Burnout subsides some days and surges others—it is chronic. One signal I vaguely track is how well I'm sleeping. I wake up at night frequently, but most of the time I fall back asleep easily. Episodes of surging burnout appear in the 3am to 5am window. Once my brain is spinning on work stress I have a much harder time getting back to sleep.
This page is Personal.
I have been feeling burned out since approximately November or December 2023. There were two conspicuous changes around September and October. First, my manager had been promoted to a director over the summer and finally chose another manager to lead our team. Second, we decided to shift our team focus from helping other teams at the sharp end to driving larger systemic changes with leaders.
As the principal engineer on the team, my work in particular focused on trying to influence leaders, directors and above. In hindsight, this was particularly bad timing. As I was engaging more with leaders I began to read weak organizational signals that I now know were related to layoffs and a reorganization that started in May of 2024.