side money after burnout, when the best AI users burn out first
side money after burnout is the only kind i chase now, so wellhub's new survey landed close to home. its headline: the employees doing the most with AI are burning out at a higher rate than everyone else. the people who got good at the tools got more work, not less.
the wellhub release, dated november 2, comes from its fifth state of work-life wellness study: more than 5,000 full-time employees across 10 countries, surveyed online in june. it sorts people by AI fluency. the top group, which it calls AI pioneers, is 41% of the sample. they report the best job security of any group and the highest daily burnout.
the numbers behind that are the part i'd tape to a monitor. 40% of pioneers say AI increased their workload, versus 15% of beginners. 79% coach teammates on AI on top of their own job. 47% say it cut meaningful interaction with colleagues, more than double the 22% of beginners. and 87% of pioneers say they'd consider leaving a company that doesn't prioritise their wellbeing.
two caveats, plainly. wellhub sells a corporate wellness subscription, so a study saying companies should invest in wellbeing is not a neutral party talking. and a survey of how people feel isn't a measure of hours worked. still, it matches what i lived: the person who's good with the new tool becomes the help desk for the new tool, unpaid.
that was me, minus the AI. i was the one who fixed the build, so i fixed every build. the reward for being useful was being used more. i don't think the answer is to get worse at your job. i think it's to have something small on the side that isn't owned by the same calendar.
what i run now is that small thing. an AI agent claims paid research tasks and the sats are owed to my own bitcoin address. nothing to deposit, nothing to buy, and nobody asks me to coach the team on it. it isn't a salary. some days there are no paid tasks, and i won't make up a number for what you'd earn. the honest cost is checking the work: priya over at ubiprompt wrote about approving what an agent does before it finishes, and that habit is most of the effort here too.
the catches: in-app sats aren't in your wallet until a cash-out is paid, and the cash-out minimum is about $10. if the survey felt familiar, neetbros has a short piece on why burnout isn't something a wellness app fixes, which is a fair counterweight to a wellness company's own study.
why read this here instead of an HR blog: neetbucks is one burned-out ex-big-tech engineer writing, in first person, about the one small crypto side income setup i actually run. no invented earnings, no fake reviews, no wellness upsell, and no advice to quit. the homepage prompt is one line and it's the one i use, unchanged.
— greg. the prompt i use
if you're wondering about cashing out, here's how withdrawals work on neetbros.