On AI and Burnout
I don't work directly on AI, but enough of my friends and colleagues do for me to be worried.
The vibes have shifted, and not just because of the advent of vibe coding. The AI industry is operating in perpetual crunch time, and that pressure is starting to bleed into the rest of the industry.
Disclaimer: the following comes from conversations I've had with dozens of my fellow engineers across the software industry. They do not reflect my direct experience.
Here are some anecdotes gathered over the past year, with the names of the people and companies omitted out of professional courtesy.
- At one large and prominent AI lab, virtually all code is now written by the company's models. Code review is nearly nonexistent, and the output of each model regularly goes directly into production after passing the tests that it wrote. Code quality is abysmal and worsening due to the lack of review and human oversight. The engineer who reported this to me left this company, leaving potentially tens of millions of dollars in unvested, illiquid stock on the table.
- At another large AI company, work culture has become "frenzied," to quote one distinguished engineer. Twelve hour days are the minimum; the company is never "off." Employees are encouraged to pace themselves and work at a sustainable pace, but missing an 11pm Slack message is problematic for one's career growth. The quoted engineer has since left for a company with more sustainable work-life balance: a large video streaming company with a reputation for having no work-life balance at all.
- One AI research organization had such a frenetic and excited work culture that a well-established, prestigious, mid-career engineer had to resign on doctor's orders after having a heart attack and being told that "working in AI may literally kill you." He loved the mission of the company and was so dedicated to it that it almost cost him his own life. He regretted having to leave, and now works for one of America's largest banks.
- A friend I've known for more than 20 years was set to get married recently. The man she was set to marry works at one of the world's largest tech companies, currently going through an insane AI push. The stress of his work, combined with the demands of wedding planning, caused them to delay the wedding. The delay eventually became infinite: they called off the wedding and ended their 8-year relationship. She moved on quickly, while he dove into his work more and has seen even more career success.
- A mentee of mine recently had a baby. Her husband works for a large AI company, working directly on systems related to model training and evaluation. The company treated his impending parental leave as a cause for celebration (as they should) but ratcheted up the intensity until the day the baby arrived. One weekend, he chose to prioritize preparing their nursery over getting work done, and gave his team a heads-up that he'd be unavailable for the weekend. He came in on Monday to find frustrated messages from his teammates and manager asking him why he chose to "take time off" (over the weekend) given that he already had parental leave scheduled so soon.
Now, the first answer here is "these people are getting paid almost seven figures for their time, of course their jobs are stressful." And sure, yes, money is one way to make this level of insane stress worthwhile. But no amount of money is worth your health, your life, or your relationships.
When I worked in video games more than a decade ago, I learned first-hand about the concept of crunch:
In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours.
In my time in video games, crunch was very normal. The office had barbecues on the roof because it was a good investment; dinner was cooked out there all the time, given that work regularly pushed 8, 9, 10pm every night. (We even got in trouble once for making too much smoke and disrupting the quantum computers being built downstairs.)
Crunch mode has consequences. People who crunch for too long burn out spectacularly; their inevitable burnout leave (or resignation) labels them as a "stress casualty." Crunch damages lives, breaks apart relationships, and hurts families. And when employees leave due to exhaustion, there's always someone ready to step in, thanks to the fact that there's a near-infinite supply for video game workers. (Every programmer who was ever into video games considers a career in the industry at one point.)
Thankfully, until now, this culture has been somewhat siloed to just the video game industry.
Not anymore, though. Everybody who works on anything related to AI is now permanently in crunch mode. The stress seems different, though. In games, you work until the game ships. In AI, you work until you automate yourself out of a job. You work until the employment ladder is pulled up behind you by your own creations.
The attitude is pretty clear: "Make your money now while you still can. This might be the end of our careers."
Like an astronaut getting spaghettified; stretched thin to the point of breaking, right before getting sucked up in to a black hole.
In this metaphor, the event horizon of a black hole seems analogous to Kurzweil's idea of a technological singularity. We don't know what's on the other side of an event horizon; but for folks working in software, it does seem like we're about to find out.
An Offer You Can't Refuse
I struggled to write much of this post due to the embarrassing amount of privilege that tech workers have - myself included. The tech industry rewards its workers to an extreme degree, so much so that anything even bordering on "complaining" about having a high-stress, high-reward job amounts to "champagne problems."
The truth, though, is that many (if not most) engineers would kill for the ability to work at a large AI company. The compensation and impact are insane - and, if you believe the hype - those companies may be the only refuge once AI automates away others' jobs. So the wager becomes:
- Join an AI company. Work 60-80 hour weeks until:
- You automate yourself (and everyone else) out of a job, or
- You set boundaries on how hard you work to avoid burning out, and get replaced by someone who doesn't, or
- You burn out in flames, to the extreme detriment of your personal life.
- Don't join an AI company, and watch as - if you believe the hype - your employability erodes due to the advancements in AI.
It's an offer that you're lucky to get, if you can - but which also feels like an impossible choice.
I hope I'm wrong here, but if you believe the hype about AI replacing lower- and middle-tenure software engineering work, it strongly looks like the era of work-life balance in software engineering jobs is quickly coming to an end. The zeitgeist is acting as if those fortunate enough to join AI companies should work themselves to the bone, while everybody else may not have jobs for much longer. I don't think that's going to happen, and those who buy into that narrative are trading their health and wellbeing for the pursuit of that goal.
Special thanks to Zameer Manji, Will Sackfield, Sebastian Ewert, and Justin Gage for reviewing drafts of this post.