--- title: Welcome to the 'Machine Pace' of Work description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/welcome-to-the-machine-pace-of-work/ author: Brian Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-08-11T10:30:00.294Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-10T22:46:08.741Z og:title: Welcome to the 'Machine Pace' of Work og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt77d35e3e8948e9ce/6a7a54440d71188c76e59101/charter-ai-burnout.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- The information presented here is created by Charter, independently from the TIME editorial staff.  Time charter * [burnout](/partner-content/charter/tag/burnout/) ## burnout # Welcome to the 'Machine Pace' of Work by [Brian Elliott](https://time.com/author/brian-elliott/) Executive-in-residence, Charter Brian Elliott is Charter's executive-in-residence and CEO of Work Forward. Aug 11, 2026 10:30 AM UTC  Illustration by Charter · Photo by Getty/Cecilie\_Arcurs by [Brian Elliott](https://time.com/author/brian-elliott/) Executive-in-residence, Charter Brian Elliott is Charter's executive-in-residence and CEO of Work Forward. Aug 11, 2026 10:30 AM UTC I host a series of forums for chief people officers, small off-the-record rooms for honest conversation. Across all of them, one worry surfaces more than any other: the people we most want to keep are the ones running out of gas the fastest. One CPO put it this way: "I feel like our top performers are trying to outrace irrelevance." Suddenly, the employees that leaders fought to keep through the last round of layoffs—the ones every bonus and retention plan was built around—are the ones closest to the edge. Moderate or higher levels of [burnout reached 56%](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-tech-workers-are-feeling-in-2026) this year among tech workers, up from 45% a year earlier, and [two-thirds of ](https://www.manpowergroup.com/-/media/project/manpowergroup/mpg-marketing/PDF/Insights/2026/MPG%5FGlobal%5FTalent%5FBarometer%5F2026%5FGlobal%5FReport.pdf)all workers—well beyond tech—say they’ve experienced burnout. Yet only about a fifth of people are worried about losing a job to AI. The unrelenting pace is what’s grinding people down, and [96% of heavy AI users](https://www.atlassian.com/blog/ai-at-work/new-research-reveals-how-ai-is-making-jobs-bigger) say their role has expanded. Burnout among top performers isn’t new—many driven workers struggled through the demands of covid, and ambitious, conscientious people have always pushed themselves harder than most. Technology shifts have long prompted change fatigue, and the disorientation that comes with them. But the AI era is different. The CPO who told me her best people are outracing irrelevance isn't describing a technology problem. She's describing what happens when old systems meet what I call “machine pace.” What follows is why this moment is different from the disruptions that have come before, how pressure builds from the boardroom down, and what the leaders holding onto their best people are doing differently. Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). ### **What makes this different** I have led teams through a lot of upheaval over three decades in tech, and I think our current moment goes beyond change fatigue, for three reasons. The first is that there is no other side to reach. The dot-com crash, the 2008 collapse, and the first months of Covid were frightening, but each had a clear threat and the promise of an eventual end. AI promises sweeping change on uncertain timelines, with no agreed-upon end state. [Colin Monaghan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdmonaghan/), who leads learning and development at Zapier, told me he’s started getting questions from employees he cannot answer. "We talk a lot about transformation," he said. "And I've had a few people say, ‘Transformation into what? When are we done?’ There's just no ceiling." Second, even the employees who normally rise to the occasion are struggling with the seemingly relentless pace. "You're learning a whole new way of working on top of doing your normal job,” one professed life-long learner told me. “We're constantly in that state.” The third is that the pain is no longer shared. Earlier shocks came from outside and hit almost everyone at once. A recession or a pandemic were external threats that demanded a collective response, even if the burden fell unevenly. The AI disruption, however, is largely being driven from the inside, in particular by the [80% of CEOs](https://www.fairplaytalks.com/2026/05/12/eight-out-of-10-ceos-worldwide-say-ai-could-cost-them-their-job-reveals-report/) who fear for their own job. The force prompting the rush to machine pace workloads is a technology that leaders are _choosing_ to deploy. The leaders making those calls sit furthest from the fallout, already holding the security, the standing, and the upside. ### **How the pressure travels** More fundamentally, the underlying mistake is assuming people can run at machine pace. That’s the assumption behind the “[tokenmaxxing](https://theworkforward.substack.com/p/the-tokenmaxxing-trap)” leaderboards, the productivity quotas, and the two-week deadlines for what used to be three-month projects. It’s the same pressure that gave us office attendance mandates, always-on messaging apps, and the pervasive 9-9-6 culture ([9am to 9pm, six days a week](https://www.charterworks.com/the-alternative-to-the-996/)) in tech that’s now considered a norm. Taking a breather won't fix this: you can't rest your way out of a system built to run people flat out while machines set the pace. That pressure comes from every level, distorting as it travels throughout the organization. It starts at the top, with boards asking why AI investments aren't paying off faster. A product designer I interviewed watched that pressure become an HR-enforced mandate to use AI on every project—even when it wasn’t efficient—in an effort to look “AI-first” for an investor. On one project, she spent an hour building a prototype in Figma, then fifteen hours fighting an AI tool to reproduce it. When she shared the math with her manager, his answer was blunt: "We don't care. Build them all as AI prototypes. We need to prove AI is worth it." She left tech this spring, and calls AI a cure in search of a disease. ### **What leaders don’t see** AI widens an old gap: executives don't see how the work really gets done. They use it at the surface, for a draft or a quick prototype. What they miss is the maintenance tail. "They only see the good parts," an engineering director told me, not the code someone has to secure, document, and maintain after the person who prompted it has moved on. A recent [SurveyMonkey report](https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/state-of-curiosity-report/) found leaders feed their questions to AI three times as often as the people who report to them, and are three times as likely to accept its answers without validation. When the person setting the pace is the one handing more of the slow, human tasks to a chatbot, the expectations they pass down get calibrated to that pace, quality problems included. Finally, managers are increasingly asked to decide whether to meet those expectations, or train the next generation. They face a choice: coach a junior through fixing what the AI got wrong, or fix it themselves and move on. Under deadline pressure, they fix it themselves. The work ships, and apprenticeship all but stops. ### **What leaders can do** The burnout showing up in your best people is a design choice, the result of setting the tempo of work at machine pace and leaving humans to absorb the difference. Too many people face what BCG calls ['AI brain fry'](https://hbr.org/2026/03/when-using-ai-leads-to-brain-fry): the cognitive load of running at hyperspeed, which it says is making workers 39% more likely to want to quit. The same technology, deployed in ways that support employees, produces better results. [Gensler](https://www.gensler.com/gri/global-workplace-survey-2026) found that heavy AI users who get autonomy and time to learn new tools and ways of working report stronger relationships with their teammates. The problem is the pace, not the technology itself. **Make outcomes the priority.** The teams handling this best have stopped rewarding activity. As one HR leader put it, "volume somehow got misconstrued as the gold star, and we need to rewrite that narrative." Token counts and output dashboards reward motion instead of value, and people optimize for what’s on the board. **Reset the pace.** Race car drivers don’t run at dangerous max speeds the whole race. They hold it near 80% so they have something left to surge with, because engines and people both break when the pedal stays on the floor. Setting a sustainable pace is a leadership decision. **Close the gap with on-the-ground reality.** If you are an executive, go find out what building with AI actually costs the people who do it. One CTO sent three trusted engineers to stress-test his own expectations. They told him he wasn't being realistic, and he adjusted his expectations. **Reinvest the time AI frees up, and budget for it.** When AI clears an hour, the reflex is to fill it with more output. The better way to use is on work that does not scale: mentoring, solving hard problems side-by-side, and creating live workshops many companies have cut for being inefficient. **What else to read:** * Brian’s column on how to [avoid burnout](https://www.charterworks.com/ai-burnout-upwork-column/) and maximize impact from AI * Our [briefing](https://www.charterworks.com/burnout-challenge-maslach/) of _The Burnout Challenge_, by Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter * How Canva boosts morale during a ‘[vibecession](https://www.charterworks.com/how-canva-boosts-morale-amid-a-vibecession/),’ our [interview](https://www.charterworks.com/how-canva-boosts-morale-amid-a-vibecession/) with CPO Jennie Rogerson --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: How to Address Employee Stress When There’s a New Crisis Every Day](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7346471/how-to-address-employee-stress-when-theres-a-new-crisis-every-day/)  ### How to Address Employee Stress When There’s a New Crisis Every Day [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7346471/how-to-address-employee-stress-when-theres-a-new-crisis-every-day/) [Open article: Actor Lamorne Morris’s advice for avoiding burnout](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7008806/lamorne-morris-burnout/)  ### Actor Lamorne Morris’s advice for avoiding burnout [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7008806/lamorne-morris-burnout/) [Open article: The Best Workplace Lessons We Learned from Books This Year](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6243814/the-best-workplace-lessons-we-learned-from-books-this-year/)  ### The Best Workplace Lessons We Learned from Books This Year [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6243814/the-best-workplace-lessons-we-learned-from-books-this-year/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/welcome-to-the-machine-pace-of-work/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/welcome-to-the-machine-pace-of-work/"},"headline":"Welcome to the 'Machine Pace' of Work","datePublished":"2026-08-11T10:30:00.294Z","dateModified":"2026-08-10T22:46:08.741Z","description":"How the heaviest AI users—and best performers—are burning out trying to ‘outrace irrelevance’","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/welcome-to-the-machine-pace-of-work/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt77d35e3e8948e9ce/6a7a54440d71188c76e59101/charter-ai-burnout.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Brian Elliott","jobTitle":"Executive-in-residence, Charter","url":"https://time.com/author/brian-elliott/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt77d35e3e8948e9ce/6a7a54440d71188c76e59101/charter-ai-burnout.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-ai-burnout.jpg","caption":"","creditText":"Illustration by Charter · Photo by Getty/Cecilie_Arcurs","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/welcome-to-the-machine-pace-of-work/","name":"Welcome to the 'Machine Pace' of Work"}}]}] ```