Should You Talk To Your Manager About Burnout?

Dev Leader Weekly 133

Mar 29, 2026

TL; DR:

Burnout builds slowly -- it sneaks up on you
Trust with your manager enables harder conversations
Know what you want before raising burnout
The live stream is skipped this week -- I’m on-call for work.

Should You Talk To Your Manager About Burnout?

I came across a post on the ExperiencedDevs subreddit that I wanted to dig into. A developer is feeling completely burnt out -- dealing with bureaucracy, red tape, slow-moving processes -- and they’re preparing for an upcoming 1:1 with their manager. Their question: how do I even start this conversation?

It’s the right question to ask. And getting it right matters. So let me share my thoughts.

You can check out my full thoughts on this in the video below:

Burnout Doesn’t Happen Overnight

This is the part a lot of people underestimate. When we talk about burnout, we’re not talking about “it was a rough week.” We’re talking about something that builds over weeks, months -- for some people, years.

Because of that time scale, it has this unsettling ability to creep up on you. You don’t notice it day-to-day. You don’t even necessarily notice it week-to-week. And then one day you’re sitting in a meeting, resenting basically everything around you, wondering how you got there.

I think about this like weight. If I stop actively paying attention to what I’m eating, I’ll pack on weight without noticing -- not daily, not even monthly. But a year in, someone I haven’t seen in a while will look at me differently. That’s what burnout does. The feedback loop is so slow that by the time you’re aware of it, it’s already been compounding for a while.

I work at Microsoft now, and I sometimes notice this with some processes. Certain things I have to do that I’m not enthusiastic about -- combined with the process overhead involved -- the feeling of disengagement grows fast, especially when you stack those things up. I wasn’t immune to this at startups either. The nature of it was different (fast chaos versus slow bureaucracy), but the burnout was still real.

What I actually find hopeful about the person who posted on Reddit is that they noticed. That awareness -- even if it came later than ideal -- is worth something. A lot of people just stay stuck on autopilot and let it bleed into every other part of their life.

Actionable Tip: Build yourself some kind of regular check-in. Not a formal process -- just a moment to ask: is this still just a rough patch, or is this a pattern? If you keep telling yourself “it’ll get better” month after month, take that seriously.

Your Relationship With Your Manager Matters More Than You Think

Before we talk mechanics, I want to zoom out.

The quality of that burnout conversation in your 1:1 will be largely shaped by the trust and respect you’ve built with your manager. That’s not something you can manufacture on the spot when you need it.

From my experience on both sides of this -- as someone who has had these conversations with my own managers, and as a manager trying to create that space for my team -- the goal should be a relationship where a difficult conversation feels like it’s coming from a place of mutual investment, not conflict.

I’ve had employees who could reach out to me between 1:1s when something important came up. Sometimes they’d say something like “if you take your manager hat off for a second, can we talk about this?” That kind of thing is a signal back to me that at least in that working relationship, I was building what I was trying to build.

Not every manager is going to be equally safe to have this conversation with. That’s just reality. But I’d encourage you to keep working towards that baseline -- because when you really need it, it matters a lot.

Don’t Walk In With a Complaint List (Without Context)

Here’s where I want to be direct, because this is where a lot of these conversations go sideways.

You probably do have a list. A list of:

Things that frustrate you
Things that feel broken
Things that drain your energy

And that list is good -- it means you’ve done the inventory work. The problem isn’t having the list. The problem is walking into that 1:1 and unloading it item by item without any framing.

Put yourself in your manager’s shoes. What happens after “this sucks, that sucks, and this other thing also sucks”? Are they supposed to:

Fix all of it?
Escalate everything?
Nod sympathetically?

If you haven’t signaled what you’re hoping for in terms of support, there’s a decent chance they don’t know either -- and then:

Nothing changes, and you’re more frustrated than before
... Or they try navigating this in ways that aren’t effective for you

The awareness piece still matters. Maybe some of the things on your list are systemic problems your manager is already aware of but can’t directly control. Raising them anyway is useful -- the more signal they have, the better they can prioritize and escalate. But awareness alone isn’t enough if you’re expecting action.

Know What You Actually Want From the Conversation

This is the step most people skip. And it makes everything harder.

Before you go into that 1:1, ask yourself: what are you actually hoping to get out of this? Some legitimate answers:

“I just want my manager to know this is happening.”
“I want help solving one specific thing.”
“I want to know if I have any agency to drive change here.”
“I want to understand if this is even fixable in this environment.”

These are all fine answers. But they lead to very different conversations.

My recommendation: pick one item from your list -- the one that’s bothering you most -- and make that the focus. Something like: “I’m finding our planning meetings really disengaging. I understand the purpose, but I don’t think we’re getting the value we should be. Can we talk about that?” Then signal your expectations: “Is this something you can help drive? Or is this something I could take some ownership of?”

That framing -- here’s the problem, here’s what I’d like to do about it -- is going to land much better than a grievance dump.

And if you genuinely don’t know what you want yet, that’s okay too. You can frame it as raising awareness: “I’m starting to notice some patterns that are contributing to disengagement, and I wanted to flag it early so we can start having that conversation. I’ll bring more specifics as I understand it better.” That’s still useful. It opens the door without pressure to have everything figured out right now.

What Happens If Nothing Changes

I want to be honest with you here.

If you raise this, frame it well, communicate your expectations clearly -- and still nothing moves -- that’s information. At some point, you have to decide whether this environment is working for you.

I’ve been in that position in my career. My gut is always to lean into it first: if I want to be here, I want to drive change. But if I’m genuinely trying to drive positive change and I’m not getting any support for it, that’s okay. It just means it’s not the right environment for me.

That’s a personal decision. I can’t tell you when the right time is -- it looks different for everyone. But I can tell you that staying indefinitely in a situation that’s burning you out, after you’ve already tried to address it, tends not to end well for anyone.

The first step is still the same: have the conversation. You might be surprised. You might not. Either way, you’ll know more than you do now.

If you’re also questioning whether software engineering is the right path at all -- separate from the current burnout -- it’s worth thinking through what’s actually driving that feeling. I explored something adjacent in last week’s Dev Leader Weekly on whether there’s an ROI on learning C# -- sometimes the burnout isn’t about the job, it’s about feeling like the craft itself isn’t rewarding anymore.

Dev Leader Weekly

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?