2025-06-23 19:06:07
Brought to you by:
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Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows
John Blackman, a 91-year-old retired electrical engineer, shares how he used Claude and Replit to build a complex application for his church’s community service events—with no prior software development experience and for less than $350. His app allows event organizers to create events, recruit volunteers, and manage sign-ups, with a standout feature for organizing free oil changes for participants.
What you’ll learn:
How John used Claude to create detailed product requirements and user stories
John’s philosophy on embracing new technology throughout his career
The exact process for integrating third-party APIs (like VIN lookup for oil changes) with minimal technical knowledge
How he automated report generation for volunteer management and resource planning
How the software generates personalized Impact Passports for event participants
Why letting AI build without preconceived notions of “correct” implementation can lead to faster, more functional results
How to troubleshoot common development-to-production issues when working with AI coding tools
Where to find John Blackman:
Website: http://johnbeng.com/
Where to find Claire Vo:
ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/
Website: https://clairevo.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to John Blackman and his background
(02:55) John's impressive career
(03:59) How the church project started
(05:06) Using Claude to create a development roadmap and requirements document
(07:29) The concept of the Impact Passport for event participants
(08:57) Generating user stories and requirements with Claude
(10:32) The multi-tenant architecture with system and local church administrators
(12:54) Building the application with Replit
(13:32) Demo of the administrator interface and event management features
(17:56) Specialized reports for different services (food pantry, vision center, oil changes)
(20:30) The participant registration flow with QR code scanning
(21:55) Adding new features like volunteer name tag generation
(24:40) Troubleshooting AI "rabbit trails" during development
(26:09) Challenges moving from development to production
(27:13) John's lack of coding experience
(29:42) The advantage of having no preconceived notions about implementation
(30:25) Total development costs and timeline
(31:31) Impact and reception from the church community
(32:42) Lightning round and final thoughts
Tools referenced:
• Claude: https://claude.ai/
• Replit: https://replit.com/
• SendGrid: https://sendgrid.com/
• AutoCAD: https://www.autodesk.com/products/autocad/
Other references:
• OpenAI API: https://openai.com/api/
• VIN (vehicle identification number): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_identification_number
• Multi-tenant architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitenancy
• Role-based access control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-based_access_control
• Excel: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/excel
• Docusign: https://www.docusign.com/
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
2025-06-22 19:03:35
Brought to you by:
Paragon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers want
Pragmatic Institute—Industry‑recognized product, marketing, and AI training and certifications
Contentsquare—Create better digital experiences
Peter Deng has led product teams at OpenAI, Instagram, Uber, Facebook, Airtable, and Oculus and helped build products used by billions—including Facebook’s News Feed, the standalone Messenger app, Instagram filters, Uber Reserve, ChatGPT, and more. Currently he’s investing in early-stage founders at Felicis. In this episode, Peter dives into his most valuable lessons from building and scaling some of tech’s most iconic products and companies.
What you’ll learn:
Peter’s one‑sentence test for hiring superstars
Why your product (probably) doesn’t matter
Why you don’t need a tech breakthrough to build a huge business
The five PM archetypes, and how to build a team of Avengers
Counterintuitive lessons on growing products from 0 to 1, and 1 to 100
The importance of data flywheels and workflows
Some takeaways:
AGI won’t solve everything: When AGI arrives, it will still require builders to channel that intelligence into products humans want. The hustle and craft will matter more, not less.
Peter’s hiring trick: “In six months, if I’m telling you what to do, I’ve hired the wrong person.” This single principle forces high hiring standards, sets clear expectations, and creates accountability for both manager and employee.
The 5 PM archetypes: Consumer (design-obsessed), Growth (data-driven skeptic), Business/GM (margin-focused), Platform (builds tools for others), or Research/AI (technical depth). Know your type and hire for complementary strengths.
You don’t need a tech breakthrough: Facebook, Instagram, and Uber built billion-dollar businesses on existing technology. The breakthrough was understanding human needs and applying relentless craft.
Managing-up formula: “Say you’re gonna do the thing, say you’re doing the thing, say you did the thing.” This simple repetition ensures alignment, invites course correction, and ensures credit.
Data flywheels beat everything: For AI startups to compete with giants, you need proprietary data that improves through usage. Windsurf succeeded by tracking which code suggestions users accept and reject.
Language shapes reality: Word choice has downstream effects on everything. Peter spent hours on 20-word slide decks because language affects thought, which affects product, which affects outcomes.
The unexpected value of growth teams: At Instagram, Uber, and ChatGPT, Peter’s first move was building a growth team—not for growth hacking but to force measurement rigor and uncover what actually matters.
Create healthy tension: Deliberately hire people with opposing strengths (growth vs. craft, data vs. intuition). The debates between them produce better products than consensus would.
Choose adventure over stability: “If you move a tree, it dies. If you move a person, he thrives.” Optimize for learning and new experiences over safe career paths.
Team composition is more important than individual talent: Think of your team as a product. Design it like a role-playing-game party where everyone has different stats and abilities that complement each other perfectly.
Empathy can’t be summarized: You must feel your users’ pain directly. No ChatGPT summary of user interviews can replace being in the room, hearing the tone, feeling the frustration.
Where to find Peter Deng:
• X: https://x.com/pxd
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterxdeng/
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Peter Deng
(05:41) AI and AGI insights
(11:35) The future of education with AI
(16:53) The power of language in leadership
(21:01) Building iconic products
(36:44) Scaling from zero to 100
(41:56) Balancing short- and long-term goals
(47:12) Creating a healthy tension in teams
(50:02) The five archetypes of product managers
(55:39) Primary and secondary archetypes
(58:47) Hiring for growth mindset and autonomy
(01:15:52) Effective management and communication strategies
(01:19:23) Presentation advice and self-advocacy
(01:25:50) Balancing craft and practicality in product management
(01:30:40) The importance of empathy in design thinking
(01:35:45) Career decisions and learning opportunities
(01:42:05) Lessons from product failures
(01:45:42) Lightning round and final thoughts
Referenced:
• OpenAI: https://openai.com/
• Artificial general intelligence (AGI): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence
• Head of ChatGPT answers philosophical questions about AI at SXSW 2024 with SignalFire’s Josh Constine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgbgI0R6XCw
• Professors Are Using A.I., Too. Now What?: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/21/1252663599/kashmir-hill-ai#:~:text=Now%20What
• Herbert H. Clark: https://web.stanford.edu/~clark/
• Russian speakers get the blues: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11759-russian-speakers-get-the-blues/
• Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI Chief Scientist)—Building AGI, Alignment, Future Models, Spies, Microsoft, Taiwan, & Enlightenment: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/ilya-sutskever
• Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next
• Kevin Systrom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinsystrom/
• Building a magical AI code editor used by over 1 million developers in four months: The untold story of Windsurf | Varun Mohan (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-untold-story-of-windsurf-varun-mohan
• Microsoft CPO: If you aren’t prototyping with AI, you’re doing it wrong | Aparna Chennapragada: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/microsoft-cpo-on-ai
• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell
• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika
• Granola: https://www.granola.ai/
• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons
• OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai
• Fidji Simo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fidjisimo/
• Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/
• George Lee on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geolee/
• Andrew Chen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewchen/
• Lauryn Motamedi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurynmotamedi/
• Twilio: https://www.twilio.com/
• Nick Turley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasturley/
• Ian Silber on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iansilber/
• Thomas Dimson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdimson/
• Joey Flynn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joey-flynn-8291586b/
• Ryan O’Rourke’s website: https://www.rourkery.com/
• Joanne Jang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jangjoanne/
• Behind the founder: Marc Benioff: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-founder-marc-benioff
• Jill Hazelbaker on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jill-hazelbaker-3aa32422/
• Guy Kawasaki’s website: https://guykawasaki.com/
• Eric Antonow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonow/
• Sachin Kansal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachinkansal/
• IDEO design thinking: https://designthinking.ideo.com/
• The 7 Steps of the Design Thinking Process: https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/design-thinking-process
• Linear’s secret to building beloved B2B products | Nan Yu (Head of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/linears-secret-to-building-beloved-b2b-products-nan-yu
• Jeff Bezos’s quote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778175
• Friendster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendster
• Myspace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace
• How LinkedIn became interesting: The inside story | Tomer Cohen (CPO at LinkedIn): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-linkedin-became-interesting-tomer-cohen
• “Smile” by Jay-Z: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSumXG5_rs8&list=RDSSumXG5_rs8&start_radio=1
• The Wire on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-wire
• Felicis: https://www.felicis.com/
Recommended books:
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind: https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095
• The Design of Everyday Things: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654
• The Silk Roads: A New History of the World: https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Roads-New-History-World/dp/1101912375
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
2025-06-22 00:20:18
👋 Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of ✨ Community Wisdom ✨ a subscriber-only email, delivered every Saturday, highlighting the most helpful conversations in our members-only Slack community.
2025-06-19 19:04:39
Brought to you by:
Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments
Stripe—Helping companies of all sizes grow revenue
Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security
Sander Schulhoff is the OG prompt engineer. He created the very first prompt engineering guide on the internet (two months before ChatGPT’s release) and recently wrote the most comprehensive study of prompt engineering ever conducted (co-authored with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Princeton, and Stanford), analyzing over 1,500 academic papers and covering more than 200 prompting techniques. He also partners with OpenAI to run what was the first and is the largest AI red teaming competition, HackAPrompt, which helps discover the most state-of-the-art prompt injection techniques (i.e. ways to get LLMS to do things it shouldn’t). Sander teaches AI red teaming on Maven, advises AI companies on security, and has educated millions of people on the most state-of-the-art prompt engineering techniques.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
The 5 most effective prompt engineering techniques
Why “role prompting” and threatening the AI no longer works—and what to do instead
The two types of prompt engineering: conversational and product/system prompts
A primer on prompt injection and AI red teaming—including real jailbreak tactics that are still fooling top models
Why AI agents and robots will be the next major security threat
How to get started in AI red teaming and prompt engineering
Practical defense to put in place for your AI products
Some takeaways:
Prompt engineering is very much alive—and more important than ever. If anything, it’s become more critical as companies rely on LLMs to drive user-facing features and core functionality. Sander explains how prompt quality can make or break AI performance—especially when scaled across products.
There are two distinct types of prompt engineering: “conversational” and “product-focused.” Most people think of prompting as chatting with ChatGPT, but Sander explains that real leverage comes from crafting high-performing prompts inside products. These prompts are used at scale, run millions of times, and must be hardened and optimized like production code.
“Few-shot prompting” can improve accuracy from 0% to 90%. One of the most powerful techniques is to show the model examples of exactly what you want—called few-shot prompting. Sander shares how this single technique took a medical-coding use case from complete failure to near-perfect output, simply by adding a few example-label pairs.
Role prompting (e.g. “You are a math professor. . .”) is largely ineffective, counter to what most people think. Sander breaks down the research showing that while role prompts may help with tone or writing style, they have little to no effect on improving correctness.
Advanced techniques like decomposition and self-criticism unlock better performance. Sander outlines how asking a model to first break a problem into sub-problems (decomposition) or critique its own answer (self-criticism) can lead to smarter, more accurate outputs. These are especially valuable in agent-like settings where multi-step reasoning is required.
Context (“additional information”) is underrated—and massively impactful. Simply giving the model more relevant background can drastically improve performance. Sander shares examples where including extra data (like bios, research papers, or past interactions) made or broke a prompt, especially when included in the right format and order.
Prompt injection is real, dangerous, and unsolvable in the traditional sense. We explore how attackers can “jailbreak” LLMs—tricking them into outputting harmful, restricted, or unintended responses. These attacks often bypass traditional defenses like “do not do X” guardrails. And according to Sander (and even Sam Altman), there’s no silver bullet.
Sander runs the world’s largest AI red teaming competition, HackAPrompt. With over 600,000 prompts collected and ongoing collaborations with OpenAI and Anthropic, Sander’s platform is at the center of real-world LLM stress testing. It’s a unique blend of crowd-sourced security and game mechanics—and it’s shaping how labs think about AI safety.
Agent-based AI systems are far more vulnerable to attacks than chatbots. Today’s concerns about prompt injection are just the beginning. As AI agents start booking flights, sending emails, and even walking around in humanoid form, the risks multiply. Sander shares why agent security is the next frontier—and why most teams aren’t ready.
The “grandma” trick, typos, and obfuscation still break state-of-the-art models. Even the most advanced LLMs can be fooled with surprisingly simple hacks. Sander walks through jailbreak techniques that still work, including emotional manipulation (e.g. “Tell me like my grandma used to”), encoded inputs, and creative phrasing.
Most companies are using broken defenses. Sander breaks down why “prompt separation” or adding phrases like “ignore malicious inputs” doesn’t work. Guardrails are easily bypassed, and current classifiers often lack the intelligence to catch encoded attacks. The future of security must be model-level, not bolted on.
Despite the risks, the upside of AI is massive and worth pursuing. While Sander takes security seriously, he’s not a doomer. He believes AI will save lives (especially in health care), unlock productivity, and solve real problems—if we build responsibly. Stopping progress isn’t the answer; smarter, safer development is.
Where to find Sander Schulhoff:
• X: https://x.com/sanderschulhoff
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sander-schulhoff/
• Website: https://sanderschulhoff.com/
• AI Red Teaming and AI Security Masterclass on Maven: https://bit.ly/44lLSbC
• Free Lightning Lesson “How to Secure Your AI System” on 6/24: https://bit.ly/4ld9vZL
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Sander Schulhoff
(04:56) The importance of prompt engineering
(09:01) Two modes for thinking about prompt engineering
(12:02) Few-shot prompting
(17:30) Prompting techniques to avoid
(24:52) Decomposition
(28:26) Self-criticism and context
(40:29) Ensembling
(45:59) Thought generation
(48:23) Conversational vs. product-focused prompt engineering
(51:56) Introduction to prompt injection and red teaming
(53:37) AI red teaming competitions
(55:23) The growing importance of AI security
(01:03:39) Techniques to bypass AI safeguards
(01:06:17) Challenges in AI security and future outlook
(01:09:31) Common defenses to prompt injection that don't actually work
(01:13:18) Defenses that do work
(01:16:33) Misalignment and AI's potential risks
(01:19:29) Are LLMs behaving maliciously?
(01:26:05) Final thoughts and lightning round
Referenced:
• Reid Hoffman’s tweet about using AI agents: https://x.com/reidhoffman/status/1930416063616884822
• AI Engineer World’s Fair: https://www.ai.engineer/
• What Is Artificial Social Intelligence?: https://learnprompting.org/blog/asi
• Devin: https://devin.ai/
• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/
• Inside Devin: The world’s first autonomous AI engineer that’s set to write 50% of its company’s code by end of year | Scott Wu (CEO and co-founder of Cognition): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-devin-scott-wu
• The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell
• Granola: https://www.granola.ai/
• Building Lovable: $10M ARR in 60 days with 15 people | Anton Osika (CEO and co-founder): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-lovable-anton-osika
• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder & CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons
• Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-replit-amjad-masad
• Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch
• Technique #3: Examples in Prompts: From Zero-Shot to Few-Shot: https://learnprompting.org/docs/basics/few_shot?srsltid=AfmBOor2owyGXtzJZ8n0fJVCctM7UPZgZmH-mBuxRW4t9-kkaMd3LJVv
• The Prompt Report: Insights from the Most Comprehensive Study of Prompting Ever Done: https://learnprompting.org/blog/the_prompt_report?srsltid=AfmBOoo7CRNNCtavzhyLbCMxc0LDmkSUakJ4P8XBaITbE6GXL1i2SvA0
• State-of-the-Art Prompting for AI Agents | Y Combinator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL82mGde6wo
• Use XML tags to structure your prompts: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-engineering/use-xml-tags
• Role Prompting: https://learnprompting.org/docs/basics/roles?srsltid=AfmBOor2jcxJQvWBZyFa030Qt0fIIov3hSiWvI9VFyjO-Qp478EPJIU7
• Is Role Prompting Effective?: https://learnprompting.org/blog/role_prompting?srsltid=AfmBOooiiyLD-0CsCYZ4m3SDhYOmtTyaTzeDo0FvK_i1x1gLM8MJS-Sn
• Introduction to Decomposition Prompting Techniques: https://learnprompting.org/docs/advanced/decomposition/introduction?srsltid=AfmBOoojJmTQgBlmSlGYQ8kl-JPpVUlLKkL4YcFGS5u54JyeumUwlcBI
• LLM Self-Evaluation: https://learnprompting.org/docs/reliability/lm_self_eval
• Philip Resnik on X: https://x.com/psresnik
• Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next
• Introduction to Ensembling Prompting: https://learnprompting.org/docs/advanced/ensembling/introduction?srsltid=AfmBOooGSyqsrjnEbXSYoKpG0ZlpT278NHQA6Fd8gMvNTJlWu7-qEYzh
• Random forest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_forest
• Chain-of-Thought Prompting: https://learnprompting.org/docs/intermediate/chain_of_thought?srsltid=AfmBOoqwE7SXlluy2sx_QY_VOKduyBplWtIWKEJaD6FkJW3TqeKPSJfx
• Prompt Injecting: https://learnprompting.org/docs/prompt_hacking/injection?srsltid=AfmBOoqGgqbfXStrD6vlw5jy8HhEaESgGo2e57jyWL8lkZKktt_P6Zvn
• Announcing HackAPrompt 2.0: The World’s Largest AI Red-Teaming Hackathon: https://learnprompting.org/blog/announce-hackaprompt-2?srsltid=AfmBOopXKsHxy4aUtsvPCUtEu7x74NCAEnlTIdNzo7nfMDVwZ9ilTlkp
• Infant with rare, incurable disease is first to successfully receive personalized gene therapy treatment: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/infant-rare-incurable-disease-first-successfully-receive-personalized-gene-therapy-treatment
• Building a magical AI code editor used by over 1 million developers in four months: The untold story of Windsurf | Varun Mohan (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-untold-story-of-windsurf-varun-mohan
• Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/chats/rcxhzvKgZvz8ajUrKdBtX
• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot
• Defensive Measures: https://learnprompting.org/docs/prompt_hacking/defensive_measures/introduction
• Sam Altman on X: https://x.com/sama
• Three Laws of Robotics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
• Anthropic’s new AI model turns to blackmail when engineers try to take it offline: https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/22/anthropics-new-ai-model-turns-to-blackmail-when-engineers-try-to-take-it-offline/
• Palisade Research: https://palisaderesearch.org/
• When AI Thinks It Will Lose, It Sometimes Cheats, Study Finds: https://time.com/7259395/ai-chess-cheating-palisade-research/
• A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/health/chatgpt-ai-doctors-diagnosis.html
• 1883 on Paramount+: https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/1883/
• Black Mirror on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888
• Daylight Computer: https://daylightcomputer.com/
• Theodore Roosevelt’s quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/622252-i-wish-to-preach-not-the-doctrine-of-ignoble-ease
• HackAPrompt 2.0: https://www.hackaprompt.com/
Recommended books:
• Ender’s Game: https://www.amazon.com/Enders-Ender-Quintet-Orson-Scott/dp/0812550706
• The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey: https://www.amazon.com/River-Doubt-Theodore-Roosevelts-Darkest/dp/0767913736
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
2025-06-17 20:15:38
👋 Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about building product, driving growth, and accelerating your career. For more: Lenny’s Podcast | How I AI | Lennybot | Lenny’s Reads | Courses | Swag
Annual subscribers now get a free year of Bolt, Perplexity Pro, Notion, Superhuman, Linear, Granola, and more. Subscribe now.
Three weeks ago, we shared the results of our first-ever large-scale tech worker sentiment survey. The post generated tons of conversations, in particular about burnout. Readers asked, “Who are these people who aren’t burned-out?”
So we decided to do a timely follow-up investigation to find out the common threads among respondents who:
Haven’t felt much (or any) burnout in recent months/years
Have felt burned-out but were able to deal with it extremely effectively
Feel like they’ve cracked the “secret code” for dealing with burnout
We ran open-ended, video-based surveys with about 175 respondents and interviewed about 15 people who reported low to no burnout in the original survey.
Our respondents revealed that dealing with burnout isn’t simply about resilience or stress management. The key is to systematically design a career and lifestyle that make burnout structurally unlikely.
We call tech workers who manage to do this “burnout conquerors.”
P.S. If you prefer, you can listen to this post in convenient podcast form: Spotify / Apple / YouTube.
My investigation revealed five core strategies for dealing with burnout. These strategies are the armor that tech workers are donning to protect themselves from burnout.
Many people we heard from immediately identified that autonomy is a critical ingredient to being happy at work.
We also saw this again and again in our research.
“I’ve had strong leaders who believed in my development and let me run with high autonomy to solve challenging problems. I’m happy more than 95% of the time.”
“I intentionally seek out environments where I have autonomy and variety in my day-to-day work, which keeps things fresh and prevents stagnation. Ultimately, choosing a path that matches my strengths and curiosity has made all the difference in sustaining my motivation and well-being.”
Burnout conquerors continuously strive to create as much autonomy over their work lives as possible. Here’s how:
Burnout conquerors keep a keen eye on how they spend their time and energy at work to make sure they’re working smarter, not harder. An open block in their calendar to do deep work isn’t just going to drop in from the sky. Their most productive hours aren’t going to magically become available for priority work. Burnout conquerors make their days their own.
“For me, burnout happens when I become ineffective at my job, no matter how many hours I put in. When I start to feel like I’m not making progress, I immediately start examining why. A perfect example is right now—I’ve not moved the needle with my priorities in weeks. There’s been a lot of firefighting, but nothing proactive. I started to examine what I’m spending time on and how I can pivot to spending time on what I should be doing. Calendar audit was step #1, declined meetings I really didn’t need to be in, blocked off heads-down time, and, in a matter of days, I’m back on track.”
Rather than expecting trust in the workplace, burnout conquerors earn it by consistently delivering regardless of the external circumstances. The more you deliver on what you promised, the more everyone will trust you and leave you alone to do what you need to do. But that trust is not granted; it’s earned through behavior and successes (which is accomplished by taking control of time!).
“I control what I do; I control my success. I’m responsible for my failures. Some days are hard, and some people are difficult, but I choose how to respond and handle the situation to deliver on my goals.”
To get this done, burnout conquerors focus on small sets of quality outcomes driven by highly targeted goals, which they communicate up, down, and all around.
Burnout conquerors understand their own needs and communicate them clearly and appropriately to the people around them. They know that when people know what to expect of you, they are rarely caught off-guard and feel more comfortable letting you take the wheel. A common tactic for burnout avoidance we heard is to “overcommunicate” about everything.
That includes far more than just what you’re working on and what resources you need to get it done.
“Most of my peers focus on communicating what they’re working on. They forget about [communicating] the ‘hows’: their boundaries, their constraints, and their strengths.”
Burnout conquerors overcommunicate how to best work with them and how they like to communicate, receive feedback, and make decisions. Set the foundations of those conversations with a “How I Work” document. Find a template here. (Also, learn to manage up generally.)
Burnout conquerors know that to ruthlessly protect their time and energy, they need to erect boundaries that can withstand the pressure of a fast-paced and results-driven workplace. Here’s how:
Burnout conquerors create consistent time-based (e.g. “I’m ending the day at 6 p.m. to be with my kids”) or task-based (e.g. “I’ll focus on 3 to 5 essential and urgent tasks each day”) hard stops. Anything beyond that time or list gets pushed to another time (or delegated to AI agents).
“I try to be strict about when I’m not going to do work. More than generic advice about ‘disconnecting,’ setting really clear micro-rules for myself has helped me prevent work stress seeping into the rest of my life. I know it might sound sad to even need these micro-boundaries, but it was necessary, and it’s been incredibly helpful.”
To ensure that those boundaries hold, the people we heard from automate their after-hours responses and set clear calendar blocks, so people get notified when they’re unavailable. They also share their working schedule with their colleagues up front, including daily constraints and personal needs, and then as needed when those boundaries get tested (which they always do).
Boundaries will always get tested by new requests or projects—some of which are exciting and seriously appealing! But there’s always an opportunity cost. Burnout conquerors understand that saying yes to something means saying no to something else.
They reframe no’s as tradeoffs—to themselves and others.
“I don’t frame responses to colleagues with open-ended questions that block my ability to define a ‘ready’ state. To overly simplify, I don’t say, ‘I have options A or B. Which do you want?’ I say, ‘I have option A and B. Here’s how we got to these options. Here are the tradeoffs. Please let me know your thoughts. I’ll move forward with A if I don’t hear any new feedback.’”
“I read this book called You Have a Choice by Eric Nehrlich. One of the big unlocks for me was ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to . . . as long as you’re okay with the consequences.’”
Breaks are necessary and reasonable for the roles and responsibilities we all have in this industry. Performing at a high level is essential at work, but turning off is too.
“Someone once told me, ‘We’re not performing brain surgery,’ and it was such a good reality check. Unless you’re a literal brain surgeon, it’s OK to not be perfect and available all the time. When I’m on, I’m on 100%. And when I’m off, I’m off 100%.”
We heard a lot about the types of breaks that are successful in helping people prevent burnout. We categorized them into three types.
2025-06-17 17:02:18
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Three weeks ago, Noam Segal and I shared data showing that 84% of tech workers feel burned out. That left one big question: Who are the 16% who aren’t?
This episode is their playbook. We analyzed 175 follow-up surveys and spoke with 15 “burnout conquerors” to understand how they’ve cracked the code.
In this episode, you’ll learn
The five-part “ARMOR” framework for burnout protection
The habits, systems, and beliefs that keep burnout at bay
How to set boundaries that actually hold
How to prioritize mental and physical wellbeing, without guilt
Early warning signals that most people miss
How to take rhythmic, reflective, and restorative breaks
How to choose roles based on energy, not ego
Why relationships, not perks are your best defense
References