Burnout Is Not a Badge of Honour

The Claim

The tech industry glorifies burnout, and its killing us. Working yourself to exhaustion isn’t dedication, it’s poor judgement. Sustainable pace beats heroic effort every single time.

Why I Think This

I’ve burned out twice. Both times, I thought I was being heroic. Both times, I was being an absolute idiot.

The first time, I worked 80-hour weeks for six months launching a product. Six months. Let that sink in. We shipped. I collapsed. Spent the next three months barely functional, making terrible decisions, snapping at people who were trying to help, and eventually quit. The product I killed myself for? Got deprecated a year later. All that sacrifice, all those missed dinners and cancelled plans, for something nobody even remembers now.

The second time, I recognised the signs earlier but pushed through anyway because of course I did. Pride, identity, the intoxicating feeling of being essential. “They need me,” I told myself, like some sort of martyred protagonist in a film nobody asked for. Same result. Recovery took months.

Here’s what I learned:

Burnout destroys productivity. Those 80-hour weeks weren’t 80 hours of work. They were maybe 40 hours of mediocre output stretched thin and padded with staring blankly at a screen. Exhaustion makes you stupid. I wrote bugs I wouldn’t have made rested, then spent twice as long debugging them because my brain had the processing power of a wet flannel.

Burnout spreads. My pace became the team’s expectation. People felt they had to match it or look like slackers. I wasnt being heroic; I was being toxic. I was the guy making everyone else feel guilty for going home at 6pm, and I didnt even realise it at the time.

Burnout isn’t temporary. You dont just rest for a weekend and bounce back. The effects compound. I’m more susceptible to burnout now because I burned out before. It leaves scars, real ones, the kind where your body tenses up when you hear a Slack notification at 9pm on a Sunday.

The culture celebrates this though, and that’s the bit that really gets me. “I pulled an all-nighter.” “I worked the whole weekend.” We say these things like they’re achievements instead of what they actually are: failures. They’re not badges of honour. They’re evidence of poor planning, poor boundaries, or poor employers. Sometimes all three at once.

The Counterargument

Sometimes deadlines are real. Sometimes the startup needs extreme effort to survive. Sometimes heroic effort genuinely is the only option left on the table.

And some people do thrive on intensity. They’re not burning out; they’re energised by it. One person’s exhaustion is another person’s flow state, and I’ll admit that’s a real thing. I’ve seen it.

Where I Might Be Wrong

Maybe I’m projecting my failures onto everyone. Some people work intensely for years without burning out. I couldn’t, but that doesn’t mean nobody can. There’s a reasonable chance I’m just not built for it and I’m dressing up a personal limitation as universal wisdom.

And sometimes stakes genuinely warrant sacrifice. I’m not sure I can look someone in the eye who’s fighting for their company’s survival and tell them to pace themselves. That feels dishonest.

The Takeaway

Watch for the signs: cynicism, exhaustion, detachment, declining quality. If you’ve stopped caring about work you used to love, that’s not maturity. That’s a warning.

Build sustainable habits before you need them. Say no. Set boundaries. Take actual holidays where you dont check your email. Sleep properly. Eat something that isnt a meal deal at your desk.

The best work comes from rested people with perspective, not exhausted martyrs running on fumes and cold coffee.

Every time I’ve burned out, I thought I was indispensable. Every time, the work continued perfectly fine without me. The only person who really suffered was me, and the people close enough to watch it happen.