Asking for middle management.

Without alcohol as a crutch I'm forced to confront the fact that I just can't do everything. So, how do I support all these people at work through burn out when I am fuckin' crispy -- like I don't always care if I live or die, much less if this project succeeds. Also, AI is a sham and fuck the oligarchs for foisting this shit on us.

7/2/2025 10:09:18 AM

Move out of middle management and be the best individual contributor you can be. Try to set yourself on a financial path such that no fucks are required. The only power an employer has over you is the perceived ongoing need for a regular paycheck, so if you can build up an emergency cushion, it's very liberating and you don't have to put up with as much crap or act like an exited team player on every new initiative that comes down from above.

7/2/2025 10:14:02 AM

you have one life

7/2/2025 10:17:23 AM

I'm pretty passionate about my job and good at it, too. I don't think I'd be any happier going back to IC. Things were going pretty damn well until the entire world fell for the AI grift. None of these "AI powered" projects are worth a shit and they don't get me excited to come to work. I get fired up by teaching people and helping them learn. AI is just training them to forget how to learn. It's the antithesis of what I value.

Part of my job right now, I think, is to prepare upper management to experience "disappointment." It's probably new to them so I'm worried they will lash out and punish people for their pet robots' failures. They seem to have all joined a cult.

7/2/2025 10:21:39 AM

Also, I probably need to keep this job so I can meet the qualifications needed to get a visa to flee the country when the gestapo starts putting shitposters into concentration camps. You may think I'm joking, but I'm not. I'm looking at digital nomad visas.

7/2/2025 10:25:07 AM

like The Coz and emnsk both said, you have some options.

The first, though, is take care of yourself. If you're feeling burned out, trying to push through it won't make anything easier or better.

If you don't already have one, I recommend finding a career coach. It sounds like a gimmick, why pay someone else to bitch about work, we all hate it, etc etc. - but the reality is they're like business therapists. Ever since I got one, my perspective on work in general has changed. My first coach helped me work out how, and under what conditions, I should quit my job last year. My new boss was setting me up to fail so that she could push her own agenda. Without that outside clarity, I probably would have had a mental breakdown. I ended up quitting and taking 6 months off to figure out what was next. It's just a job, not who you are as a person, so do as much work as you can to detach yourself from whatever flavor of the month your execs have wound themselves up over this quarter.

The other thing I would recommend is getting out there and networking - in person, but also on LinkedIn. Again, it seems corny, but the proximity to other people in your field with similar stories helps you feel less alone. Even if you're not actively trying to find a new role, there's a real advantage to being able to "talk shop" with people who do the same thing you do and might have some different perspectives. Plus, it opens up tons of possibilities if you do decide you need to get out of that place, because people who do what you do now know you and know you know your stuff, and will hit you up unprompted with opportunities. Hell, that's happened to me several times from TWW folks over the years.


TL;DR

Getchu a career coach. Make a plan. Do some networking. Take care of yourself.

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7/2/2025 10:42:37 AM

Throw a pizza party duh

Also AI is not entirely a sham…

7/2/2025 10:48:58 AM

yeah I know there's some things AI is good at and even some ways we could take advantage of it
but this doesn't feel like it's about real results - this feels performative - people don't seem to care about internal efficiencies, what they seem to want is some sexy, customer-facing AI experience that completely changes how users learn technology and the AI tech doesn't seem up for the job, just yet

giving me 90 days to show how I'm utilizing some half baked (or completely unbaked) shit doesn't seem reasonable it seems like some DOGE nonsense -- I may as well start emailing them 5 things I did this week

I really like the suggestion of finding a career coach. The description of them as a "business therapist" is very appealing. The stress of my job sometimes spills into the stress of all other parts of my life. Having a therapist to help me manage that could be very helpful. Also, heard on the networking aspect. Having someone to bitch to could be very helpful. I don't bitch to my direct reports and I don't have a lot of peers to complain to.

7/2/2025 11:05:38 AM

Quote :

"but this doesn't feel like it's about real results - this feels performative - people don't seem to care about internal efficiencies, what they seem to want is some sexy, customer-facing AI experience that completely changes how users learn technology and the AI tech doesn't seem up for the job, just yet giving me 90 days to show how I'm utilizing some half baked (or completely unbaked) shit doesn't seem reasonable it seems like some DOGE nonsense -- I may as well start emailing them 5 things I did this week"

this seems like something you might be able to tackle with your management peers - standard consolidate bets and focus on value stuff.

I can tell you from what I've heard talking to a lot of people at orgs of various sizes - folks are running off to do their own skunkworks shit and there's a million different initiatives pulling in a million different directions and that seems to scale by orders of magnitude based on the size of your company. Guaranteed, your peers are also frazzled, so partner up with them and find out what the overlaps are so that you can stop overworking yourself and your team to pursue something that pretty much everyone knows is a waste of time. This isn't just applicable to AI stuff, honestly, it's just regular business advice. AI has just poured gasoline on the fire because there's a tremendous hype cycle for shit that's mostly just GPT wrappers applied to bullshit work to begin with. God forbid I'm posting a fucking Gartner link, but here: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-06-25-gartner-predicts-over-40-percent-of-agentic-ai-projects-will-be-canceled-by-end-of-2027 - use this to ground your thinking. Your end customers likely don't give a shit about AI features at all. They just want whatever you sell them to work. AI for AI's sake in your end product is just typical keeping up with the Joneses competitor envy bullshit. Find some internal thing with peers and say "what if we added some AI to it" and set an easily measured KPI to it and bring it back to your execs. Hell, get a marketer involved and they can spin that into gold of how it makes shit better for your customers.

7/2/2025 11:47:00 AM

Snewf, where do you live? Do you work remotely or in-person? Like kiljadn said, the best thing you could probably do is get together with some like minded people just to blow off steam and have people to bounce ideas off of. There are always many more people like you out there, you just need to find them

7/2/2025 12:29:40 PM

Raleigh. I'm hybrid but I mostly work remote because my team is totally remote.

^^ I am the marketer. I can't spin straw into gold, though.

[Edited on July 2, 2025 at 12:32 PM. Reason : - ]

7/2/2025 12:30:57 PM

Is there a difference between a sales engineer and a marketer (in the tech space)?

[Edited on July 2, 2025 at 12:43 PM. Reason : 1]

7/2/2025 12:43:25 PM

Is there a difference between an engineer and a marketer?

Yes.

7/2/2025 1:16:35 PM

Quote :

"^^ I am the marketer. I can't spin straw into gold, though."

ahhh shit

vaya con dios mijo, lo siento

7/2/2025 1:19:06 PM

what we have been working on FOR YEARS is a system for recommending the next best learning content (blogs, demos, docs, trials, etc) for people based on what we know about them and what they are trying to accomplish -- this involves standardizing dozens of disparate systems and platforms

but what our bosses want in 90 days is some kind of customer experience based on some vague ideas of AI without any standardization or platform consolidation and, in order to deliver anything that even remotely looks like that, we're going to have to mechanical turk the whole thing which is fitting for AI, I guess -- to deliver a lie

in the past they haven't prioritized the foundational work necessary to get these kinds of experiences and it still feels like they aren't prioritizing this work - just setting ultimatums

I think they're going to be disappointed
I already am

7/2/2025 3:26:53 PM

Something I learned the hard way in my last role as a "near-exec" is that most execs generally:

1. don't know how anything works, don't care to learn, and don't care if it's actually quality
2. have their own agendas for why they push for what they do - it's generally "number go up?" and you get to pick whatever the number of the quarter is - funding, EBITDA, ARR/MRR, GRR... whatever


I hate the whole metrics-chasing KPI OKR three letter bullshit game, but maybe you can back your way into something if you at least know what they're looking to dazzle whoever they report to with

7/2/2025 4:35:30 PM

this is excellent advice - and, yeah, I think I can

I'm actually involved in writing the OKRs for at least 2 large groups

I am nearly positive that I can massage some existing work into meeting these goals and being worth bragging about - but I still resent that I have to play that game when I'm so busy like maximizing shareholder value and shit




[Edited on July 2, 2025 at 5:25 PM. Reason : thanks]

7/2/2025 5:24:20 PM