Significant burnout jumped from 44.7% to 54.7% year over year, while career optimism fell from 54.8% to 48.7%, despite AI capabilities improving.

20:12because 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

20:46than 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.

21:19Uh pretty worrisome. the the rise to like a massive jump like over 10% increase in burnout in just in a year. >> 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

21:52don'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