Some of you may have noticed I disappeared a bit from the community over the last couple of weeks. Well, first of all, I've been on holiday. I was travelling through Iceland, admiring its breathtaking landscapes, enjoying nature (I saw whales, reindeer, and puffins!), trying local food, and bathing in hot lagoons.
During this road trip, I caught myself thinking that I did not want to go back. That maybe I would feel much more satisfied if I just stayed there and lived a simple life, herding sheep and admiring landscapes that look like the set of The Lord of the Rings, maybe doing some artwork in my spare time.
Since coming back, I've had this feeling that I do not fit in anymore. That the work I'm coming back to is not the work I used to love. Instead, I'm coming back to the work I started to hate; to the tasks I do not want to touch and that do not have anything in common with what I used to do.
Burnout in the age of AI
I've seen many articles about burnout since I joined the DEV community, and I've always been aware of the problem. I thought I was doing a pretty good job keeping a healthy work-life balance. But I think AI has introduced a completely different kind of burnout that I wasn't prepared for.
I discovered that I am exhausted by the amount of low-effort content around me. Most of what I read now feels generated at the lowest possible cost, barely reviewed, and nowhere near the quality I used to expect.
I don't think I'm tired of AI itself. I'm tired of how quickly we've started accepting "good enough" instead of craftsmanship. And how we've started prioritising the chase for AI tools, putting AI everywhere, while forgetting that we are creating products for humans, not just generating work for the sake of working.
I miss the times when work felt real; when work was something authentic and tangible; when I had to go to an engineer colleague and work together on documentation, to grasp the point of how the feature works and explain it in plain language to the audience. I want to feel that someone still really cares about the content before publishing it, not just generates it to tick off the Definition of Done.
Redefining myself
Lately, I've been asking myself whether I still enjoy technical writing, or whether I just miss a version of it that no longer exists.
I used to architect documentation structures, build documentation from scratch, think about information architecture, and carefully review every change to make sure it helped people achieve what they came for.
What I enjoyed the most wasn't simply writing documentation. It was solving problems. Finding better ways to organise information. Cleaning up messy structures. Making documentation easier to navigate.
Now I'm supposed to work on an AI agent that writes documentation for us. Ironically, it pushes me even further away from the part of the job that I actually love. It's not that I dislike technology. I enjoy docs-as-code, information architecture, and working with technical systems. What doesn't align with my values is replacing thoughtful work with generated content that often feels disposable.
This makes me question myself.
Should I stay in this profession and hope things change? Is it technical writing itself that no longer fits me, or just my current environment? Would changing jobs help, or is this simply the direction our industry is heading?
Discussion
Have you experienced burnout yourself? Have you ever considered a total career change? Is there a way out of burnout? Or do you simply need to live through it and wait until things get better? Or maybe it's really time for me to move out to some desolate, godforsaken place in Iceland and herd sheep 🐑
Top comments (157)
Klaudia...
I guess this half year is the year of burn out.
I made promises to a good amount of people on my post about being behind and I will honor that in this comment.
I am so sorry that you are feeling this way. To be honest, I am feeling that as well mentioning "low-effort content around me. Most of what I read now feels generated at the lowest possible cost, barely reviewed, and nowhere near the quality I used to expect.". It's a sad reality, but rest asure @jess and @ben will release a solution for us. For right now, I am trying my best to reduce the amount of AI-Generated Articles, so that everyone is conformable to share their work with other people that feels human.
This is a reason I am taking initiative to use my Moderation to the fullest extent for the common good. We have hundreds of moderators on DEV and it feels like there is no work being done. Sure, makes sense they are busy and all, but I feel like having this kind of responsibility makes me feel like I need to take action. I am a type of person who would want to see something change. If I want to see change, I need to speak up, which I believe what you are doing right now is courageous of you to share your experience. We need more people speaking up about genuine experiences.
Keep doing what you do best. The only thing is that we have to adapt. Instead of using AI to replace, use AI as a hybrid. Find out ways that AI can help you speed up instead of relying. It might help.
Technical documentation, in my view, is based on if you can see what AI cannot. In fact, I believe we still need you. It's something I learn when contributing to Forem. AI only understands how to improve based on what is given, not what it can expand upon. For example, there was an article I read where it states "If you give AI a candle and you tell it to improve it. It will improve the lighting and the candle itself. However, it won't invent the light bulb". Outside the box thinking is CRITICAL and AI currently can't do that because it is trained on EXISTING knowledge. Otherwise, we would be at Mars by now lol.
I hope this makes sense. I am sorry that you felt burnt out and I will try my best to make DEV a great place for you. I would never let anyone feeling down like this and I am glad you shared your thoughts.
Also, for the disclaimer, feel free to remove it. I will make an exception to you. Besides, I don't send Sloan messages based on if the cover image is AI or not. It is more of content itself, which it doesn't seem to be the case. Either way, feel free to remove the disclaimer. I, as a Mod, pardon you :)
Hope you feel better. I am here if you want to speak to me about anything. You are chosen as a DEVenger for a reason. The great mind we ever know. Continue to show that :)
Aaaaaw, thank you, Francis! Your comments are always so supportive and wholesome 💛 I really appreciate that!
I am actually pretty satisfied with the quality on DEV. Sure, it's visible that people use AI to structure their thoughts and proofread; however, I always feel there is a human with an original thought behind it. I also think you are doing a great job moderating and guarding the quality on DEV – it for sure takes some courage! ⚔️
As for technical writing, I do not think that all writers will be replaced by AI now. I am not afraid of losing my job to this. I'm rather disappointed with what my job is evolving into. Not sure if it's only in the company I work for, or in the industry in general.
Anyway, thank you very much for your kind words and support; much appreciated 🙏🏻
Wow,your blog is fantastic.Your reply is also useful for me. Thank you very much.
This post is relatable in so many ways. I can't believe it.
My last month was almost completely passive. I barely managed to put an article together. It wasn't because of burnout, it was mostly because I got promoted, and I had to adapt to a completely new reality in the shortest amount of time possible.
Then, when the dust finally settled, I was excited to get back to writing on DEV. I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. I opened my editor and...
Blank.
I had no idea how to structure my article. Something I used to do almost naturally suddenly felt unfamiliar. I hadn't felt that rusty in a long while. And to make things worse, my first two articles after that break didn't perform particularly well, which added a few more tons to my self-doubt. It was rough, I really thought I was done at some point.
I love Iceland, but I ain't gonna become a herd sheep anytime soon. I'd probably be terrible at it. 😄 So instead, I decided to get back into my rhythm again.
And I did. My last article received more than a hundred reactions.
Now, why am I boring you with a story you probably don't care about?
Because sometimes the things we love and the things we're good at can become boring, exhausting, and frustrating. At some point, it happens to everyone.
Ask people who herd sheep in Iceland. I'm pretty sure even they get tired of it sometimes. And some of them wish they had skills to write just like us. But just like us, they have good days and bad days. And those bad days shouldn't make us give up on the good ones.
Now, about the low-quality, AI-generated content...
I know. I hate it too!
Every other article sometimes feels synthetic. The same structure, the same phrases, the same empty information. We've all seen those articles where you finish reading and think: "Okay... but what did I actually learn?"
I love craftsmanship. I love puzzles. I love an organic writing style where you can recognize the person behind the words.
When someone reads my article, I want them to understand what kind of person I am, well at least on some level. My way of thinking, my personality, my perspective. If that disappears, I'd rather not write at all.
But...
This is actually an incredible opportunity for people who truly care about the craft.
Why?
Because if there are 200 articles that all look and sound the same, and then there's yours, an article saturated with your personality, your fingerprints visible in every paragraph, your way of thinking shining through, you'll stand out. BIG TIME!!!
And the best part? You'll actually enjoy creating it.
You'll be crafting something beautiful instead of just producing another piece of content.
Compare "November Rain" by Axl Rose (he took 10 years to write that song) with some random crappy hip-hop with no soul. I'd pick "November Rain" 10 out of 10 times.
So no, don't give up on writing.
You're doing just fine.
You're not falling behind.
You're just getting started! And that's the best part.
Thank you, Giorgi, for your comment. It really resonates with me on so many levels that it makes me feel understood; it also gave me a lot to think about. Thank you very much for that.
The part that especially hit me was:
You know, I haven't been thinking about it like this. I rather felt like a loser standing for something nobody gives a crap about anymore. But as you stated above:
I feel this way, too! I'd rather be called a "dinosaur" and be blamed for not using brand-new technologies and AI models, but I want the content I create to feel mine and make sure it's good before I publish it. Maybe I'm not even tired of AI itself, but of proving that using it everywhere possible is not the most clever idea.
BTW, I'd probably be terrible as a shepherd, too. Probably it's better for the sheep if I don't pursue this career 🐑
PS: I appreciate the "November Rain" reference!
"Probably it's better for the sheep if I don't pursue this career 🐑" - that cracked me up, good one 😄
I'm glad it resonated with you. I've had that same feeling too, like I'm somehow falling behind and can't keep up, but it isn't actually true.
If anything, you're being more authentic and original than the people who rely entirely on AI and wirte five articles a day.
And trust me, the vast majority of readers would rather read something that's thoughtful, original, and genuinely valuable than another article that just repeats the obvious and adds nothing new, nothing valuable.
And lastly, I'm one of your regular readers, so please keep doing what you're doing. 😁 You're way too good at that to stop writing.
Thank you for taking the time to write these words, Giorgi. I think it's easy to doubt yourself and lose direction, especially now in the times of AI, but your comment lifted my spirit. I appreciate it a lot! 💛
Let's rock on like in "November Rain" 🤘
That's awesome! Then I consider my job done. 😄
BTW, I was just listening to "Nightrain".
Great comment - the one about even sheep herders in Iceland sometimes becoming tired of their job, that gave me a chuckle :-)
Should I quit or just live through it? people who are fine don't ask this question I don't have the answer. But living through it usually means surviving and surviving isn't the same as living.
One thing helped: asking what do I need right now? instead of should I quit? The answer is different for everyone. But you're not alone. ❤️
Thank you, Harsh; that is very comforting 💛
This question will stay with me for a while. Lately, I feel like I’ve been doing many things that go against myself and don’t really align with my values. This could be a big part of why I feel so drained recently.
Since I know you’ve also been struggling lately, let me say this again: I hope you find your way back to a job that feels right for you, too.
Klaudia doing things that go against myself that's the real drain. Not the work. The misalignment I hope you find what feels right. And I hope I do too.
One day at a time. 💛
I have been extremely burnt out in the past. I still get a bit burned out from time to time, but I've worked through it. A combination of habits to mitigate burnout and avoiding situations which clearly and unabashedly lead to burnout.
I'm not trying to describe it as easy, but it is possible to get to a new place with this stuff.
Thank you for the comment, Ben.
Yeah, this is what I'm trying to do now. Any advice on what, in particular, worked for you?
Dev.to is such a great community - also for discussing this kind of topic, not just "tech" topics ...
honestly the 'live through it' option is worse than it sounds - most people who push past burnout come back smaller. took me two burnout cycles to stop treating rest as productivity debt. quitting the role isn't quitting IT
So, have you changed your role? Was it your way out of burnout?
didn't change the role but shifted what i was doing. less reactive PM, more building. that helped.
Hmm, so didn't you actually come back to what you enjoyed the most – building things? I've noticed the same pattern with some developer colleagues: after being promoted to PM, lead, or head roles, they started feeling burned out. Sooner or later, many of them wanted to go back to building things again.
I feel it's the same in my case, with the difference that I was forced to work on AI tooling, and I am simply missing creating docs, which gave me joy from the very beginning.
yeah, sort of - but building without any PM framing gets hollow fast for me. the real drain was reactive mode: status meetings, stakeholder chasing. swapped that for actual building work and the energy came back. the PM side stayed, just the mix changed
So maybe a proper balance is the key. I will think about it and try to bring it to my team – that maybe instead of devoting 100% capacity to AI enablement, we should actually use it to improve the existing documentation.
Thank you a lot for your comments!
Documentation upgrades are a great entry point — visible wins, low risk, and it builds team confidence in AI before tackling messier workflows. Hope it lands well with your team.
I join to burn out feelings. I keep try to ride a AI waves, even earn some victory in copilot cli vibe code championship. So I spend that money into a real equipment a 1993 Mazda pickup which is give me a chanche for a second life to renovate a old adobe house next to the mountain but close enough to a big city where I am working. Work also have a lot of fustration: need to give back my macbookpro to replaced a old ( 6 years ) del window laptop with very worn out keyboard ... but I can live with that by
wls install ubuntuand using that machine as linux one. Now the new company idea is do not use copilot cli so I back to the good old solve by hand method. Maybe that is help my burning out process, maybe not.Iceland is beautifull!
Lucky you! I wish the AI bubble would crash soon and more companies would follow this trend 🤞🏻Hope you find your way out of burnout. Good luck!
This was such an honest read, Klaudia.
The Iceland part immediately caught my attention because it's actually one of the places I really want to travel someday. 😄 But what resonated even more was the feeling behind it, that moment where you realize you don't actually want to open your laptop again just yet. I've started looking forward to those moments myself. Not because I dislike building things, but because stepping away for a while reminds me there's a whole world outside our screens that's worth experiencing too.
I also found myself thinking about your point on craftsmanship. I don't think you're burned out because of AI, I think you're burned out because you care deeply about the quality of what you create. Those are two very different things. Wanting to solve problems thoughtfully instead of just generating something "good enough" has always come through in your writing.
One thing your article made me reflect on is how easy it is to confuse losing passion for a profession with losing passion for the way we're currently doing it. Reading this, it feels less like you've fallen out of love with technical writing and more like you've been pushed away from the parts of it that originally gave you joy, structuring information, making things clearer, and helping people understand.
Reading this also made me think about something I've been missing lately. A year ago I used to spend evenings making tiny, fun little tools just because an idea sounded exciting. Somewhere along the way I became so focused on work, responsibilities, and "useful" projects that I stopped making those things. Your post reminded me that sometimes burnout isn't just about working too much, it's about slowly drifting away from the kind of work that made you excited to open your laptop in the first place.
I really hope it's the environment that's changed rather than the passion itself, because the latter is much harder to replace.
And selfishly... I'd much rather keep reading your articles on DEV than hear you've become the world's happiest shepherd in Iceland hahaha... I'm sure the sheep will be happy with you as their shepherd too though
Thank you for the valuable comment, Aryan! You lifted my spirit and, as always, you found the perfect words 💛
I can totally recommend Iceland as a travel destination! The nature is simply amazing, changing gradually as you travel along road no. 1. You will see mountains, ocean, lava fields, volcanoes, beaches with black sand, glaciers, and vast grasslands where sheep and horses feed. I'm sure you will love it! It's insanely expensive, though 🥲
As for the burnout itself... yes, it's just as you wrote. Could be that the current place does not align with my values anymore (especially regarding the attitude towards "thoughtful vs. good enough"). Hopefully, this is way easier to change than the passion for the profession itself 🙂 I hope you come back to the little projects that give you joy as well 🌻
BTW, the sheep at the end are hilarious 😂
Thank you so much, Klaudia! 💛
You're making Iceland sound even more tempting now. 😭 I've wanted to visit for a long time, and honestly what you described is exactly why. I love places where the scenery changes every few hours instead of looking the same the whole trip. I'll definitely have to start saving though... "insanely expensive" seems to be the one thing everyone agrees on.... Ehehe.
Also... yes!! 😂 The sheep are from The Sheep Detective Movie, I watched it a few days ago and absolutely loved it. If you haven't seen it yet, I'd definitely recommend it.
yes.If you're not lazy. You just need to try something new. What's technical writting like? idk I think you could try disassembling computers, writing a program, or creating a game, write the shader. In short, change activity. Maybe burnout is just a sign that it's become routine? gg
Hi Ember! I was actually thinking that trying something new could be a solution. I’ve been looking into different job opportunities and found that there are now some new specialisations in technical writing, with AI tooling being only one of them.
Personally, I would be more interested in something closer to coding, such as documentation engineering: handling documentation end-to-end, from maintaining documentation portals to building and maintaining pipelines. Moving in this direction would be a nice challenge.
However, my team seems to be moving more towards AI tooling, which is something I don’t really see myself fitting into. Hopefully, I’ll be able to resolve this mismatch in my current role or find a new opportunity soon.
You always know you can join open source. We're waiting for you, and I think you'll find a project that interests you
Interesting, I was actually thinking of some contributions to Forem 😄 Maybe it;s not such a bad idea after all.
Klaudia, I kept coming back to what you said about craftsmanship. I think that's what I've always admired about your writing and your posts here. You care about creating something that's genuinely useful, and that always comes through.
I don't know what the right answer is, and it's easy for me to say this from the outside because I'm not in your shoes. I can only imagine how heavy all of this must feel.
I just hope you give yourself the time and space before making any big decisions. Sometimes burnout has a way of making us question things we normally love. Maybe it's the work, maybe it's the environment, or maybe it's something else entirely. I hope things become a little clearer with time.
One thing I realized while writing my own recent article is just how important it is to have people around us when we're going through difficult periods. So if you ever need someone to talk to, even if it's just to vent or talk things through, please remember you're not alone. I'm always happy to listen, and you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn.
I hope you're feeling a little better soon. This community wouldn't be the same without you 🧡
Awwww, thank you so much, Hema! 💛🥹
To be honest, I am shocked by the amount of support I got from the DEV community since writing this article. I wrote this post mostly as a kind of rant, to let go of something that had been uncomfortable for a long time, but I never imagined so many people could relate and simply care about other community members.
Thank you for simply being here, for understanding, and for making me feel seen 💛 This means a lot, especially in such times of doubt.
Due to the very nature of how generative AI works, technical writing becomes that first low hanging fruit when it comes to automation areas; especially in a world that is rapidly losing interest in story-telling and epiphanies, and becoming more 'pragmatic' to say the least. As you rightly said, 'good enough' has become the new normal, folks no longer seem to have that thirst for inner insight or contemplation.
It's probably wise to quit this field if it's your sole earning source and you professionally depend on it. Would you keep writing even when discouraged at each step with 'AI can do better' and similar remarks? Would you keep writing stuff even when there is no appreciation or encouragement - just like the Sun who keeps rising each morning on the Eastern horizon even as everyone is asleep and nobody is there to appreciate its grace? Probably not, unless you live for the craft itself rather than craft being just a means to an end.
Hi, thank you for the comment 👋🏻
You're asking some interesting questions...
TBH, being a technical writer has taught me not to count on any of these 😅 Of course, a lot depends on the environment, but documentation never gets as much glory as code. That never was the problem for me. I was just there doing my job and making sure the documentation was there – complete and clear – in case anyone needed it. And I want to keep it this way.
With that approach, you're bound to achieve success 🙌.
The trick is to rise above the level that gets saturated due to AI automation. AI is good at generating reference docs from code, but code only tells you what happened. It rarely tells you:
Another great opportunity area is interviewing engineers and converting them to stories. They will tell you about all the important decisions that never make it to the code. For example - Why do we use UUIDv7 instead of autoincrement IDs, why we chose sqlite-wasm instead of IndexedDb, etc.
Yes, and this is exactly the most interesting part of the job! 🙂 I hope we will not lose it to "I don't know why it's like that; AI did it".
At some point, I think that "I don't know why it's like that; AI did it" is bound to happen, especially in Enterprise IT projects where time to deliver is the only metric considered.
Among the top tech influencers today, almost everyone is on the "Let's vibe code everything" bandwagon at varying degrees and choices of their favorite LLMs. I'm yet to see one that says 'Let's use LLMs to just prototype some boilerplate code, not depend on them too much' (unless I missed someone).
So unless something drastically changes in future, the vibe coding trajectory is mostly set. Those using LLMs as mere 'boilerplate assistants' while keeping core workflows with themselves will probably form their small niche spaces - like there are COBOL programmers today!.
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