You already know that the rate of change is growing exponentially. Companies are scrambling to adopt AI, AI is coding and even creating more AI, and of course the economy is in turmoil and putting more pressure on companies to cut costs. All this change results in pressure and that pressure takes a toll on you as a leader and on your team.
Recent studies from the World Economic Forum show that over 60% of tech professionals report experiencing burnout symptoms in the past year. What’s more, if you as leaders of engineering, 67% of them are reporting feeling burnout.
As a leader, you have the ability, and the obligation to help address this challenge for yourself and for your team. You’ve likely experienced the pressures firsthand and have the authority and influence to implement meaningful change.
The benefit of tackling burnout extends far beyond employee wellbeing (though that should be reason enough). Research consistently shows that teams operating with sustainable workloads demonstrate 32% higher productivity, 41% better retention rates, and generate 29% more innovative solutions than their burnt-out counterparts. Put simply: exhausted teams don’t deliver exceptional work, no matter how talented they are.
One of the principles of the Agile Manifesto is:
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Indefinitely is a long time. Are you and your team working at a pace you could maintain indefinitely? If not and you don’t do anything about it, then it is likely to stay that way or, more likely, get worse.
Recognizing Early Warning Signs of Team Exhaustion
The most dangerous aspect of burnout in technical teams is how easily it masquerades as dedication. That engineer working late “because they’re passionate about the project” might actually be drowning. As a leader, you need to develop a keen eye for the subtle shifts that precede full-blown burnout:
1. Communication Patterns
Watch for team members who were once engaged in discussions but now remain silent in meetings, respond to messages with uncharacteristic delays, or send emails at 2 AM. On the other end of the spectrum, when someone who use to get along is now explosive and always on edge, something is going on. Similarly concerning is when technical discussions that once involved thoughtful debate devolve into passive agreement just to “get it over with.”
2. Quality Indicators
Like a teenager who stays up all night and then makes mistakes all day long, you’ll often notice inconsistent attention to detail – thorough testers missing obvious edge cases, careful coders submitting work with basic logical errors, or documentation becoming increasingly sparse. These aren’t laziness; they’re cognitive fatigue resulting from constant firefighting.
3. Interpersonal dynamics
Teams approaching burnout typically get explosive (shorter tempers, defensive responses to feedback) or sullen (disengagement from collaborative problem-solving). Both extremes signal depleted emotional resources. They just don’t have the energy to maintain the middle ground.
4. Innovation reluctance
Innovation takes a lot of brain power. When a team is burned out, they don’t have the mental energy to forge new neural pathways to find new angels and new solutions. When previously enthusiastic team members start responding to new ideas with “let’s just stick with what works,” it’s often because they spent all their brain power on the emergency de jour and now lack the mental bandwidth for creative thinking.
Structural Prevention Strategies
Your mission and challenge is to create an environment where team members feel safe raising and sharing these issues. And in the technical space this may be extra tough because we are really talking about mental and emotional topics, quite often scary territory even when things are going great.
Try setting an example by starting conversations about capacity by sharing your own feelings and situation: “I was so burned out after our third straight planning session yesterday that I completely overlooked a critical dependency on the UX team, which caused confusion among the team. I am sure I am not the only one a bit burned out. How is everyone’s energy level today?” This approach demonstrates that acknowledging limits is professional, not weak.
Addressing burnout requires more than motivational talks or wellness programs – it demands structural changes to how work flows through your team.
1. Realistic capacity planning
So many technical teams operate on the dangerous assumption that every sprint will be 100% productive time. Build your planning models to reflect reality: 20-30% of capacity for maintenance, learning, and technical debt; buffer time for unexpected challenges; and recognition that humans aren’t machines with consistent output. When stakeholders pressure you for more, you need to defend your team. One idea is to share data on how unrealistic deadlines actually decrease total output over time and make things take longer.
2. Boundary setting
As a leader, you may feel pressure to say “yes” to everything. You want to prove how valuable you and your team are. But you really have to resist this urge. Instead, develop the skill of the “productive no”, or at least “not yet” – declining requests while offering alternatives. One of my favorite techniques here is giving a date for a date: “We can’t add that feature to this sprint, but I can have the team evaluate it for the next release cycle and provide an estimate by Friday.” It’s important to give them the next waypoint – the next date when they can expect something.
3. Recovery rhythms
I had a friend who use to work for the FBI as a field agent. I asked if it was exciting like you see on TV. He said it is for a few days a month, then the rest of the time was recovery in the form of deck work. Similarly, athletes work in cycle – periods of intense focus followed by deliberate recovery. Your team is like the agent and the athlete. They need to work in cycles. After major releases or critical projects, build in “low-intensity weeks” where the team can address technical debt, learn new skills, innovate or catch up on documentation. These aren’t vacations; they’re strategic investments in sustainable performance. If you are using SAFe, please never ever say “we don’t work during the IP sprint.”
4. Workload Visibility
We all know this happens. Someone in support is friends with the engineer Vikas. So, they go straight to Vikas for help. SO many engineers want to be helpful so they will silently absorb increasing demands. That is, until they break. You need to create systems that make workload visible – team capacity dashboards, Kanban boards, regular anonymous pulse surveys, or simple red/yellow/green status updates at standups. Review trends over time, not just point-in-time data. Look for trends and patterns that show where work is coming from and what is taking your teams time and energy. Be intentional about how that precious resource is being spent.
5. Managing Up
Perhaps most importantly, you must become skilled at advocating upward. When leadership demands put pressure on all that we have said here about team sustainability, frame your concerns in business terms: “If we maintain this pace for another month, we risk losing two senior engineers and accumulating technical debt that will take three months to address. Here’s my proposed alternative that protects our key deliverables while mitigating these risks.”
Building a Sustainable Technical Leadership Practice
Your team is watching you. If you preach work-life balance while sending midnight emails, your actions will drown out your words. You can’t lead with “do as I say, not as I do”. You have to be the model. Sustainable teams require sustainable leaders:
1. Model healthy boundaries
Be explicit about your own limits. “I don’t respond to non-emergency messages after 7 PM” or “I take a true lunch break on Wednesdays and won’t be available” shows your team that boundaries are the norm here.
2. Master context switching
Technical leadership requires both deep work and responsive availability. Block your calendar for focused work periods where you’re unavailable except for emergencies, and clearly communicate these boundaries: “I’ll be focusing on architecture planning from 1-3 PM, but will respond to messages before and after.”
3. Develop your sustainability toolkit
Identify the specific practices that help you maintain energy – whether that’s timeboxing decision-making, delegating meeting leadership, or protecting time for technical hands-on work that energizes you. Share these approaches with your team as options they might adapt for themselves. As a side note – one of the most interesting bits of advice I give new leaders is get a hobby. Seriously. If you are used to being a hands-on contributor and now your work is more about leading, a part of you still needs to make or do something tangible. I took up wood working and making props for escape rooms. It is my creative hands-on engineering making things outlet. I strongly suggest you find that outlet for yourself.
4. Create meaningful rituals
My son’s football teams used to do paper plate awards. The team would make cheesy award for the best hair, the hardest hit, the smelliest locker, the best assist. Yea, some were silly, but others were meaningful.
In high-pressure environments, it’s easy to move from one crisis to the next without taking time to celebrate and recognize accomplishments, growth and each other. Establish team rituals that celebrate meaningful milestones, not just final deliverables. This might be a brief “wins of the week” segment in your Friday meeting or a virtual “wall of done” where completed work is recognized. Or letting your team make their own paper plate awards 😊
Bringing it all together
Think about a tight rope walker. Do they stand still? They don’t.
Remember that balance is an action, not a state – it requires ongoing adjustment as projects and team dynamics evolve. The approaches that work during normal operations may need modification during crunch periods or organizational changes.
Taking Action: The Weekly Sustainability Checkpoint
- Team Temperature Check: Use a simple 1-5 scale for team members to anonymously rate their current energy/capacity levels. Track these scores over time to identify patterns.
- Workload Redistribution: Have each team member identify one task that could be deprioritized, delegated, or simplified. Make decisions as a group about which adjustments to implement.
- Success Celebration: Acknowledge one meaningful achievement from the week, however small. This builds resilience by reinforcing progress even during challenging periods.
This routine serves a few purposes: it normalizes conversations about capacity, provides actionable data about team state, and creates regular opportunities for adjustment before problems escalate.
The Competitive Advantage of Working at a Sustainable Pace
In the relentless world of technology, the true competitive edge doesn’t come from working the most hours – it comes from doing the most valuable work exceptionally well and putting the rest aside. Teams and companies that can maintain consistent focus on the critical few and do it with high levels of quality over weeks, months and years will always outperform those that oscillate between heroic sprints and recovery from burnout.
As you continue your leadership journey, remember that preventing burnout isn’t just about being nice – it’s about being effective. The best technical outcomes come from teams operating at sustainable capacity, with the mental and emotional resources to solve complex problems creatively.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Your transition from individual contributor to leader gives you a unique perspective on the real costs of burnout culture. Use that insight to build something better – a team where both people and technology can thrive for the long term.
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