The 2027 AI Burnout Wave is Coming. It Will Make 2023 Look Like a Vacation. But We Can’t Slow Down.

The way we work has already radically changed — and it’s accelerating. The competitive advantages feel limitless.And that’s exactly why the real burnout is still coming. 

Excerpt: "2022-2023 for many was the “Great SaaS Burnout”. First IPOs stopped in December 2021.  Then stock prices fell fast in early 2022, followed by growth rates plummeting later in the year.  Layoffs swept tech companies big and small, often for the very first time ever. Founders felt the crushing weight of building in a suddenly much tougher environment.  The GTM playbooks stopped working as well, and sometimes, at all.  Everything was just so much harder than 2H’20-2021.

That exhaustion felt brutal at the time. You saw it all over LinkedIn.  Folks quitting to be fractional execs, manage real estate, take a break, and more. But here’s the thing: it was a slow, grinding, perhaps demoralizing burnout.  But mostly, things were the same.  The same products, the same motions, the same game.  Just a harder version of it.  Difficulty level turned up, but the same game.

What we’re experiencing now in the AI Age is completely different. We’re all working far, far harder than we ever did during those post-boom years – and we’re absolutely deep into it. The capabilities of AI coding, AI agents, AI support, etc. are intoxicating. We’re all living in ChatGPT now in a way we couldn’t even imagine in 2023.  The way we work has already radically changed — and it’s accelerating. The competitive advantages feel limitless.

And that’s exactly why the real burnout is still coming.  And what can do you — if you want to keep up? It is what it is. 

You have to keep up. 

Or step aside."