Burnout

Burnout in tech rarely announces itself. It arrives as a slow narrowing — of energy, of curiosity, of the capacity to care about work that used to absorb you — and most people spend months explaining it to themselves as a discipline problem before giving it its actual name.

These articles cover the whole arc: the physical signs that show up before you're willing to admit anything is wrong, how to raise it with a manager without damaging your standing, why two weeks off so reliably fails to fix it, and how to tell the difference between needing to recover and needing to leave.

If you're unsure whether what you're feeling is burnout or something that needs clinical attention, start with telling burnout and depression apart.