People write a lot about burnout and how to get over it, but they don't write about what happens when they face the same burnout for the 5th time, with the periods between decreasing.

Eventually you face a hard truth: I just don't love this any more.

AI seems to be accelerating this feeling, at least with many of my friends. There is a sense of malaise and frustration at what appears to be the slow erosion of intentional care and effort in our industry. Just let the AI do it, while you ... do other stuff.

I'm not quite there yet. I believe you can use AI as a virtual assistant that does the stuff that actually causes burnout in the first place. Creating and updating READMEs, ensuring the code on your docs is correct, writing a script that compiles markdown to a PDF - things like that.

Or you might end up with a lead who doesn't like AI at all.

Tedium, Incorporated

I spent the last 30 days at a clownshow startup, trying to help get their DevRel group get off the ground. There was an option for going full time, but at the end of the 30 days it was pretty clear the fit wasn't right for either of us. The novelty of having a fresh WTF every morning was wearing thin; there simply was no helping here.

To be honest, I never thought of myself as a "Developer Relations" type of person anyway, but it was my friend Seth Juarez who convinced me otherwise:

That's a compliment for someone who loves to write and make content for people, and it hit me that he was right: after 15 years or so of writing, podcasting, and video production, I've gotten pretty good at it. Maybe I should pivot?

Seth said that to me 7 years ago when I rejoined Microsoft, taking on the title of "Developer Advocate" for the first time. It was a weird gig, if I'm honest, but Seth was right: helping developers improve their lives is something I care about deeply, and I don't think I'll ever burnout on that.

That said, the company you're working for can change that in a heartbeat.

This Is Your Last Day

That's how the Zoom started at the end of my month at the clownshow startup. I knew it was coming as we had talked openly about it. They had given me a list of tasks to do, and I had offered my opinion that these tasks could be handled by Claude Sonnet easily. I would rather do the thing they hired me to do.

Normally I would just have said "sure I'll get right on it", but this time I just couldn't. I simply didn't care. I don't mind writing docs and I don't mind proofreading, but that's not why you hire me. You hire me to do the thing I wrote about in the opening section of this email: reach your developers and help them improve their lives using your toolset.

It's really not complicated.

In fact, I said exactly that earlier in the week, wondering if the 30 day cliff could be avoided:

At that moment I had been handed a mess of tasks that I knew an LLM could knock out in short order, and, for some reason, perhaps ego, the lead I was working with insisted that it was too detailed for an LLM. I politely (yes, I maintained professionalism here, I promise) told him that I knew how to AI pretty well, and he might be surprised at the results.

He said no and I did what I do, which is to ignore mediocrity altogether and do the job that needs doing. It took me 15 minutes to finish the first draft and another 30 minutes to review the details to be reasonably sure that I wasn't making a mess.

When doing work like this with an LLM, you get to a point where the mistakes are indistinguishable from ones you would make anyway. Spelling issues, grammar, missed titles, and so on.

I went back to the lead and let them know the tasks were ready for review, and could I please get back to outlining our first TickTock video and awareness campaign?

That's when I knew Friday would be my last day, which was fine. As Pooh said:

Ego and AI. What a fun mix.

Fighting For What You Love

I settled for this job because I needed a job, which is a good reason to settle. The work sounded fine, and the people seemed nice enough, but nothing about it really drew me in. Nothing made me actually care.

Now you could look at that statement and declare me entitled, privileged, and an ungrateful ass and that I should feel lucky to have a job (don't worry, I did the work for you and said that to myself daily).

You could also look at that statement and think I settled for something mediocre out of fear, so of course it wasn't going to work out. I did the company a disservice for taking the job in the first place - if I wanted something, go get it!

Welcome to the daily battle in my brain. In one corner, there's the ghost of my dad: stoic, hard-working depression baby that ate cream of mushroom soup with peas, on toast, regularly, until the day he died.

In the other corner is my mom, who never settles for anything. She lived a rich, long life and defined her own reality. It didn't matter what other people thought and, yes, it often drove my brothers and me out of our heads.

I suppose the point of all of this is that I am once again, semi-jobless and trying to figure out what's next. I'm still creating workshops and courses, and with a little effort and a ton of risk, I could be my own boss and strike out on my own again.

Or I could play it reasonably safe and try to find another job at a company that may, or may not, be a complete clownshow. Even if I did find something that was interesting and fun, it's entirely likely I would get laid off in the next 3-5 years anyway.

See what I mean about malaise? It's so easy to let it in when you don't feel a sense of control.

But, as my new friend said to me when I told her I got fired:

She's a keeper, I think.

What would you do? We're only given one life and it's up to each of us to make the most of it. That said, is it reasonable to try and find that much fulfillment from a job? Isn't that what friends, family, and F1 are all about?

I really am curious about your thoughts on this, so if you're motivated, hit reply and let me know. I read every single reply!

Thanks for reading,

Rob

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