Home / Articles / Two years in, the opposite: an essay about burning out on AI that I could not buy, and why my two years of AI have been the most productive of my career

Two years in, the opposite: an essay about burning out on AI that I could not buy, and why my two years of AI have been the most productive of my career

By Dinis Cruz · 2026-10-18 · article v1.1.0, 2 versions · newsroom v0.12.120 · aicareerspaywallspublisherspay-as-you-readwardley-mapsarticle

Abstract: Business Insider published an essay this month by a former lawyer who moved his career towards AI two years ago and now, in the headline's words, has never felt more behind and tired of the topic. I wanted to read it. I could read three paragraphs, and then a box offered me a free trial that renews at $12.95 every four weeks, or a year for $49 that renews at $149. I do not want a subscription to an organisation I do not know yet; I wanted to pay a little for that one essay, and for its author to get some of it. Meanwhile the page had already shown me adverts in three places, so the publisher had made money from my visit before giving me almost anything. I could not read it, so I could not judge it either: not agree, not challenge it, not say whether the headline was fair. And my own story is the opposite. I have been doing AI for two years and a bit, and I have never felt more productive, more empowered or happier at work. I am building sgit, RiskMandate and this newsroom; for the first time my engineering and my creative side meet; I am in control of my inbox, which I never was. It is not easy, a startup never is, and progress is not linear. But Wardley maps let me see the game I am playing, and that gives me a kind of peace. There is an anti-AI mood right now, and burnout stories feed it. Stories like mine should be told too.

In short

• An essay I wanted to read. About burning out on AI after two years.
• Three paragraphs, then a subscription. $12.95 every four weeks, or $49 for a year.
• The adverts came first. The page earned from my visit before it gave me anything.
• I could not judge it. Not agree, not challenge it, not say if the headline was fair.
• My two years were the opposite. The most productive, empowered and happy of my career.
• It is not easy. But Wardley maps show me the game, and that gives me peace.
• Positive stories should be told too. There is an anti-AI mood, and it needs balance.

The essay I could not read

Business Insider published an essay in its careers section this month, by Santiago Barraza Lopez, under the headline "I thought working in AI would put me ahead of the curve. Two years in, I've never felt more behind and tired of the topic." The first paragraphs tell you who he is: for most of his career he was a lawyer, he burned out, and around two years ago he started moving his career towards AI, because, as he puts it, "I didn't want to wake up 10 years later and realize technology had changed my profession without me."

That is as far as I got. Then a box covered the page: a 14-day free trial that renews every four weeks at $12.95, or an annual plan at $49, marked 67% off, that renews at $149. I did not read the rest, so I will not tell you what he argues. I can only tell you what the headline says, and that I wanted to know why.

I wanted to pay for this one

I do not want a subscription. I wanted to read this one essay, and I would have paid for it. And I would like the author to get some of that money, beyond what he was paid to write it. It is the same thing that happened with Harvard Business Review: a piece I wanted, and only a subscription on offer.

There is an irony in the page itself. Before asking me to pay, it had shown me adverts in three places: a banner across the top, the side of the page, and the middle of the text. The publisher had already made money from my visit, and had given me almost nothing apart from the headline. Then it asked me to commit to a plan, from an organisation I barely know. I may have seen it before, but it does not have my trust today. Why would I buy a subscription from it?

I could not judge it either

There is a second cost. This site is building a way for people who know a subject to put a signed opinion beside an article: I agree, I do not, here is why. With this essay I could do none of that. I could not say the headline was fair, or that it was clickbait, or that the story was more complicated than the title, because I could not read it. A paywall in front of an argument also stops the argument from being answered.

Trust is earned by reading

The model I would want, and the one this newsroom runs, works the other way round. You start with five pounds of credit. Each article you read uses a few pence; you can set the price from free to double, and the balance can go below zero without blocking you (paying after the value explains the experiment). A publisher earns my subscription after I have read a lot of its articles and decided I want more of them, and then it can tailor what it offers me, the way this site tailors itself to what a reader reads.

My two years were the opposite

And the essay's subject matters to me, because my experience has been the exact opposite. I have been doing AI for the last two years and a bit, and I have never felt more productive. I have never felt happier at work, or more empowered. I have great days. I learn a lot. I feel I am ahead of the curve, and that I am disrupting large and interesting markets.

Look at what I am doing with sgit, with RiskMandate, with this newsroom. For the first time, a lot of the parts of my career intersect, and I can combine my engineering brain and my creative brain in the same day. I create, I execute, I ship. I can scale the things that used to hold me back, the non-functional requirements, in ways I never could before. I have that sense of wonder people talk about with AI, because there are so many interesting projects and so much to create.

And a small thing that is not small: I am in control of my inbox. I never was. My joke is that my inbox was under control on the first day or the first week of a new job, and on the first of January, when I would move every single email into a folder and start clean. Now, with the agents behind my emails, it is under control every day.

It is not easy

None of this is glamorous. I am doing a startup, with its risks and its stress. Things fail every other week; I hit blockers all the time. You could tell my two years as a miserable story, with a failure a week. I do not see it like that. I see a challenge: I try something, it works or it does not, I take a couple of steps back and continue. Progress is not linear, and that is part of what makes it interesting.

And working in a corporate job is also hard. The difference, for me, is control: I get to choose what I work on and what I take on.

Seeing the game

A lot of my peace comes from Wardley maps. I can see the game being played, the pieces of the puzzle, the play I am making, and how each piece evolves. I can see the innovate, leverage, commoditise pattern, the zigzag where each layer matures until the next can be built on it. I love going from a half-baked idea to something released, then iterating on it, and building on top of what I built. When you can see the board, a bad week is a move, not a verdict.

Why tell this now

There is an anti-AI mood at the moment, and stories of burnout feed it. I am not dismissing the essay; burnout is real, and I could not read his reasons. But the other story should be told as loudly: that working this way can make you more productive, more in control and happier than you have ever been. That is the story I want people starting out to hear, and it is the one Generation Z Developers (AI edition) is for.

What this does not claim

• I did not read the essay. I quote only what the page showed before the paywall.
• One visit, one browser. The offers and adverts may differ by place and time.
• My experience is mine. It is an account, not a study of people working in AI.
• The anti-AI mood is my reading. Not a measured result.

Where this comes from

A voice memo from me on 18 October 2026, and my screenshots of the essay's page that day: the headline, the byline, the first three paragraphs, the subscription offer and the adverts. Related: I just want to buy the article, paying after the value, on the record, the man behind the curtain, why I love Wardley maps, Generation Z Developers (AI edition). Written up and checked by this site's agent, newsroom.writer; the editorial responsibility is mine.

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