Mind MiddlewareA Mind Middleware conversation
⚠️ Content warning: This article discusses burnout, anxiety and depression. Please read with care. In Aotearoa New Zealand you can call or text 1737 any time. In an emergency, call 111.
At the end of 2021, I was burnt out and quietly unsure I had a future in this industry. I was finishing a contract, interviewing for whatever came next, and running low on the thing that's hardest to fake: purpose. One of those interviews was with Frazer Scott. I walked out thinking, "That's someone I could work for — someone I could actually have a real conversation with." A few years later, when I started imagining this podcast, I kept coming back to that feeling. So Frazer became the first guest on Mind Middleware. It was the right call.
Frazer has the kind of CV that's easy to be intimidated by: Sony, Microsoft, six and a half years as chief executive of Plan B, and now New Zealand Country Manager at Atturra, the Australian firm that acquired Plan B at the end of 2024. But this episode isn't about the CV. It's about the human being underneath the human doing — and Frazer, to his enormous credit, went straight there.
The shoe that never drops
Ask Frazer about identity and the first thing he reaches for is imposter syndrome. "We all have it," he said. "I don't know anyone who doesn't — maybe people just don't admit it." For most of his career he's been waiting for the shoe to drop, for someone to realise he's not who they think he is. Not in the job itself — in the job there's comfort and assuredness — but in the quiet 3am moments where the questions get loud. "Who am I? What am I?"
It's a striking admission from someone who has led teams doing globally significant work. But that's rather the point. The confidence we read on accomplished people is often a performance laid over the same doubt the rest of us carry. Naming it out loud, as Frazer does, is the first quiet act of leadership in this conversation.
"So — who are you?"
The turning point in Frazer's story came in an unlikely place: a one-on-one with an executive coach named Peter, whom Frazer had originally brought into the business to develop other people. At the time, life looked enviable from the outside. He was commuting to Sydney regularly, expecting his first child, and on track to become a director at Microsoft — the first real rung of senior leadership there.
They meditated, which Frazer had never done. Then, mid-conversation, Peter asked four words: "So, Frazer — who are you?" Frazer shut down. "What do you mean, who am I?" "No — who are you?" He couldn't answer. "Such an obvious, simple question, and I had no words. Three minutes later, I'm bawling."
What Peter had spotted was a schism. Frazer had grown up in a nuclear family in rural New Zealand, with values of family first. But the person he was turning up as at work was the opposite — career first, "it's about me," in his own words, selfish. He hadn't noticed the gap, because he hadn't been aware it was there. The coach didn't hand him an answer; he handed him the question. And the lesson Frazer took from it is more useful than any tidy resolution: the goal isn't to land on a perfect definition of yourself. It's to make sure there isn't a gap — that you're not quietly being two different people. "Whatever the answer is, it's probably fine, as long as there is an answer."
The stool you stop trying to balance
When I asked Frazer for a metaphor for his relationship with work, he offered one he's "fully confident I've subconsciously plagiarised, because I'm not that smart." Picture a stool with three legs: health and wellness, career, and relationships. (A fourth leg, spirituality, if that's your thing.) The stool is never in balance. Pour yourself into your career and the gym leg gets short. Pour yourself into family and the career leg wobbles.
For a while, Frazer chased equilibrium — and then realised that was the wrong goal entirely. "It's not about getting balance. It's about accepting that the stool is never balanced, but being mindful and attentive about where it is." The skill isn't levelling the legs; it's noticing which one is short right now, and having the honest conversations — with yourself and the people around you — about why. It's permission to be out of balance on purpose, as long as you're awake to it.
His early-warning signals are refreshingly ordinary. Getting frustrated and triggered more than usual. Skipping the gym. And the one a lot of us will recognise: "If I wake up dreaming about work, that's a dead giveaway. Time for a holiday."
Owning the burnout
The closest Frazer came to burnout, outside the churn of starting a new job, was at Microsoft — around the same time as that meditation. He'd fallen out of love with a role that, on paper, had everything: a great product, a great team, a great company. But he was travelling constantly and was, in his words, "pretty broken, physically broken." So he went to his boss, David, and said, "I'm done."
David offered him the carrot — deliver your numbers and I'll get you to director. Frazer turned it down. "That's not the thing anymore. I'm out." And then, because "there's no point having a problem if you don't have a solution," he proposed what he actually wanted to do instead. Within an hour, David had cleared it with his boss and come back with three words: "Write your job description." Frazer did, and the role he invented for himself ended up being replicated around the world.
He's careful about the moral. Part of it is luck — a genuinely good company and good leadership. But part of it is on him: "owning it, owning your shit." He could have white-knuckled the old role for a while longer, but he has no idea what it would have cost him — career, body, relationships. The version of this story we don't tell often enough is that the brave move wasn't leaving. It was being honest, out loud, before the wheels came off.
Self-awareness as the whole game
Frazer describes himself as a borderline introvert-extrovert who probably defaults to introvert — not the stereotype of the gregarious CEO. What he leans on instead is self-awareness. It's how he found his way into leadership in the first place (by clocking what he was good at, what he wasn't, and where he needed help), and it's still the number one thing he hires for. "How well do you know yourself? Because if you understand yourself, generally you can be coached."
That same self-knowledge shows up in how he manages his energy. Cynicism, pessimism and bullying drain him so physically that he'll sometimes remove himself from a room. Change, on the other hand, lights him up — even as he watches colleagues struggle with the very uncertainty he feeds on. He's honest, too, about a cost his family pays: after a day of giving to everyone else, the last thing he wants to do at home is talk. "That's unfair on my family. It's a work-on." It's a small, human admission, and it lands harder than any leadership platitude.
His dad's voice
The most moving moment of the conversation came back at that first meditation. Peter had guided Frazer to a place of safety — the house he grew up in — and asked whether there was a message there for him. "I heard my dad's voice as clear as a bell." Frazer's father is still alive, and to this day he can't tell you the root of it. But the voice said two words: "It's okay." He described it as a peace that hit so hard he'd half-forgotten it until we spoke. He's tried to return to that place since, using a recording Peter made of the meditation — "the relaxation response" — and while the lightning hasn't struck twice, it set him on a path toward guided meditation he still uses. "With this brain, it's hard to quiet the monkey."
The honest limits of a good leader
I put it to Frazer that we don't talk about mental health in tech nearly enough. He agreed, and then did something I respect: he refused to overclaim. Tech was the first place he encountered Employee Assistance Programmes, and he's grateful they exist — but they're limited, the resources are genuinely hard to access, and health insurers still largely don't cover mental health, for reasons neither of us could explain. As a leader, he says, the honest feeling is being unequipped. "I don't have answers, and 'there, there, it's okay' isn't an answer."
His prescription is modest and, I think, exactly right. He's not a clinician — "mental health first aid accreditation" is the extent of it — and he's wary of leaders trying to do more than that, because it gets dangerous fast. So start small: acknowledgement, support, and a basic toolkit for spotting signs you might otherwise misread. Not diagnosis. Just enough awareness to help, and the humility to know where your job ends.
You are enough
I close every episode the same way: if you could whisper one thing to everyone in tech before they start tomorrow, what would it be? Frazer didn't hesitate. "You are enough." He chose the words deliberately, straight from the imposter-syndrome place. Self-doubt, he says, is a fine sword — a little gives you pause and reflection; too much and you're crippled, unable to act. The antidote is simply knowing, and absorbing, that you are enough as you are.
He had one more, for anyone eyeing a job that scares them: do it. "If your next job doesn't scare the shit out of you, you shouldn't do it. If you think you can already do the job, it's the wrong job." Growth, in his telling, is two years of feeling like a fraud punctuated by brief, hilarious bursts of "I've got this" that promptly fall apart — until, eventually, they don't. His tip: every six months, stop and look back at where you were. "The change is usually more than you'd ever think you were capable of."
And then, at the very end, the line that says the most. Reflecting on the human-doing / human-being distinction, Frazer admitted he's more comfortable being a human doing — "because I'm not always sure I like who I am as a human being." The gap between where he is and who he thinks he should be feels, he said, like a chasm a light year wide. But he's aware of it. He's labelled it. And if there's one idea this whole episode turns on, it's that: naming the gap is not the failure. It's the work. It's the becoming.
Mind Middleware is a podcast about the invisible space between doing and being — honest conversations about mental health in tech. If this resonated, share it with someone you care about. And if you're struggling, you're not alone: in Aotearoa New Zealand, call or text 1737 any time. In an emergency, call 111.**