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Going to War with Burnout - Less Hours Isn’t Your Only Option

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cottrell tackles the complex issue of burnout among developers. He begins by clarifying the official ICD-11 definition of burnout as a syndrome characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job or negativity/cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy. Importantly, he notes that the definition doesn’t mention work hours, suggesting that time spent working isn’t a direct input to burnout.

Cottrell critiques the typical advice given to those experiencing burnout—taking more vacation, finding a new job, or simply working less—as approaches that primarily focus on reducing the volume of work. While these might help manage chronic workplace stress, they’re often impractical for driven professionals and can feel like choosing between career advancement and mental health.

The core of the episode presents an alternative framework: increasing agency, autonomy, and resources to better manage workplace demands. Cottrell introduces the concept that stress correlates with the ratio of demands to resources—when you have sufficient resources (including decision-making power, proper tooling, training, and connections) to meet demands, stress decreases. He illustrates this with contrasting scenarios where identical work hours produce vastly different stress levels based on the level of control and support available.

For managers and individual contributors alike, Cottrell recommends identifying specific resource deficiencies that hinder efficacy and autonomy. This could include better tooling, training, mentorship connections, or team support. He emphasizes that good managers should help remove solvable hindrances, and that improving one’s “stress ceiling” through increased control and engagement with interesting work can be more sustainable than simply reducing hours.

The episode concludes with the practical takeaway: “If you want to control burnout, add control.” By focusing on agency, autonomy, and resources rather than just work volume, developers can find a more sustainable path forward while maintaining their career momentum and sense of professional efficacy.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to burnout and its three dimensions — Jonathan Cottrell introduces the episode’s focus on burnout, specifically a dimension that listeners may have more control over than they realize. He references the ICD-11 classification of burnout as a syndrome characterized by three dimensions: energy depletion/exhaustion, increased mental distance/negativity toward one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy. He notes that work hours aren’t mentioned in the definition, suggesting time isn’t a direct input to burnout.
  • 00:03:14 — Critique of typical burnout advice — Cottrell examines common burnout advice like taking more vacation, finding a new job, or working less. He explains these approaches proxy stress management to reduced work volume—a “tank emptying” philosophy where less work means less stress accumulation. While this might work for some, he acknowledges it’s often impractical for driven developers who feel asking to work less isn’t a viable career move, creating a difficult choice between reduced hours and continued burnout.
  • 00:06:31 — Introducing agency and autonomy as solutions — The host presents an alternative approach: improving burnout metrics by increasing agency and autonomy. He introduces the concept that to control stress, you should provide control—meaning more decision-making power and resources to carry out decisions. This shifts the focus from reducing demands to increasing one’s capacity to meet them, directly affecting the stress ratio.
  • 00:08:42 — The demand-resource ratio and stress — Cottrell explains that stress correlates with the ratio of workplace demands to available resources. If you have more resources (including agency, autonomy, proper tooling, training, and connections) to meet demands, stress decreases. He uses the analogy of a hindered laptop slowing work to illustrate how environmental factors reduce efficacy and autonomy, increasing stress regardless of personal capability.
  • 00:11:26 — Contrasting scenarios with identical hours — The host paints two contrasting work weeks with identical hours (40-45). In one, tasks are unfamiliar, tools are subpar, team connections are poor, and hours are rigidly controlled—resulting in high stress. In the other, with better tooling, team connections, training access, and autonomy over scheduling, stress is much lower. This demonstrates that agency and resources dramatically affect burnout risk independent of time worked.
  • 00:13:30 — Practical exercise and manager conversation — Cottrell recommends a practical exercise: pinpoint what resources could improve your efficacy and autonomy given your current problems. This could be training, mentorship, better tooling, or additional team support. He suggests bringing these specific resource needs to your manager, noting that a good manager’s goal includes ensuring you aren’t hindered by solvable problems and that training and connections are usually accessible.
  • 00:15:39 — Final recommendation and conclusion — The episode concludes with the core recommendation: “If you want to control burnout, add control.” Cottrell emphasizes that finding ways to increase efficacy and decision-making power is crucial because demands will continue increasing. The ultimate goal is improving our ability to affect the world around us through better tooling, resources, and unblocking control improvements—leading to a more sustainable path than simply reducing work volume.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2025-10-27T09:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:18:09

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, and welcome to today’s episode of Developer Team.

[00:00:10] My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like

[00:00:13] you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers.

[00:00:16] And in today’s episode, I want to talk about something that will challenge all three of

[00:00:20] those things.

[00:00:22] We’re going to talk about burnout today, and I specifically want to talk about a dimension

[00:00:27] of burnout that you may have more control over than you realize, and especially if you’re

[00:00:33] a manager, one way that you can help your reports with their burnout without having

[00:00:38] to have a major, you know, huge dip in productivity or, you know, some major threat to the work

[00:00:46] that you actually are doing.

[00:00:48] So first, I want to mention that burnout is actually a classification.

[00:00:54] It shows up in the ICD.

[00:00:57] The ICD-11, right, ICD-11, I don’t know what the actual way to describe that, you know,

[00:01:04] the ICD is, but that’s the International Classification of Diseases.

[00:01:10] Now, they do not say that it is a disease, to be clear.

[00:01:14] They instead call it a syndrome, and I’ll read directly from the ICD-11 as it states

[00:01:22] this.

[00:01:23] It says,

[00:01:27] It is characterized by three dimensions.

[00:01:33] One, feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, right, feeling tired.

[00:01:38] Two, increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativity, cynicism related

[00:01:44] to one’s job.

[00:01:46] And then number three is reduced professional efficacy, right, being good at your job, okay?

[00:01:54] Burnout refers specifically to phenomena in the occupation.

[00:01:57] Occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of

[00:02:03] life.

[00:02:03] So this is what the ICD-11 says.

[00:02:06] And you’ll notice a couple of things.

[00:02:08] One, the amount of time that you work is not mentioned, right?

[00:02:13] So this leads us to be able to conclude that the amount of time that you work is not a

[00:02:19] direct input to burnout, okay?

[00:02:23] It doesn’t talk about the people that you work with.

[00:02:27] It doesn’t talk about your boss.

[00:02:28] It doesn’t talk about what kind of work you’re doing.

[00:02:30] It just talks about these three aspects or these three signs of burnout, all right?

[00:02:36] So those three things, if you have, especially if you have all three of them, then burnout

[00:02:41] may be part of the reason why, okay?

[00:02:45] So I want to talk about a couple of different aspects, and specifically I want to give you

[00:02:49] a tool set that you can practically apply to be able to improve burnout.

[00:02:57] This may not fix it.

[00:02:59] It may not be the only thing that you can do.

[00:03:02] Certainly it isn’t the only thing you can do, but I do want to give you something that

[00:03:06] is more practical than the advice that you may hear.

[00:03:09] So first, let’s talk about the typical advice for someone who’s experiencing burnout.

[00:03:14] Take more vacation, right?

[00:03:15] Find a new job.

[00:03:17] Find something different that’s not as demanding on you, right?

[00:03:21] Another one is work less, right?

[00:03:24] These all seem like they are.

[00:03:27] Solving the same problem, which is essentially do less, right?

[00:03:32] Try to reduce the amount of work that you’re doing in order to deal with burnout.

[00:03:37] And the reason why this is the most common go-to is because people are trying to affect

[00:03:44] the very first thing that we mentioned in that definition, which is successfully managing

[00:03:50] the chronic workplace stress, all right?

[00:03:53] So we are proxying.

[00:03:56] The successful management of stress to less work.

[00:04:00] So in other words, if you have fewer opportunities to be stressed, then hopefully that will reduce

[00:04:09] the amount of stress that you have to deal with, and therefore you’ll be able to recover.

[00:04:13] So this views it as kind of a tank filling or tank emptying philosophy, where the more

[00:04:20] work you do, the more stress accumulates.

[00:04:24] And then in order to…

[00:04:26] Accumulate less stress, do less work, right?

[00:04:28] This makes sense from a pure kind of input-output perspective.

[00:04:35] And it may also work for most people, but it may not be practical.

[00:04:41] I imagine if somebody came to you and said, just work less, and you are driven in your

[00:04:47] career, that sounds like something that’s hard to actually affect, right?

[00:04:52] If you went to your boss and said, I want to work less.

[00:04:55] I want to reduce my stress.

[00:04:56] I want to reduce my stress by working less, that it’s most likely most of you feel like

[00:05:02] that’s not the best career move for you, even though staying burnt out is possibly

[00:05:08] a lot worse, right?

[00:05:11] So it leaves us in kind of a difficult position where we have to choose between working less

[00:05:19] and regaining some of our sense of efficacy, for example.

[00:05:26] Regaining some energy, reducing the negativity that we have about our job.

[00:05:33] Or the alternative is to continue being burnt out and try to find a different way around

[00:05:39] it, or maybe work through it somehow.

[00:05:42] Or adapt, right?

[00:05:43] Maybe we haven’t felt the stress before, and so we’re hoping that somehow we just adapt

[00:05:48] to it.

[00:05:49] But there is other options.

[00:05:52] Other options exist, right?

[00:05:53] Right.

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[00:06:17] Then we can improve our burnout metrics, right?

[00:06:20] We can improve our exhaustion.

[00:06:23] We can improve our sense

[00:06:26] negativity about our job. We can improve our sense of efficacy. So I want to talk about one

[00:06:31] specific. There are plenty of ways that you may go about doing this, but one specific way that is

[00:06:38] shown in research to improve your stress level to begin with, right? And it will also improve

[00:06:47] your ability to clear that stress, to deal with the stress. Specifically, I want to talk about

[00:06:53] agency or autonomy, the ability to make decisions. And the easy way to remember is this. If you’re a

[00:07:02] manager, if you’re an IC, whatever, wherever you are in the organization, the easy way to remember

[00:07:08] this is in order to control stress, provide control. In order to control stress, provide

[00:07:17] control. This is agency and autonomy that we’re talking about. The ability to make decisions

[00:07:22] and control stress. And the easy way to remember this is to control stress, provide control.

[00:07:23] The resources to actually carry out those decisions, right? The trust that your decisions

[00:07:32] are actually worthwhile, that they can be acted on, and the kind of, you know, permission or

[00:07:39] freedom, agency, to go and actually act on them. So it’s very likely that if you’re experiencing

[00:07:46] burnout, your burnout would be improved if the demand that was placed on you,

[00:07:52] which, by the way, is kind of the primary driver of stress, is demands. If you had more resources

[00:08:01] to be able to deal with the demands, the ratio of demand to resource or demand to agency,

[00:08:12] the ratio of demand to ability to meet that demand is directly correlated to your stress,

[00:08:19] right? This isn’t a theory. This is just,

[00:08:22] the fact that your ability to handle things is going to have a direct connection to your

[00:08:31] stress level as a result of the things that people are handing you to handle.

[00:08:37] Does that make sense? So if you’re thinking about, you know, how do I reduce my stress level?

[00:08:42] If you were more capable, right? And we’ll talk about what I mean by capable here.

[00:08:49] If you were more capable of handling the things that are,

[00:08:52] being asked of you, then your stress level comes down. And we can kind of prove this

[00:08:57] if you had a less capable machine, right? Let’s say that your laptop, that your work-provided

[00:09:05] laptop is hindered in some way. Maybe every, you know, every two hours you have to restart

[00:09:13] your machine entirely and you have to, I don’t know, this is a made-up scenario, right?

[00:09:18] But it doesn’t necessarily say anything about your personal capability.

[00:09:23] It doesn’t say anything about your skill. It doesn’t say anything about your energy levels.

[00:09:27] It’s entirely the environment that you’re having to deal with, right? Because you’re getting slowed

[00:09:33] down, your sense of efficacy is reduced. Your sense of flow is going to be reduced, right?

[00:09:40] All of these, the autonomy and agency that you have is going to be hampered, hindered

[00:09:46] by the fact that you have this interruption in your work. And this is one that, you know,

[00:09:52] is very kind of mechanical in nature, but there are a lot of interruptions that would fit

[00:09:58] in the same category in terms of hindering your agency, hindering your autonomy, right?

[00:10:04] Slowing you down. The resources are reduced. And so the demands, the ratio of the demand

[00:10:12] to the resources necessarily demand start going up on that ratio, right? So what you want is

[00:10:21] sufficient resources.

[00:10:22] even more resources available in order to meet the demand. And resources here, I’m very broadly

[00:10:30] lumping in, you know, agency autonomy, the decision-making resources, right? The more control

[00:10:36] you have, the more resources you have. So to meet the demands that you have, if you have more

[00:10:42] control, more resources, if you have what is necessary in order to do those things, then

[00:10:49] you’re going to be less stressed by those demands, right? So this can also extend into

[00:10:54] things that are actually skill-based. So training, right? If you are trained to be able to handle

[00:11:01] those particular demands and you have more efficacy at a baseline, then those demands

[00:11:10] are going to be less stressful to you, right? If somebody asks you to do something that you’re not

[00:11:14] very skilled at doing, they don’t give you training, your tools are subpar,

[00:11:19] then that’s going to be more stressful, naturally, right? So imagine two work weeks,

[00:11:26] exactly the same amount of time in those work weeks, 40, 45 hours. And in one of those work

[00:11:34] weeks, you are given a bunch of tasks that you have no idea how to do. You don’t have good

[00:11:43] connections with your teammates. You are getting, you know,

[00:11:49] slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash,

[00:11:49] messages that are considered off hours, but you’re still seeing them come through. So

[00:11:53] your ability to recover after the stressful day is reduced.

[00:11:58] All right. So now let’s, let’s imagine adding agency on autonomy. Okay. Oh yeah. And in that

[00:12:04] first example, you’re required to be on a specific set hours. Okay. Specific hours for work. And,

[00:12:13] you know, it’s highly, tightly controlled which hours you’re working. Now let’s imagine

[00:12:19] in the second scenario, you’re working the same number of hours, but you have

[00:12:22] more autonomy over when you’re working. You have better tooling. You have better connections with

[00:12:27] your, with your teammates, with people who know the work that you’re doing. The things that you

[00:12:33] don’t have the capability of doing, you’re able to either delegate or get training in order to

[00:12:38] accomplish. You have, you know, more resources to accomplish what you need to accomplish.

[00:12:44] You have more decision-making power. You know, you have autonomy over your,

[00:12:49] your time. The, these two scenarios are drastically different with the same number of work hours.

[00:12:54] The amount of stress that you’re going to experience in the first one is much higher.

[00:12:59] All right. Regardless of the amount of time that you’re working.

[00:13:03] So the goal here is to create an environment where you have higher agency and higher autonomy,

[00:13:13] where you have more control over how you do your job, right? More control,

[00:13:19] over the decisions that you’re making, more resources in order to make more decisions.

[00:13:23] When you talk to your manager, next time you talk to them, bring up this idea that,

[00:13:30] especially if you’re feeling burnout, try to pinpoint, right? This is a good exercise to

[00:13:35] take away from this. Try to pinpoint what resources could you have, right? Whether that’s

[00:13:42] something that you can go buy, if it’s training, if it is a connection to a mentor in the company,

[00:13:49] maybe it’s another person working on the team with you, right? There’s a variety of things that

[00:13:54] you may fit into this bucket, but what could you have that would improve the efficacy of your time

[00:14:01] that would improve your autonomy and agency, given the problem that you have to solve?

[00:14:09] Okay. Talk to your manager and bring those things to them.

[00:14:14] The goal of a good manager, one of the goals of a good manager is to ensure that,

[00:14:19] your ability to do your job is not hampered, right? That you aren’t hindered by a very

[00:14:25] solvable problem. Training is very often accessible, right? Getting someone inside of the

[00:14:32] company, connecting you to that person, or even outside of the company, connecting you to the

[00:14:38] right resources, the right mentoring is usually accessible, right? So it’s very important to

[00:14:47] recognize that.

[00:14:49] Burnout is a dangerous state to be in, right? The syndrome of burnout, if you’re seeing those

[00:14:56] signs, pay attention to it and try to understand, is this a problem that I could solve in another

[00:15:05] way, aside from reducing my sheer volume of work? Perhaps it’s trading some work so that I,

[00:15:13] the work I’m getting is more interesting and keeps me engaged longer. And therefore,

[00:15:18] I can spend more of my mental energy against it, right? Because it’s not going to stress me out as

[00:15:24] much, or it’s going to moderate my kind of ceiling for stress. What I’m able to handle,

[00:15:30] that stress ceiling is going to be a little bit higher for things that I’m interested in.

[00:15:34] There are a lot of different ways to kind of affect this, but remember, if you want to control

[00:15:39] burnout, add control. Add control. This is agency autonomy resources. These are the things that are

[00:15:46] going to control burnout.

[00:15:48] I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in just a moment. I’m going to talk a little bit more

[00:15:50] about that in just a moment. I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in just a moment.

[00:15:50] It’s very unlikely that you can go on unlimited PTO. In reality, how many weeks before you are

[00:15:58] just no longer on the team, right? How many weeks are you willing to give your reports as a manager

[00:16:05] before you realize that there’s actually a different problem that you need to solve,

[00:16:10] right? Now, of course, just to be clear, I’m all for taking PTO. I’m all for, you know, having a,

[00:16:18] you know, having a manageable workload in your life. But if our only lever in our work life is

[00:16:25] reducing the work that we’re doing to an absolute minimum, if we can’t find ways of becoming more

[00:16:35] effective, right? And becoming, and when I say effective here, I mean, you know, feeling that

[00:16:42] efficacy and feeling the control over our decisions. If we can’t find those ways, then we

[00:16:48] are having a lot of trouble. And so, you know, I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in

[00:16:48] because the demands will continue increasing. And us meeting those demands is what we actually

[00:16:57] want to be able to do. Being able to be efficacious, right? Making decisions and

[00:17:04] affecting the world around us. That’s actually our ultimate goal. We want to improve our efficacy.

[00:17:11] And in order to do that, we need to find tooling and resources and ways of unblocking

[00:17:18] that control improvement. That’s my recommendation for you. The tooling is very simple here.

[00:17:26] The recommendation is very simple. It’s really about connecting the dots between the resource

[00:17:32] deficiency and where you are in your career today. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode

[00:17:37] of Developer Tea. If you are feeling a sense of burnout, it may just be that you need to take a

[00:17:48] break. If you are feeling a sense of burnout, it may just be that you need to take a break. But I also

[00:17:50] believe that this direction will lead you to a more sustainable path, regardless of the sheer volume

[00:17:58] of hours that you’re working. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.

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