The Engine(er) Is Smoking: A Survival Guide for Tech Burnout
[Level 0: Technical] The guide I wish I’d had back in 2022 / Here’s how to not die at your desk
Update (Dec 20, 2025): This is Level 0: Technical. For Level 1: Transitional, read the sequel: God is a Cosmic Masochist—A Meditation on Numbing.
Something that’s come to my attention within the recent years is how prevalent burnout is becoming in the workplace, particularly in tech (which is the only one I really have insight into given being in the tech space for a decade now). The world is churning people up and spitting them out, and most don’t even realize they’re burning until they’re already ash.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
How to recognize if you’re burning out (before it’s too late)
Two evidence-based practices that actually help
Why these work (the science behind completing the stress cycle)
How to start today (with a low bar you can actually clear)
It’s not just you
At first I thought it was just me 4 years ago with 2 projects killed back-to-back within the span of 2 years as I was gunning for a promotion to staff-level (went up to 3 axed projects in a row as of 2 years ago, but this time I actually wanted it to be killed... maybe more on that in another post).
But as I talked to more of my friend network in the field, the more I noticed people:
“crashing out” (at least, a former teammate used those exact words to describe it for them, another had a manic break that shook their entire life up and moved away)
submitting notice with no jobs lined up to take an intentional gap in employment (a former coworker spent half a year with aging parents and traveling to decompress)
retiring early / “Barista FIRE” (one former coworker decided to become a crossfit trainer for example, even AFTER a 2 month sabbatical)
trying to swap out of a toxic job while juggling both scrum meetings and interviews all while getting heat from their manager in 1-on-1s for not meeting expectations under the unreasonable demands (you know who you are)
OR, at the very least, considering how to make an exit from their current job / switch fields into something else entirely
I realized it wasn’t just my network when my favorite Harvard-educated psychiatrist and former-monk-in-training went on his channel earlier this year to do a video *specifically* on this topic. That was the moment when I went: “Oh shit. It’s not just us struggling”.
What can we do?
Notice the smoke
The first step of handling burnout unequivocally is realizing you actually have it (or are on the way to it). The problem is that it’s hard to detect until you think you’re suffering from depression (this comes up in the video I’ll mention later).
There is a phase called “brownout” which is the usually undetected or ignored stage before getting to full-blown burnout where you can no longer perform basic self-care tasks because even that takes too much energy and you’re just completely spent.
Warning signs you’re approaching burnout (brownout phase):
You can’t remember the last time you felt excited about your work
Sleep doesn’t restore your energy anymore
You’re irritable over small things that wouldn’t normally bother you
You’re constantly tired, even on weekends
You’re disconnected from people and activities you used to enjoy
You’re going through the motions at work but feel no sense of accomplishment
Self-care feels like “one more thing to do” instead of restful
Warning signs you’re IN burnout:
You can barely function at basic tasks
Getting out of bed feels impossible
You’re experiencing physical symptoms (headaches, stomach issues, constant illness)
You feel emotionally numb or constantly on the verge of crying
You fantasize about quitting without a backup plan
You can’t focus or make decisions
You feel hopeless about things improving
For a deeper dive into recognizing these patterns, Dr. K’s video on burnout is excellent, but the above gives you the essentials. I cannot recommend enough that you watch this video, even if you don’t think you have burnout. The warning signs are all too easy to miss.
What actually works (and it’s simpler than you think)
I know you’re so exhausted that you’re stuck in the same routine because it requires the least thinking. It requires the least effort when you’re running on fumes. It’s automatic while you’re too busy thinking about the mountain of tasks that loom ahead of you, the never-ending stream of concerning news, the chores that need attending to at home, among many other worries that all add up to an overwhelming load before you even have your morning coffee.
I know because I was there. Hell, I’m still there on some days. Not all of us can just leave and never have to fix yet another last minute feature that product management promised a customer would be available by next quarter (can you tell I’ve considered using spirituality as an escape before?).
BUT...
There is a way to keep the engine from becoming engulfed in flames causing you to make a strategic emergency landing at best and an abrupt crash-landing at worst.
Moving your body (yes, that counts as exercise)
In a later book recommendation post I intend to write, this is the FIRST thing that comes up in the Burnout book by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. This book is, and I quote:
for women (or anyone) who has felt overwhelmed and exhausted by everything they have to do, yet still worried they weren’t doing “enough.”
(As a woman in tech, this book hit me like a brick.)
The first chapter of the book explicitly talks about exercise. It’s fundamental to complete the circuit on what they refer to as “the stress cycle”, addressing the “fight or flight” response we have built into us when we’re subject to:
constant stressors (yes, even just responding to that Slack message from another coworker about that PR needing yet another rebase)
unconscious microstressors of modern life, the “daily hassles” (think traffic, long lines, someone pinging you while you’re in the middle of debugging that pesky race condition that keeps messing up your unit tests).
To summarize the stress cycle:
When you experience stress, your body activates the fight-or-flight response, releasing cortisol and adrenaline to prepare you to deal with a threat. (Maybe like me you’ve noticed from your fitness tracker / smart watch that your RHR is too high recently)
In nature, this “stress cycle” completes when you physically respond: you fight the predator, you run away, the threat passes.
The problem in modern life: Your body doesn’t know the difference between “saber-toothed tiger” and “passive-aggressive Slack message.” It floods you with stress hormones either way.
But you don’t fight. You don’t run. You just... sit there at your desk trying to figure out when and how to respond. The stress hormones stay in your system, building up day after day.
To complete this cycle, your body needs a PHYSICAL outlet. For example:
Walk around the block after a frustrating meeting
Take the stairs instead of the elevator
Dance to one song (maybe easier if you work from home)
The goal isn’t fitness. The goal is completing the stress cycle via physical movement so those stress hormones don’t stay trapped in your body.
Kurzgesagt also recently put out a great video on modern stress if you’re interested.
Sitting in silence (yes, meditation—but not what you think)
This might be survivor’s bias, but I can honestly say this made a world of difference for me. This is what I would recommend AFTER you’ve tried your best to get regular exercise or some form of physical movement in in direct response to a stressful conversation, meeting, or commute.
I want to emphasize that I AM NOT saying to go sit on a cushion and “focus on the breath” or whatever in RESPONSE to stress. That’s spiritual bypassing. However, ACTUALLY practicing breathwork (pranayama) such as box breathing or simply extending your exhales to be longer than the inhales DOES influence a physiological response to calm you down.
What I AM saying is that building meditation into your routine is immensely beneficial for your mental health. It strengthens the frontal lobes, the part of your brain that controls attention, applies the “brakes” for your amygdala (emotional center), and helps you make decisions... all things that are critical in managing and preventing burnout.
Options for what this could look like:
Spending the first few minutes of the day only sitting quietly with only yourself when you first wake up as part of your “get ready for work” routine as soon as you roll out of bed, ideally before your brain really “turns on” instead of immediately checking the barrage of notifications / news updates, messages, whatever. Though, if it’s too ingrained as a habit, schedule a chunk of time on your calendar so it turns into an automatic notification reminder (or even schedule an alarm with a nice ringtone if you really need the ability to snooze it for a few minutes). I did the calendar event strategy (though now I no longer follow a strict schedule after several years of daily practice).
Spending 5 minutes before or after eating your lunch to notice how you feel. Notice the hunger or fullness instead of operating from pure routine or rushing off to the next thing.
Have your nightly wind-down include meditation. An effective practice is yoga nidra where you lie down and just rest. If you end up falling asleep, great! You needed it! Happens at my local studio all the time.
Doing nothing is hard!
Whether at the start or end of the day, thoughts are going to come. They’re going to snowball at first.
It’s because:
You’re now NOTICING them. Many times we don’t even realize we’re thinking.
These thoughts are now being allowed to finally surface after being suppressed with sensory stimuli for days, weeks, months, even years. When was the last time you even sat on the toilet without your phone? Maybe you even listen to podcasts in the shower or while on your commute to “stay up-to-date”?
BUT...
They will not keep snowballing. The surge will subside. This I interpret as the “poison” that comes up in the Hindu legend of the “churning of the ocean” to get to the “elixir of life” (amrita) at the bottom, what I understand as the mind for the “ocean” and the root of being for the “ocean floor” respectively.
The thoughts will become sparse and the gaps of that restful Nothingness will grow like watered seeds. I cannot tell you how long this takes because it directly depends how long you’ve been drowning out your own inner noise with outer noise. For increasingly more of us, that’s been getting longer and longer.
TL;DR
Burnout is growing in the workplace, especially if you’ve been in the field for several years.
My number one advice is to do what the Burnout book calls “the stress cycle” via exercise or physical movement to blow off steam.
The next is to make meditation part of your nonnegotiable self-care routine, as important as showering or eating. You are tending to your brain’s health by doing this and your overall body’s by extension.
You need to let your mind take out the proverbial “trash”, to digest the thoughts of the day (you may notice eventually this happens without your input!), or simply to create silence after waking up instead of a morning doomscroll sesh that creates a negative coloring over your whole already overwhelming day.
Thank you
My thanks for making it this far and I genuinely hope someone finds this post helpful. I needed to read this almost exactly 3 years ago when I was nearly crying at my desk from overwhelming pressure to deliver on a daunting and understaffed project to the point that I needed to take an immediate week off because I was barely functional. My hope is this reaches you before you get that far because not everyone is fortunate enough to have managers that will allow them to take time like this.
Don’t let yourself burnout.
You still have so much life to live and you should feel ALIVE for it, not a husk of a person that used to have motivation and dreams.
That “person” is still in there.
They’re at the bottom of the ocean waiting for you to meet them.
All it takes is some movement and some stillness.
Additional resources
Books
[Previously mentioned] Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA (non-Amazon link to the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/592377/burnout-by-emily-nagoski-phd-and-amelia-nagoski-dma/)
YouTube Shorts
(As you may have noticed, I have a strong bias towards Dr. K’s content because I don’t subscribe to many channels and try to stay off YouTube in general)
Why do we burnout? https://youtube.com/shorts/-LE5q1GgkyU
What causes burnout?
Why software devs keep burning out https://youtube.com/shorts/3IAQoduxAxM
How to stop burnout at work https://youtube.com/shorts/BYVnZiL2ARo
Why is everyone so burntout?
P.S. for the seekers
I intend to do a more “spiritual” take on this on a future date because that’s kind of my schtick. This post is more geared towards the strivers like I once was (and honestly, still may be a bit deep down, albeit to a more sinisterly subtle degree now).
Update (Dec 20, 2025)
The "spiritual take" is now live. If you are ready to move from survival (Level 0) to transformation, read the sequel: God is a Cosmic Masochist—A Meditation on Numbing.