『别沦为永久底层（permanent underclass）』。我感觉这份研究里贯穿着好几条这样的线索，在这儿就像是：好吧，我是个 PM，可已经太晚了，别入这行，这个岗位的门正在关上。世道在变，而且不只是 PM，是每一个岗位。大家都觉得，也许该去干点别的。

[35:36] Lenny

Yeah, I would agree with that and I think it's uh it's unfortunate. I 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. We certainly don't know to recommend to others like yeah you know in 5 years

是的，我同意这个看法，而且我觉得挺遗憾的。我感觉过去大家都被推着去学计算机、去学写代码。而如今，就我自己作为一个家长来说，我都不知道该让我的孩子去做什么了。我不确定再过几年还会有什么岗位留给他们。这是非常令人迷茫的时代，我觉得科技行业的员工也正经历着同样的迷茫——他们看不清自己未来会面对什么。我们更是没法给别人什么建议，比如『你放心，5 年后会很好的』——

[36:19] Noam

it's going to be great

——会很棒的。

[36:21] Lenny

plastics

『去搞塑料业吧。』（《毕业生》里那句经典的职业建议）

[36:22] Noam

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. 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.

——就像根本没人知道会怎样。你稍微跳出来看一下：我们此刻正经历的变化之大，简直离谱。这种结果，放在一两年前是绝不可能看到的。它是如此不稳定、如此不确定，对科技行业的人来说，这都是全新的体验。是的，我喜欢用一些比喻，或者拿我生活里其他领域的例子，来解释这些事。我记得你之前采访过 Cognition 的联合创始人兼 CEO Scott Wu——

[37:07] Lenny

Mhm. Devon

嗯。就是做 Devin 的。

[37:08] Noam

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 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. 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. 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. 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

——对，就是 Devin 的缔造者。我记得他描述这个产品时，讲过产品是沿着一架梯子一级级往上爬的：从一个高中的计算机学生，到大学实习生，再到初级工程师，而现在大概已经到了资深甚至 staff 级工程师的水平了。我会说，我们所有人都在眼睁睁看着这项技术一级一级往上爬、不断进阶，而我们感觉这项技术正把我们脚下的梯级一根根抽走。所以我们在梯子上爬得越高，对自己的职业就越有安全感、越踏实；可我们在梯子上的位置越低，脚下的梯级就越是被抽走。所以完全说得通——我们不会推荐别人也来站上这架梯子，因为梯级正在一根根消失。哎，这里面能聊的太多了，不过我先指出几点我看到的东西，然后我们再进入下一条发现。第一点很有意思：销售和 PM 是最不那么『别入这行』的——这挺有意思，我没想到，销售人员对自己岗位的未来没那么害怕；PM 也是——这可是我们这儿一大批听众——也没那么害怕。而正如你说的，研究和设计是最『千万别干这行』的。作为一名研究员，你刚才稍微提到了一点，但我很好奇：看到这个结果，你心里是什么感受？

[38:48] Noam

it's it's [snorts] 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. 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 [snorts] 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. 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. 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.

这……挺难受的。我觉得研究这个圈子这些年一直背负着不少焦虑和创伤：为在决策桌上争一个席位而焦虑，为在工作中寻找意义而焦虑，还有围绕『研究民主化』这类话题——别人开始接手我们的活儿，最终把我们取代掉。看到这个结果，确实很扎心。我认为在未来做产品的过程中，研究需要扮演一个非常重要的角色。我觉得随着这项技术往前发展，我们对『自己在造什么』应该变得更审慎，而不是更草率。我听过那套说法：反正搭原型这么便宜，那就搭一千个原型，看哪个能跑通。我想你在最近一期对谈里也听到过类似的说法。我倒觉得，那样只会让我们更加心力交瘁。这种做法，我个人不推荐。我认为研究、还有设计，在『抬高可能性的上限』这件事上有极其重要的作用；而 AI 大多只是拉低了门槛，却并没有抬高上限。我还可以告诉你，PM 相对更愿意推荐自己的岗位——尽管他们其实也算不上愿意推荐——这一点对我来说是说得通的。我会说，相比其他一些岗位，PM 更偏向一个通才型的角色。而如果你问我，这就是属于通才的时代，AI 的时代。让我最意外的是销售和 go-to-market，因为如果我们真处在某种所谓的『SaaS 末日』里——我个人并不相信我们真身处其中，但确实有人这么说——那我觉得销售和 go-to-market 的人，本不该对推荐自己的岗位感觉这么良好才对。不过也许他们相信，销售这件事到目前为止是 AI 干不了的。

[41:03] Lenny

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. 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. 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.

是的，这里我想聊的实在太多了。有一点很重要，我要特别强调一下：这并不意味着设计要消失、或者研究要消失。它只是说，此刻身处这些岗位的人，脑子里的那套叙事是『别干这行』。这并不代表这行就完了，因为这很可能只是我们一直听到的那些炒作——我自己也『有份』，通过请来的各路嘉宾没少添柴加火——但这只是人们的感受，并不代表现实真会如此。百分之百。这整个在科技圈独一无二的项目，讲的全都是『人们的感受』，而不是科技行业工作的客观现实。它关乎的是人们的情绪、人们的感受。我真心觉得，除了我们，没有谁像我们这样把这些情绪捕捉下来。但没错，这是个很好的提醒：这不是现实的写照，而是此刻科技圈里人们心境的写照。

[42:00] Lenny

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

还有一个数据点，我们想确保在这儿讲清楚。你刚才提到了，但我不确定你是否真把它对大家说得足够明白——就是说，前面看的是『你会不会推荐别人入你这行』，而我们其实还问了：你自己此刻对这个岗位感觉如何？比如你干得开不开心？结果是：其实我还挺好的，我很开心，我是个 PM，我很开心，我是设计师、研究员（也挺开心）。所以正如你说的，这就有点像——水挺好的，但你别下来。你能不能再展开讲讲这一点，好让大家把这层意思弄明白？

[42:28] Noam

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 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. 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. 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.

当我们问大家诸如『你喜不喜欢自己的工作』这类问题时——就像我们前面聊的——大多数人都说，总体而言是的，他们在自己的岗位上是有乐趣的。我觉得这里发生的情况是：跟以前相比，人们缺的是乐观。乐观情绪下降了。所以，人们此刻对自己岗位的感受（基于他们职业上已取得的成就、以及他们在梯子上所处的位置）和他们对未来的推演（一年后、三年后、五年后可能发生什么）之间，存在巨大的落差——而人们推演出的未来，显然要比他们当下的体验更负面。所以总的来说，作为一个行业，我们过得还行：我们乐在其中、我们在尝试新东西、我们正经历一场关于『如何工作』的彻底范式转变，这在一段时间里挺有意思的。但看起来，大家都觉得，这事儿正朝着不太妙的方向发展。当然，我希望我们全都想错了，我真心希望我们全都错了。

[43:48] Lenny

Me too. As a natural optimist, I'm like, it's gonna be all right. So, we'll see. I'll see.

我也希望。作为一个天生的乐观派，我总觉得，会没事的。所以，走着瞧吧，我拭目以待。

[43:53] Lenny

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. [music] 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. They make it so easy, dare I say fun, to send invoices, [music] 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 [music] just recently, they launched Command, a conversational interface built directly into Mercury, which acts [music] as your financial operator. 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 [music] 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. 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. 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. When we simply asked the question, how much better are you at your job thanks to AI? Unequivocally the answer was yes.

我也是天生的乐观派。而我意识到，到目前为止我们聊的内容里，乐观的成分好像不太多，所以我也希望我们能聊到一些乐观的部分。本期节目由 Mercury 赞助——一种彻底不一样的银行服务，深受超过 30 万创业者的喜爱，如今还带来了 Command 功能。我做 Mercury 的客户已经超过 6 年了，一次都没想过要换。Mercury 基本上就是『当银行由产品人、而不是银行家来打造』时会呈现的样子。它把开发票、转账调钱、给团队成员设置虚拟卡这些事做得特别简单——甚至可以说，好玩。你的银行有 API 吗？有原生的终端 CLI 吗？有为 AI 准备好的 MCP server 吗？我看是没有。而且最近他们刚推出了 Command，一个直接内建在 Mercury 里的对话式界面，相当于你的财务操盘手。我一直用 Command 来回转账、搞清楚我在哪些类目上花钱最多、分析我的现金流，就在今天，我还用它查了过去一年我从某个特定赞助商那儿一共赚了多少——我只要问一句『过去一年我从 X 那儿赚了多少？』，10 秒后答案就出来了。真的太酷了。访问 mercury.com 了解更多，几分钟就能在线申请。Mercury 是一家金融科技公司，并非受 FDIC 保险的银行；银行服务由 Choice Financial Group 和 Column N.A. 提供，二者均为 FDIC 成员。我们来聊聊第四条发现。这一条看的是生产力、质量，也就是 AI 带来的好处那一面。这对我来说是特别有意思的一条。在去年那份专门调查 AI 对生产力和质量影响的问卷里，人们对这项技术相当看好，觉得它不只是让自己更高效，而是让自己变得更好。而这一次，我们看到了一些有意思的发现。我先从这里讲起——这是最初的表象，但它引出的东西跟我原本以为会发生的很不一样。当我们只是简单地问『多亏了 AI，你在工作上变得好了多少？』时，答案毫无悬念是肯定的。

[46:07] Noam

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. 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. 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. People essentially told us my brain is rotting my work feels worse. And this this is related to phenomenon I've heard about recently like um is it cognitive rot I think is what what I've heard. 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.

你可以看到，97.2% 的人都说 AI 让他们在工作上变得更好了，其中接近 50% 的人说 AI 让他们工作变得『好非常多』或『好到极点』。所以很明显，在宏观层面上——不管你怎么理解『更好』这个词（这个我们马上会讲到）——人们都觉得 AI 产生了影响。但当你往深里挖、看看这背后到底是什么意思，就像你在这儿看到的：所谓『我们变好了』，其实意味着一件和你想的相当不一样的事。当我听到人们说自己变好了，我以为是字面意义上的变好，以为是他们工作的质量变高了、AI 让产出质量更好了。而事实恰恰相反。我们从人们那儿听到了两件让人担忧的事。第一件是：我能更快地做更多，但做得并不更好。所以，AI 某种程度上拉低了『可能性的下限』，让人们能比以往产出多得多的东西——不管那是什么，是 PR、PRD、研究项目还是原型——但产出的质量并没有更高。而或许更让人担忧的影响、也就是这一切背后更深的代价，是使用 AI 对『思考和判断力』的侵蚀。人们本质上是在告诉我们：我的脑子正在腐坏，我的工作反而感觉更差了。这跟我最近听说的一个现象有关——我想是叫『认知腐化（cognitive rot）』吧。基本上就是这样一种现象：你看到 AI 模型给出的初版产出，就那么直接接受了，你不再对它施加你的判断，不再对它投入思考，于是你慢慢地任由自己的头脑、你在工作中的参与、你的能动性，一点点塌缩进这种『腐坏』的状态里。

[48:36] Lenny

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……对，这是条特别有意思的发现，而且这里其实有一个正面的信号。就像你说的，我看着这些数字：82% 的人说 AI 至少让他们在工作上变好了『中等程度』，接近 50% 的人说变好了『非常多』或『极其多』——这也许跟最开始那种『两极分化』相吻合：那些觉得 AI 让自己工作变得更好的人，很可能正是那些感觉最被点燃、最有干劲的人。

[48:59] Lenny

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. All my stuff is higher quality and it's much better than ever.

所以不管它是不是真的——我觉得这里有几个让人欣慰的点。第一，大家觉得 AI 让自己变强了，他们是真这么感觉的，这份感受是真实的，哪怕事实未必如此。同时呢，他们也挺有自知之明，知道质量是个问题，也知道自己写代码、写策略文档这些能力可能正在退化。所以至少大家是清醒的，不是那种“我无敌了、我产出的东西质量更高、比以前强多了”的盲目自信。

[49:28] Noam

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

他们确实有自知之明，但你要知道——顺便说一句，我是持证的教练——我想说的是，光有自知之明还不够，我们得真正行动起来。

[49:36] Noam

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

针对这件事去做点什么。对于这个现象，我能给出好几种解释。其中一个可能是：跟 AI 的蜜月期结束了。我们一度觉得它完美无缺，是自打有切片面包以来最伟大的发明——美国人不都爱这么说嘛。但我们意识到，它其实还没到那个程度。没错，今天的模型是它们此生最差的样子，只会越来越好，但在我们能真心说出“我的工作因此好太多了、我都不用怎么亲自上手”之前，它还有太多要进步的地方。你之前请 Simon Willison 上过这档节目，聊到大家担心技能退化——担心自己学得不够，担心我们必须有意识地去抵抗，别让自己的脑子就这么烂掉。我觉得这份数据说明，这一仗我们打得有点吃力。我们得再多投入一点精力，去对抗这种正在蔓延的“认知退化”，确保在门槛不断被抬高、技术不断演进的同时，我们能用刻意练习、刻意思考、刻意判断去迎上去。可人就是特别不擅长这个。就好比面前有个“一键偷懒”的按钮，我肯定会按下去。我知道不该，但那包 Doritos 我还是要吃。这就是难处：因为你明明可以走捷径，太难忍住了。这又回到刚说的那个不断被抬高的门槛——很多人才刚入门，他们得逼着自己用笨办法做，才能真正学会。我特别好奇，这在市场里那些初级同学身上会怎么演变：他们到底是靠自己的双手去学写代码、学写作、从零手写一份 PRD，还是直接跟 Claude 聊出来。

[51:31] Lenny

Yeah, there's so much to say here. I think um the the more I think people miss feeling smart sometimes, you know. I think I I thought

是啊，这里面能说的太多了。我越来越觉得，人有时候是会怀念“觉得自己聪明”那种感觉的。

[51:41] Lenny

once upon a time about myself that I'm I'm smart and then you encounter these 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. 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. 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.

我曾经一度觉得自己挺聪明的，然后你一撞上这些模型——最近就是刚发布的 Fable 5——你突然就没那么聪明了，那种一直以来“我能行”的自我效能感也被削掉了。关于这点还有第二层要说：每一次是你、而不是 AI 解决了一个难题、跨过了一道坎，你的自我效能、自信、自我信念的基线就会被抬高一点；而每一次你把它甩给你最爱的那个 AI 模型，你就是在拉低这个基线，你的思考和判断力也在跟着荒废。这是个很严重的问题。所以给这个要点收个尾吧——这份报告里有句话我特别喜欢，我念一下：生产力的提升是真实的，但工作的质量、以及做这件事的人本身的敏锐度，正在受损。

[52:37] Noam

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.

完全同意。也许我们留到最后再展开，但我们真的得盯紧这件事，认真去经营自己的自我效能感。

[52:47] Lenny

We need like evals for people like are humans becoming

我们得给人也搞个 evals 才行，就像——人类是不是正在变得……

[52:49] Noam

eval for people. Let's let's do that.

给人做 eval。来，咱们就搞这个。

[52:52] Noam

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. 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 what are you afraid of in tech? Losing my job to AI is actually second to last on that list. 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. 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. 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. You're such an amazing writer, Nom.

就评估你的聪明程度呗。好，我们来聊第五个要点，这个我也觉得特别有意思。天哪，这里面有意思的东西太多了。来说第五个要点。是这样，我觉得当下我们这个圈子里最主流的叙事，是“怕被取代”。就像我们前面聊的，很多科技行业的人确实害怕、担心自己会被取代、被裁掉。所以按理说，如果问卷里有个选项是“我担心被 AI 抢走工作”，它的排名应该相当靠前才对。可当我们看这张图、看大家被问到“你现在最担心什么、最困扰你的是什么、在科技行业里你最怕什么”时——“被 AI 抢走工作”居然排在倒数第二。真正冲到最前面的，是“同样的薪水却被要求做更多”。感觉就像我们都被一遍遍地挤压，被要求在更短的时间里、拿一样的钱、完成更多的事。所以“怕被过度压榨”才是压倒性的头号恐惧，紧随其后的第二项是“节奏正变得难以为继”。我说的“节奏”有两层：一是工作本身的节奏和对产出速度的期待——每天到底要吐出多少东西，天天如此；二是技术变化的节奏，它逼着你花大量时间去学新模型、新框架、用技术的新方式，而这当然又会挤占你真正专注干活的时间。于是就形成了一个可怕的下行螺旋，让你几乎没法感觉自己完成了什么有意义的事，只觉得被工作压垮、特别累。我相信在听的每个人都完全懂你说的这种状态。这显然也和我们前面提到的倦怠那点连上了。这个要点我就用你文章里的另一小段来收尾吧——你真是个了不起的写作者，Noam。

[55:25] Lenny

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.

我太喜欢读你写的这些学习总结了。我念一下这段：AI 释放出来的速度，全被原封不动地灌回到了更高的期待里。每一次的成绩都变成新的基准线，而被要求去达标的人，已经快喘不过气了。

[55:40] Noam

When are we going to get to the optimistic part of this uh of this episode?

我们到底什么时候才能聊到这期里乐观的部分啊？

[55:46] Lenny

Maybe we'll find something. Okay, let's talk about 6, which has a little bit of optimism.

也许我们能找到点乐观的。好，我们来说第六点，这一点还真带着一点乐观。

[55:51] Lenny

Oh, yeah. Okay. a lot of ambival ambivalence is another way you put it.

哦对。好吧——换个说法，也就是你说的“满是矛盾纠结”。

[55:56] Noam

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. 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. 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 to figure out what exactly is going on. 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. 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. 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.

对，我前面提过一句。这个行业现在绝对处在一种矛盾交织的状态。我们试着去捕捉大家此刻在职场里感受到的所有情绪。我很高兴地告诉你——你也能在这张图上看到——排在最前面的两种情绪是正面的：好奇和兴奋。这太好了，这就是乐观的部分，我很欣慰是这样。大家说自己对这项技术、对它的能力、对自己能做成的事感到兴奋；对未来会带来什么、随着这些模型和系统继续演进自己还能做些什么，感到好奇。这非常棒。但你顺着这张表往下看，就会发现是一锅很有意思的、正面、负面、中性情绪混在一起的大杂烩。人们同时也感到不知所措、感到矛盾、在某些方面又感到松了口气——就是那种把一些事甩给 AI 之后、AI 帮你卸下负担的、好的那种松弛。然后大家又感到疲惫、倦怠，就是像我们说的那样拼命干活、不安、焦虑，接着又抱着希望。所以你看，这里的情绪五花八门，真的很难说清到底在发生什么。但有一点我特别想提，就是 Nikhyl Singhal 在你另一期节目里讲过的——我知道他是这档播客的老朋友，也是产品圈乃至整个科技圈里极了不起的领导者。他讲到一个词叫“微笑式疲惫”（smiling exhaustion）。我特别喜欢这个说法，因为它精准地抓住了这种矛盾。过去那种情绪、那种倦怠是彻底灰暗的，全是那种从“不投入”和“精疲力竭”里长出来的负面情绪。而现在，当 Nikhyl 说“微笑式疲惫”时，讲的是一种人一方面几乎有种重生的感觉——“我又在发布东西了、我在创造、我在用 AI 做出这些了不起的玩意儿，从没有过比现在更让人兴奋的时代”；但另一方面，没有关机键，就是没有那个开关。所以那个节奏残酷到了极点，规则每天都在自我改写，是一种毫不留情的快节奏。

[58:52] Noam

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.

于是我们就这么微笑着，扛着心里那份疲惫。我觉得这比任何东西都更能概括这种矛盾纠结。

[59:00] Lenny

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. 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

我觉得也很值得回到你前面讲的一个核心点：其实有一半的人是真的干得很拼、可能有时也筋疲力尽，但他们同时又特别投入、是全情押上，对事情的走向感觉很好、很有劲。所以我觉得，在我们抛出这一堆负面元素的时候，一定要时不时回到这一点：其实有很大一群人，此刻是真心热爱这段时光、而且过得非常好。我觉得，比什么都更想在这里强调的是——我们太容易把事情看成非黑即白了。

[59:40] Noam

Yeah.

对。

[59:41] Lenny

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

……非黑即白。我们要么把人看成满嘴炒作、打了鸡血的那一类，要么就是——该叫他们末日论者（doomers）吗？这个词对吗——

[59:50] Noam

you know or haters or whatever you want to call it. 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,

你懂的，或者叫黑粉、或者随你怎么称呼。而我们在这里看到的是——一如生活里向来如此，要我说，事情没那么简单。在那层表象背后、在 Elena Bernard 讲过的那些“表演”背后——

[1:00:07] Noam

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

我们每个人身上，其实都同时住着一个盲目乐观者（hype person）和一个末日论者（doomer），只是程度不同。我们彼此的区别只在于两者各占多少，而不是非此即彼。这里头真的有大量的矛盾纠结。我就想让大家知道：这没关系。你完全可以既兴奋、好奇，又同时感到不知所措；可以既松了口气，又疲惫不堪；可以心里带着点怨气。哪怕总体上你对这项技术是正面的，这些情绪也能在你心里共存，这非常自然。别让“你只能是这一种或那一种”的叙事占了上风，别让它说服你——说你现在的感受有什么不对。因为在我们所处的这个时代，所有这些情绪其实都完全说得通。——这点太重要了，我特别喜欢你这么说。好，那下一个要点，我们这里做的是：顺着你发现的这种两极分化，去看到底哪些职能过得最好、哪些过得最糟。前面其实已经埋了个伏笔——结果发现，有那么几个职能整体上是眼下过得最惨、幸福感最低的。我们来聊聊这个。是的，绝对如此——顺便说，去年我们也看到了同样的情况：设计师和研究员是最消极的。稍微澄清一下我说的“最消极”是什么意思：你在这张图上能看到，在“AI 带来的身份认同冲击”这项上，设计师和研究员觉得自己被动摇（destabilized）或被贬低（diminished）的比例最高；在“疲惫、不知所措、焦虑”这类情绪上，研究员和设计师也是负面情绪最重的一批；在“怕被 AI 抢走工作”这项上，研究员和设计师同样几乎顶到了最高；最后，在那种类似 NPS 的评分上——就是你愿不愿意推荐朋友或同事也来做你这个岗位——研究员和设计师是最不愿意推荐别人现在入行的。

[1:02:21] Noam

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. 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. 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

这个我们前面聊过，我不确定还能再补充多少。说到底，倒不是说这些职能真的就大难临头了，而是说这个职能里的人现在就是这么感受的。我不太客观，因为我本身就是研究社区和设计社区的一员。请允许我对这个社区里的人说一句：我是真心、诚实地相信，从没有哪个时刻，比现在更需要我们这些角色在我们做出来的产品里体现价值。Lenny，你在之前很多期访谈里跟很多人聊过——聊品味（taste）、聊匠心（craft）、聊质量（quality）这些概念。我想到像 Linear 的 CEO Karri Saarinen，他就把“质量”以及“该如何打造产品”讲得特别漂亮。我还想到像……

[1:03:23] Noam

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. 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.

……我一下想到了 Katie Dill。她有过——你们在节目里有过一整段关于品味、美感和价值的对话。Katie Dill，还有最近 Anthropic 那边负责 Claude 设计的 Jenny Wen，以及那么多谈论品味、判断力、设计之重要性的人。所以我是真心希望，设计师和研究员在对这个行业的感受上能打个翻身仗，因为这个行业需要他们，这个行业需要我们。所以我希望明年能看到变化。这也是对所有设计师和研究员的一声召唤：投身进去、做我们最擅长的事，因为在这个时代，它的价值大到难以估量。

[1:04:08] Lenny

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. 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. 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. 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.

是啊，我最近也聊过几次关于设计的话题，尤其是——为什么到今天，明知 AI 在设计上这么烂，设计却还没成为一个巨大的加分项和差异化优势。我们前不久刚请了 Codex 那个 app 的负责人上节目，聊到为什么 AI 其实并不擅长设计，你一眼就能看出“这东西是 AI 设计的”。你会以为，眼看着满世界都是 AI 批量生产的那种粗制滥造（AI slop），这正是设计成为公司巨大加分项和差异化优势的时刻。所以我挺乐观，觉得这一点会浮现出来——因为大家会说，我实在受够了这些千篇一律的东西，我想真正做出点好东西。对。而且，如果我没记错，你在那次对话里还说过：AI 做设计的一些问题也许是可解的（tractable），但有些甚至是无解的（intractable）——或者至少要难解得多。到今天依然是这样：创造出真正精彩、新颖、有创意的体验，并不是这项技术目前能做到的事。所以走着瞧吧，但我是真心希望设计和研究这个群体明年能回心转意、改变他们对这个行业的看法。

[1:05:20] Noam

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.

是啊。老天，我已经等不及做明年那版了，到时候又会是什么样呢？不过你要是真去看“怕被 AI 抢走工作”这一类，其实还有一个岗位比设计和研究更担心丢工作。我记得那是数据分析。我们图上用的色块深浅很接近——是为了让信息更清楚——但这点真的挺有意思：数据分析师基本上是最担心被 AI 抢走工作的一群人。

[1:05:43] Noam

I think we're we're seeing uh incredible capabilities coming out.

我觉得我们确实看到了非常惊人的能力冒出来。

[1:05:49] Lenny

Makes sense.

有道理。

[1:05:50] Noam

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. This is about how people are feeling in these roles and there isn't a onetoone correlation uh between between those things.

对。现在有各种各样的模型可以拿来做数据分析，我在 research 领域也看到了同样的情况。我还想说，coding 方面的进步同样惊人。所以我本来以为 engineering 在这里某些指标上会更靠前，结果并没有。不过还是那句话——这里说的不是「AI 在客观现实里到底能把这些岗位的活干到什么程度」，而是身处这些岗位的人自己的感受，这两件事之间并不是一一对应的。

[1:06:28] Lenny

Speaking of that, let's talk about who the happiest people are. Who's doing great? Who's doing best?

说到这个，我们来聊聊谁是最开心的那群人。谁过得最好？谁状态最棒？

[1:06:34] Noam

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. 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 is still running rather than founders who had to shut down their startup. purple, whatever it might be. 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. 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. 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. 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.

那么，科技行业里最开心的人——这一点从去年的调查到今年都没变，还是 founders，以及在小公司工作的人。我确实觉得有必要说明一下：说到 founders，就像你刚才提到的，当 founder 是一份极其艰难、需要你全身心投入的工作。而且这里存在一定的选择偏差（selection bias）——我们看到的是那些当下还 active 地在创业公司里担任 founder、公司还在运转的人，而不是那些不得不把创业公司关掉的 founder，不管出于什么原因。所以我想把「我们观察的到底是哪群人」讲清楚。但没错，当我们看 founders、同时看公司规模的时候，你会发现无论是乐观程度、burnout、对裁员的担忧，还是愿不愿意推荐自己这份工作，这些指标都会随着不同问题在升高或降低。非常明显，founders 几乎在每一项指标上都排在最前面：他们 71% 是乐观的，最享受自己的工作，burnout 最低，对裁员的担忧最低，对 AI 的兴奋度最高。跟我们看到的其他效应比，这是一个中等强度的效应，但非常显著。话虽如此，说到 founders，即便拥有这种所有权、这种自主权（agency），它也是有极限的——很多 founder 还是处在中等、或者至少中等程度的 burnout 里，具体是 47% 的 founder。而且就像我们前面说的，就连 founders 现在也不太会推荐别人去当 founder，这一点很有意思。我还觉得有一点很重要——正如你说的，现在流行一个梗，说「从没有比现在更好的创业时机」。有人看到这个可能会想「我得去开家公司，这是最好的位置」。也许恰恰是当下这个时刻大家对创业最兴奋，然后随着泡沫——我也不知道这算不算泡沫——但随着形势开始变难，这种情绪可能会出现反转。

[1:09:11] Lenny

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.

所以到目前为止很有意思的是，我们连续两年都看到 founders 是最开心的，但我很好奇，如果市场变了、如果出现什么状况，这个结论会不会变。所以这并不是说你去当 founder 就一定会开心，但真的很有意思——连续两年，在所有结论里最清晰的一个就是：founders 几乎在每一个维度上都显得最开心。

[1:09:31] Noam

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. 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.

对。然后是公司规模。同样地，公司越大，乐观程度越低；公司越大，你越容易 burnout；公司越大，你越担心被裁员；公司越大，你越不愿意推荐自己这份工作。所以这一点也保持一致。如果我们单看 burnout，这里可以非常清楚地看到：从一家 1 到 10 人的小 startup，到一家五千人、一万人的大 enterprise 公司，burnout 是一路显著攀升的。

[1:10:18] Lenny

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。这条线居然这么线性，太离谱了。中间没有任何拐点，而末尾那两个——就像你在这张图里指出的——它们在统计上……

[1:10:26] Noam

it's within margin of error yeah

在误差范围之内，对。

[1:10:28] Lenny

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

真的太离谱了，它就是一路往上，根本没有那种「先有个甜蜜点（sweet spot）、然后又降回来」的情况。你翻回上一张图，也是一模一样——就是非常线性，所有指标都往上走、随着公司规模变大而变差。太夸张了。

[1:10:44] Noam

absolutely I would say one thing to highlight here like if you look at burnout for example is that even the 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. 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.

完全同意。我想强调一点——比如你看 burnout，就算是最低的那一档，其实也还是相当高的，对吧？所以我会说，在 startup 工作的人 burnout 稍微低一点、状态稍微健康一点。但我会把这种程度的 burnout、这种程度的担忧看作是令人忧虑的。我很担心现在 tech 行业里这种「担忧」的水平，氛围（vibe）不太好。你提到我们十年前在 Airbnb 认识，我确实觉得那时候 tech 行业的氛围很不一样。所以我对我们现在看到的这些数字有点忧心。但没错，从相对的角度看，也许一个人可以考虑换一换——去做自己的事，或者去一家更小的公司。

[1:11:40] Lenny

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. 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,

对，没错，这会是其中一个 takeaway。你知道吗，要是我们能给非科技行业也做一次这样的调查就太棒了。我特别好奇——你觉得 tech 行业的人很恐慌、很焦虑，那我超好奇这跟比如蓝领工人、或者其他职能相比会是什么样。我不知道我们有没有那样的受众来做这个，但那真的会很有意思。我是说，我觉得我那位 HVAC（暖通空调）师傅现在对自己的职业感觉好得很——佛罗里达热得要命，人人都需要空调，这短期内不会变。要不去试一把，对，去开家公司……

[1:12:15] Noam

we should do that.

咱们真该做这个。

[1:12:16] Lenny

Start a filming business. Oh, man.

去开家拍视频的公司得了。哎哟，天哪。

[1:12:19] Noam

So, what I love about this doing the survey again is we're starting to find things that are consistently true. 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? 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. The problem is 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. 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 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

我特别喜欢再做一遍这个调查的一点是——我们开始发现一些持续成立的规律。下一个 takeaway 又是一个很好的例子，去年我们也看到了，是关于 manager 的。我们来聊聊。对。我是说，也许大家已经知道这一点：manager 的影响非常大。你的 manager 是谁，可能比你这份工作的大多数其他特征都更重要。去年我们非常明确地发现了这一点，今年又一次——关于 manager 的有效性（effectiveness）。我们基本上就是问大家：你的 manager 有多称职？你会怎么给他打分？你在这里能看到的是：你的 manager 越称职，你的 burnout 就越低，也越享受工作。这是我们看到的一个极其巨大的效应。举个例子，如果你有一个非常称职的 manager，你报告的工作愉悦度会高出大约 65%，burnout 也大幅降低。问题在于「供给」——样本里只有大约 25% 的人把自己的 manager 评为「非常称职」，而 36% 的人把 manager 评为「不称职」，顺便说一句，这跟去年相比变化非常小。所以我们看到的是：manager 普遍被评得不怎么样；与此同时，一旦 manager 真的称职（显然这种情况远远不够多），它对人们的工作愉悦度、burnout 乃至其他方面的影响，都大得惊人。这太震撼了。我觉得我们这是在给世界补上一条新的洞见——光是发现这一点：我以前从没见过这种数据，一个 manager 的影响力竟然这么大。我们总是听到各种传闻，总听人说「人们离开的不是工作，而是他们的 manager」，但这真的太震撼了，它对你的影响居然这么大。而且很明显，其中一个 takeaway 可能就是：如果你过得不好，那就去找一个更好的 manager——就像你说的，说起来容易做起来难。

[1:14:43] Noam

yeah but there's a couple of things here I want to I want to also note before we move on. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

对，但在我们往下讲之前，这里有几点我也想提一下。首先，我们正处在一个「大扁平化（great flattening）」的时代，一个「founder mode」的时代。现在每个人手下管的直接下属（direct reports）比以往任何时候都多，我们都在尽量把组织弄得扁平、去掉层级。我对此有点担心。我是说，扁平化、去层级当然有它很好的理由，但考虑到「你的 manager 是谁」对你的幸福感这么重要，我很好奇这个趋势会走向何方。第二点，我们前面聊到过被过度工作、聊到 AI 给我们带来的这种挤压。那么，比任何人都更能左右这种挤压的是谁？是你的 manager，对吧？是你的 manager 在保护你，是你的 manager 在很多方面几乎决定了你会不会被过度压榨。所以是的，这件事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，其实正是我们在 tech 行业里怎么对待 manager、怎么搭建组织所造成的结果。这个点太有意思了。不管是现在还是下次——光是去看这些 manager 自己的指标，比如他们自己 burnout 高出多少、他们自己幸福感和乐观程度低多少，都会很有意思。这篇文章里还有几条注解我想拎出来，我觉得特别有意思。一条核心 takeaway 是：你能用来提升公司留存（retention）的最大杠杆，就是提升你的 manager——基本上就是把人安排给更好的 manager、把人跟更好的 manager 连起来。太有意思了，这是一件你实际能去做的事，当然说起来容易做起来难，但这是你能改变的所有事情里最大的那根杠杆。你还注意到另一件事：评分最差的 manager 集中在 data analytics 和 design——设计做得很差。对。至于这是为什么，我也不确定有没有一个清晰的解释。

[1:17:13] Noam

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. 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. And then [clears throat]

我觉得一个可能的解释是——说到底，manager 也是人。所以 design 领域的 manager、data 和 analytics 领域的 manager，他们本身就身处 design 和 analytics 里，而从我们看到的数据来看，这两个领域的人明显过得很苦。我觉得你很难把「你在 tech 行业里的感受」和「你作为 manager 的工作」切割开——你很难做到不把自己的一些负能量转嫁到团队和身边的同事身上。所以我对现在过得很辛苦、感觉不到能量的 design manager、research manager、data 和 analytics manager，以及其他 tech 行业的 manager，都抱有很多同理心。而不幸的是，这其中的一部分正在被传导给他们的直接下属。然后……（清了清嗓子）

[1:17:47] Lenny

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. 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. 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,

另外，我很感激在我待过的一些公司里，有机会去参加 manager 培训——我觉得这在很多组织里还是太稀缺了。如果你在听这期节目，而你是一个组织的领导者、是公司的 C-suite 高管，请在你的 manager 身上多投入一些。而如果你现在正在找工作，请认真考虑你的 manager 会是谁，因为大概没有什么，比「这个人最终是谁」对你的幸福感影响更大了。再补充一点当下公司有多难——现在挖人的力度、砸给顶尖人才的 offer，你想象一下这有多糟心：好不容易找到一个优秀的 manager，把人培养成出色的 manager，然后他们转头就……

[1:18:40] Noam

only to lose them

到头来还是留不住。

[1:18:41] Lenny

only to lose them to, you know, the labs, people with infinite money. 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.

到头来被那些 labs、那些钱多到没边的人给挖走了。所以真的是难上加难。这正好可以过渡到我们最后一个 takeaway——它非常好地总结了当下大家的感受。

[1:18:53] Noam

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. Some researchers are sort of anti-wordcloud. I love I'm not gonna apologize for the word cloud.

对，现在是有史以来最疯狂的时候。我们请大家描述一下当下 tech 行业的状态，收到了成千上万条回答。这些基本都是开放式（open-ended）的回答，我们就把这些描述大致聚类成了这么一张 word cloud（词云）。我还是很喜欢 word cloud 的。有些研究者算是「反词云派」，但我就是喜欢——我才不会为用了词云而道歉。

[1:19:23] Lenny

No, this is amazing.

不，这个太棒了。

[1:19:24] Lenny

It's like such a clear. Look at this. Just look at this. This is exactly what it feels like.

它简直太清晰了。你看这个，你就看看这个。这完完全全就是现在那种感觉本身。

[1:19:28] Noam

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. Do you understand baseball? Does

对。我们看到了 change（变化），看到了 chaos（混乱），看到了 speed（速度），看到了 excitement（兴奋）、flux（动荡）、hype（炒作）、缺乏稳定、可能的泡沫，但同时也有疯狂的机会。一切都在演进，一切都不稳定，都伴随着代价。它更好了，它更糟了，它无比巨大，它令人困惑。所有这些揉在一起，构成了一个比以往任何时候都更混乱的行业。呃，我对棒球一窍不通，也可能那是板球——但我们收到了这么一条引言。你懂棒球吗？

[1:20:08] Lenny

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.

希望正在看的观众能听懂这些说法。我们收到这样一条留言:「我们正处在一场巨变的第二局,没人知道它会如何收场,你能做的就是一次次上场挥棒。」——这是板球里的说法,还是棒球?

[1:20:23] Noam

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.

是棒球。我也说不好到底是第几局,我甚至不确定板球里有没有「局」这个概念,但这肯定是棒球,至少放到棒球里说是通的。

[1:20:30] Lenny

Yeah. Basically, it's just saying keep trying. Just keep taking shots. Shots on goal. A lot of metaphors.

对。说白了就是让你别停下,继续挥棒、继续射门。一堆比喻。

[1:20:36] Noam

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. 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 when I saw these data. It's pretty wild how equally uh uh divided we are.

对,金句真的太多了。我在这儿还看到另一条,也特别精彩:「科技圈现在很躁狂。一半人跟现实脱节,死抱着潮流、被过度炒作裹挟;另一半人则被前一半人搞得精疲力竭。」——这是一位资深 PM 写的。嗯,真的很有意思。整体看下来,你会发现这种两极分化特别夸张:我们做情绪分析时,用到的词里 37% 是正面的,37% 是负面的,剩下大约 26% 是中性的。基本上是对半开。我们看到的是同一件事,但一半人觉得振奋,另一半人觉得恐惧。说实话,第一次看到这组数据时我挺震惊的——我们分裂得如此均等,真的挺离谱。

[1:21:42] Lenny

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。我记得你前面用过一句话——「现在这个状态,已经是往后最『正常』的时候了。」

[1:21:49] Noam

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.

我也说不准。嗯,有句话说「预言都是留给傻子的」,所以我不打算充当先知。不过,是的,我很怀疑从统计上看,还能比现在更『正常』、更常态化。所以,咱们就走着瞧吧。

[1:22:07] Lenny

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. 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. Uh, I don't know if that's a good rap, but

是啊。往大了说,我们此刻正身处历史之中。这种变化的量级、这种史无前例的程度……大家常拿工业革命来类比,这个类比是准确的。嗯,也许很疯狂,也许不算,但这恰恰是有意思的地方——能活在这样一个时代,多有意思。Elon 有个特别有意思的说法:如果我们此刻活着,眼看着就要在太空里建数据中心、AI 马上要聪明得堪比人脑了,那我们几乎可以肯定是活在一场模拟里。你想想,你恰好活在那个时刻的概率能有多大?嗯……不过这大概也还行吧,也许是某个更高的智能,正在模拟历史上最有意思的这段时期。我不知道这套说辞好不好,但……

[1:22:50] Noam

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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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? What does this tell us we should be doing if we can do anything to kind of move ourselves basically into a happier place?

听我说、听我说,我个人非常尊重 Elon。像 Elon 这样的人,选择把注意力放在宇宙、放在浩瀚太空、放在支配宇宙的法则上,那是他们的关注点。而我,至少从学术训练上说是个心理学家,因为我的关注点一直都在人身上。如果要我用一句话给这项研究收尾,我会说:拥有最先进的 AI、能用上世界上最好的模型,并不能决定你的组织会不会成功。我们得记住,所有这一切的底层,都是人。我们每个人都正在经历此生最剧烈的一场变革,而正是「人」,在同时感受着兴奋、疲惫、希望和恐惧——常常是这些情绪一股脑全涌上来。我们都在参与塑造、构建这个未来,并希望几年之后,这个未来里还有我们的一席之地。所以我时时刻刻都记着这一点:是人在推动这些创新,是一群了不起的人在打造这些技术。我的关注点永远都会在人身上。我也希望,如果你正在看这期节目,请照顾好自己,出门走走、接接地气(touch grass),花点时间想想你在职业上到底想要什么。再提醒一次:体会到各种各样的情绪都很正常,你只管用任何对你有用的方式,熬过科技行业这段疯狂的时期。那么——顺着这个话头往下说,你花了大量时间去琢磨这些结果,以及人们拿到这些数据后到底能做点什么。因为光是报告「大家现在是什么感受」是一回事——好,知道了,那然后呢?大家该怎么做?所以报告最后有非常重要的一节,咱们值得花点时间聊聊,就是:我们接下来往哪走?如果真能做点什么让自己过得更舒坦一些,这些结果告诉我们该做些什么?

[1:25:38] Noam

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. 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? 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. 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 of uh you know, being positive about 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. 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. 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.

那就先从「如果你是员工」说起——尤其是如果你是公司里的一名 IC(个人贡献者)。我们观察到,那些感觉自己被「放大」、被激发出能量的人,他们的做法其实是:在具体的任务、具体要交付的工作(jobs to be done)上做深,而不是想去当那个什么都干的多面手。我觉得,恰恰是那些想当多面手、或者太往「样样都沾」那个方向倾斜的人,最后会严重倦怠。所以我想稍微提醒大家,别太被那种叙事带跑——说什么「到这个阶段你必须成为多面手,什么都得干」,结果把自己岗位的核心部分完全丢在一边。我觉得那是个很糟糕的主意,而且从大家反馈的情况看,这么干至少不会让你感觉良好。另外,我也特别希望大家警惕这种「挤压」——活儿越来越多,钱还是那点。我们理应得到更好的对待。我们在文章里放了一个「倦怠自测」的链接,去测一下,看看自己在倦怠量表上处在什么位置。然后根据结果反思一下自己的状态,跟你的经理谈谈,重新界定你的工作范围,重新校准、和经理对齐你手头的活儿,确保自己没被这种挤压搞得对岗位失去积极性,也没被挤得没法在岗位上做出成绩。——在你往下捋这份清单之前,我先帮大家把框架彻底讲清楚,因为你基本上是分了两个「桶」:一类是基于这些结果、你作为员工能做的事,大概有五条建议;另一类是你作为公司能做的,也是五条左右。所以说得再明确点:第一条就是,挑几件你最想让 AI 帮上忙的事,在这几件上做深,而不是想把它铺得到处都是、让 AI 替你干所有事。挑几件你最兴奋的,然后往深里钻。第二条就是你刚说的,警惕那种「挤压」——留意自己是不是被越压越狠,然后去找经理谈:「嘿,我的职责范围扩大了,但薪酬这块什么都没变」,诸如此类。

[1:27:31] Noam

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. [snorts] Learn to manage up. That investment in that relationship will pay off greatly in terms of how you feel. 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. 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. Um it's 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. 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?

完全正确。说到经理——第三点就是,在「你对工作的感受」这件事上,你的经理显然比几乎任何其他因素都重要。要守护好这段关系、在这段关系上投入,和你的经理建立起顺畅的沟通渠道。[轻笑]学会向上管理。你在这段关系上的投入,会在「你的感受」上给你带来巨大回报。除此之外,首先,如果你想试试去小公司干、或者自己创业,那显然是有一些好处的,值得考虑一下。另外,如果你还处在职业早期,觉得梯子的横档正在一根根消失、往上爬越来越难——我是导师制的坚定信仰者,我特别看重导师的价值。优质的师徒关系,至今仍然是极其有效的东西。去找那些愿意投入来培养你的团队、经理和人。这在今天这个时代尤其宝贵。以上就是给员工的建议。那么,如果你是带团队的、是带公司的,那就像我们前面说的:投资你的经理们。这大概是你花得最值的一笔钱。让我挺难过的是,我们样本里——可能整个科技行业也一样——只有四分之一的人认为自己的经理「非常高效」。在我看来这是个天大的警讯,是科技行业一个严重的问题。所以,如果你想改善倦怠、想提升员工的愉悦感、想在 AI 实验室开出的那些疯狂 offer 满天飞的情况下留住人,你就必须投资你的经理。除此之外,也要管好那种「挤压」。大家能感觉到 AI 在以一些不可持续的方式抬高标准,所以你得摸索出合理的期望水平和合理的产出水平。别让梯子最底下那一档烂掉——务必为入门级(entry-level)的人做好该做的,让他们能往上走,因为这些职业早期的人,很可能也是你能找到的最「AI 原生」的一批人。

[1:30:02] Noam

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 [snorts] 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. We are clearly not experiencing this technology in the same way.

他们用起这些技术来觉得特别自然,某种程度上比那些已经太习惯旧范式的人还要自然。所以……嗯,还有一点,这么说有点私心[轻笑]:我希望管理者能多留意一下设计、研究这些岗位,以及其他那些感受比别的岗位更负面的角色。还要记住,AI 这项技术在托举一部分人的同时,也在动摇另一部分人。这一点你真的必须重视。我们显然并没有在以同一种方式经历这项技术。

[1:30:47] Lenny

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? I've like I've definitely gone through periods of burnout and wasn't aware that 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

总结得太棒了。我想特别再强调一下你刚提到的那个倦怠自测。我们会在节目说明(show notes)里放链接。我知道有人会觉得「这听着挺傻的,我干嘛要去测」——但我自己是真的经历过几段倦怠期,当时甚至没意识到那就是倦怠。所以它特别有用:让你一下子「哇,原来我现在这种感觉是不正常的」;一旦你知道「你此刻其实倦怠得很严重」,你就能决定拿这个信息去做点什么——往往是去找教练聊聊、找经理聊聊、条件允许的话就休息一段时间。但光是「知道」这件事本身,其实就非常有力量。而且他基于真正的科学和研究,做了一个特别棒的测试,我们会把链接放给大家。

[1:31:28] Noam

100%.

百分之百同意。

[1:31:29] Noam

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. 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? There's one interesting phenomenon that I wanted to 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. 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. 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

太好了。那……嗯,还有没有什么我们没聊到的?还有什么你想留给大家的话?我们已经聊了很多,我都不确定还剩下什么了。我们当然会把报告链接放出来,让大家能深入去看。我们还打算基于这次对话、以及评论区里冒出来的东西,再做一期跟进——因为这里面信息量太大了,有不少挺吓人的东西,也有一些乐观的东西。我们没法对每件事都给出答案,但打算做一期跟进,把「冒出来的问题」摆出来,看看能不能找到一些答案。除此之外,你还有什么想分享的吗?——有一个挺有意思的现象我想提一下。我们开始看到一种「AI 内疚」,尤其是在职业早期的人当中——他们会觉得,借助这项技术某种意义上有点像「作弊」,而这种内疚感会随着资历上升而减弱。特别是,我们看到做产品营销(product marketing)、以及做数据与分析(data and analytics)的人——这两类前面也在好几个地方冒出来过——内疚感最强。这其实和那个众所周知、也被充分研究过的「冒充者现象」(imposter phenomenon)有关,对吧?就是「我不够好」;明明很能干的人,却觉得自己的成功不真正属于自己,而是别人的功劳——只不过这一次,我们把它归到了 AI、归到了一项技术头上,而不是别人。我想对所有可能正被这种内疚困扰的人说:AI 是一项了不起的技术,去用它、去学会怎么用它。我不觉得它会消失。今天的它,已经是它往后最差的样子了,只会越来越好。所以完全没理由为用它而内疚,恰恰相反。嗯……我觉得说到底,我们其实一直都在用它。所以——

[1:33:32] Lenny

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. 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.

那作为收尾,我就想单纯表达一下对你的欣赏。你在这上面做的工作真的了不起,还有我们一起做过的这么多轮调查。这对你来说,某种程度上只是你顺手跟我一起搞的一件「副业」,可它却是这个领域里最大的调查之一——也许就是最大的——你还要做分析、还要写,而且写得那么漂亮。所以,我觉得这是一份非常独特、非常特别的报告,我很感激你愿意和我一起做这件事。我真的对这一切的走向、以及我们在为大家做的事,感到特别开心。

[1:34:04] Noam

Thank you so so much.

太谢谢你了,真的。

[1:34:05] Lenny

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?

那么,Noam,如果大家想联系你、或者有后续问题,可以在网上哪里找到你?听众又能怎样帮到你?

[1:34:13] Noam

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.

嗯,找我最好的地方是 LinkedIn。欢迎任何想连接的人在 LinkedIn 上加我,或者在 Lenny 的社群里、在你们的 Slack 里找我。我常在那儿待着,也一直很乐意和社群里的人聊。所以,来 LinkedIn 或 Slack 上找我就好,这两个最合适。

[1:34:30] Lenny

How can listeners be useful to you? No one.

听众能怎样帮到你呢?Noam,你说——

[1:34:32] Noam

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. 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. 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. We'd love to see you in our next research project.

如果你正在看这期节目,我想传达的是:我真心希望这项研究对你有帮助;而比什么都更重要的是,我希望你能考虑参与我们未来的研究项目。Lenny,我真的特别高兴我们能一起做这些事。我想给所有正在看的人一个机会,去更了解科技行业正在发生什么、你可以如何把工作做得更好、如何对自己的工作感觉更好,以及这中间的种种。我们打算继续做下去——既有针对社群的快速小调查,也有更深入、更长篇的问卷、访谈,各种形式都有。所以,如果你收到关于某个研究项目的消息、邮件或 Slack,请一定参与。我们非常想听到你的声音、你的视角,再把这些反馈给整个社群。希望这能让我们都把工作做得更好,也对自己的工作感觉更好。因为我真心希望——尽管这次聊的很多内容都有点沉重、甚至偏负面——但 Lenny,我和你一样,也是个永远的乐观主义者,是个「技术乐观主义者」(techno-optimist)。我相信这一切正在往好的方向走,我也想确保我们把这份乐观如实地捕捉下来。所以,真的,请参与进来。我们非常期待在下一个研究项目里见到你。

[1:36:00] Lenny

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. See you in the next episode.

太好了。那么就到这里。Noam,非常感谢你来上节目。太感谢了。也非常感谢各位的收听。如果你觉得这期有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的任何播客 App 上订阅本节目。另外也请考虑给我们评个分或留个评论,这能真正帮到其他听众发现这档节目。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 上找到所有往期节目、或了解更多关于本节目的信息。下期见。