Both Sides of the Desk: Burnout (The Manager's Perspective)
Both Sides of the Desk: Part 2
In the first post of this series, I explored burnout from the network engineer's perspective - the certification treadmill, work overload, organizational chaos, and the exhausting disconnect between engineers and management.
Now let's flip the desk and look at the same issue from the manager's side.
Three months into this role, I'm discovering that management burnout is real, pervasive, and completely different from engineer burnout. As an engineer, I dealt with technical complexity and always-on expectations. As a manager, I'm dealing with something harder: being responsible for other people's well-being while having limited control over the factors causing their stress.
This isn't about making excuses or asking for sympathy. It's about understanding what's happening on the other side of that conversation when an engineer talks to their manager about burnout. And it's about acknowledging that managers burn out too - often silently, because they feel like they're supposed to be the strong ones holding everything together.
When Your Team Member Says "I'm Burned Out"
The Moment: You're in a one-on-one with a team member. They look exhausted. They say, "I need to talk to you about something. I'm really burned out, and I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this."
What Goes Through Your Head:
Immediate concern for their well-being
Panic about losing a valuable team member
Guilt that you didn't see this coming or prevent it
Anxiety about how to cover their work if they leave
Uncertainty about what you can actually do to help
Fear that you're failing as a manager
The Trap to Avoid: Your instinct might be to immediately try to fix it: "What if we adjust your schedule?" "Should we shift some projects around?" "Would training help?"
But rushing to solutions can make people feel like you're dismissing the depth of their exhaustion or just trying to keep them productive rather than genuinely caring about their well-being.
What Actually Helps
First: Listen Without Trying to Fix It Immediately
"Thank you for telling me. I want to understand what you're experiencing. Can you walk me through what's contributing to how you're feeling?"
Then shut up and listen. Really listen. Don't interrupt with solutions or explanations. Don't defend organizational decisions. Don't minimize their experience. Just listen.
Second: Validate Their Experience
"What you're describing sounds really difficult. Burnout is real, and I'm concerned about you."
Not: "Everyone's under pressure right now," or "At least we're not as bad as [other company]" or "This is just a busy season."
Their burnout is real and valid regardless of what others are experiencing.
Third: Collaborate on Solutions
"Let's think about what we can change. Some things are within my control to adjust, some I'll need to advocate for with my leadership, and some are organizational realities we'll need to work within. But let's figure out what's actually possible."
Be honest about what you can and can't change. False promises make things worse.
Possible Interventions:
Immediate Relief:
Time off (encourage actual disconnection, not working from home)
Temporarily reduce workload or reassign projects
Shield from non-essential meetings and requests
Flexibility in schedule or work location
Structural Changes:
Redistribute work more evenly across the team
Hire contractors or temporary help for peak periods
Push back on the timeline for projects
Eliminate low-value work that's draining energy
Long-Term Solutions:
Career development conversations about the desired direction
Role adjustments that better fit their strengths and interests
Additional training or resources
Changes to processes that create unnecessary stress
The Honest Conversation: Sometimes the organization is broken in ways you can't fix as a manager. Sometimes the person needs to leave - not because they're weak, but because the situation is untenable.
That conversation is hard, but it's better than false optimism: "I hear what you're saying. Based on what I know about our organization, I don't see these specific issues changing soon. Let me be honest about what I think is realistic..."
What Doesn't Help (But We Do Anyway)
Toxic Positivity: "Think of this as a growth opportunity!" No. Burnout isn't a learning experience. It's exhaustion.
Comparison Minimization: "Others have it worse" or "At least you're not in [difficult situation]." This doesn't help. It just makes people feel like their struggles don't matter.
Surface-Level Solutions: "How about a team happy hour?" Burned-out people don't need forced fun. They need real relief from the actual sources of stress.
Pressure to Stay: "We really need you" or "I don't know what we'd do without you." This guilts people into staying in situations that are harming them.
The challenge of balancing team well-being with business needs relates to what I discussed in managing up as a technical manager - advocating for your team while navigating organizational constraints.
Preventing Burnout Before It Reaches Crisis
The Hard Truth: By the time someone tells you they're burned out, they've probably been struggling for months. They've tried to push through, hoped it would get better, and finally reached a breaking point.
As a manager, your job is to spot warning signs before people reach that point.
Early Warning Signs to Watch For
Behavioral Changes:
A previously engaged team member becomes withdrawn in meetings
Decreased participation in team discussions or activities
Delayed responses to communication
Missing deadlines or lower quality work from a normally reliable person
Increased irritability or negativity
Communication Shifts:
Shorter, more terse emails or messages
Less volunteering for projects or responsibilities
Avoiding social interactions with the team
Cynicism about organizational initiatives
Work Pattern Changes:
Working excessive hours consistently
Never taking time off or working during vacation
Arriving late or leaving early (burnout manifests differently for different people)
Visible exhaustion in video calls or in-person
Emotional Signals:
Expressing hopelessness about projects or organizational direction
Frequent frustration with things that previously didn't bother them
Loss of enthusiasm about work they used to enjoy
Comments about feeling overwhelmed or unable to keep up
Proactive Prevention Strategies
Regular Check-ins with Real Questions:
Don't just ask "How are things going?" Ask specific questions:
"What's your workload feeling like right now - manageable or overwhelming?"
"Is there anything you're worried about that we should discuss?"
"What's been most frustrating lately?"
"Are you getting enough time to disconnect from work?"
Monitor Workload Distribution: Pay attention to who's consistently taking on extra work. The people who always say yes are often the ones heading toward burnout.
Create Space for Honest Feedback: Make it safe to say "I'm at capacity" or "This timeline isn't realistic" without fear of being seen as not a team player.
Model Healthy Boundaries: If you're sending emails at 11 PM and working weekends, you're setting expectations that your team should too. Your behavior defines the culture more than your words.
Protect Development Time: Ensure people have time for learning, experimentation, and skill development. When everything is urgent, burnout accelerates.
The Challenge: You Can't Fix Everything
Here's the uncomfortable reality: some burnout factors are beyond your control as a manager. You can't fix:
Organizational dysfunction from the top
Industry-wide expectations around always-on availability
Fundamental understaffing or resource constraints
Toxic organizational culture
Market pressure on the business
What you can do is:
Be honest about what you can't change
Advocate upward for better conditions
Shield your team from what you can control
Help people make informed decisions about their careers
Being the Buffer: Absorbing Organizational Chaos
The Reality: Senior leadership makes decisions that lack technical soundness. They change priorities without understanding the impact. They have expectations that are divorced from reality. And your job is to somehow translate all of that into a workable direction for your team.
What This Looks Like Daily
Monday Morning: Executive leadership announces a new "strategic initiative" that requires immediate network engineering support. Timeline: unrealistic. Resources: insufficient. Business justification: vague.
Your Job:
Figure out what they actually need vs. what they think they need
Translate vague business objectives into technical requirements
Negotiate realistic timelines without seeming uncooperative
Shield your team from the chaos while they're trying to do actual work
Communicate progress in language leadership understands
The Exhausting Part: You're constantly translating between two groups who speak different languages and have different priorities. You take executive frustration about timelines and convert it into constructive feedback for your team. You take your team's technical reality and convert it into business impact language for executives.
The Buffer Scenarios
Unrealistic Deadline from Above:
What Exec Says: "We need this network upgrade done in two weeks for the new branch opening."
What You Know: That timeline requires skipping testing, documentation, and proper change management. It's a recipe for outages.
The Buffer: "I understand the business urgency. Here's what we can deliver within two weeks with an acceptable level of risk, and here are the trade-offs. To do this safely, we need four weeks. Help me understand if we can adjust the branch opening timeline or if we need to accept the implementation risks."
You're protecting your team from being set up to fail while giving leadership a realistic picture of what's possible.
Constant Priority Changes:
What Happens: Leadership changes direction mid-project. Again. The third time this quarter.
What Your Team Sees: You communicating the new direction calmly, explaining the reasoning, and helping them pivot.
What They Don't See: You spending hours in meetings pushing back on the change, negotiating what can actually be stopped vs. continued, and taking the heat for "resisting change."
The "Do More With Less" Mandate:
What Exec Says: "We need to find efficiencies. Do the same work with fewer resources."
What You Do: Document the actual work being done, quantify the business impact, and present choices: "Here are the three options: reduce project load, extend timelines, or add resources. There's no fourth option where we magically do more with less."
Sometimes you win. Sometimes you don't. But you fight that battle so your team doesn't have to.
The Cost of Being the Buffer
Emotional Labor: Absorbing executive frustration and team exhaustion day after day is draining. You're managing everyone's emotions while suppressing your own.
Relationship Strain: Your team thinks you're defending bad decisions from above. Leadership thinks you're making excuses for your team. You're caught in the middle, trying to maintain relationships with both.
Decision Fatigue: Constantly deciding what to shield your team from, what to be transparent about, how much to push back, and when to just implement bad decisions is exhausting.
The Isolation: You can't vent to your team about executive dysfunction. You can't complain to executives about team frustrations. You're managing relationships in all directions with nowhere to process your own stress.
This isolation and pressure is something I touched on in 5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Becoming A Manager - the emotional weight of management is heavier than I expected.
Getting Things Done Without Overloading Your Team
The Manager's Dilemma: You have business objectives to meet. Projects to deliver. Deadlines to hit. But you also have a team that's already at capacity. How do you balance delivery with team wellbeing?
The Capacity Reality Check
What You Inherited: Three months into management, I'm realizing my team's "capacity" was actually them working unsustainably. What looked like normal productivity was people working nights and weekends to keep up.
The Reckoning: When you try to establish a sustainable pace, delivery slows down. Leadership notices. They're not happy. But the alternative is burning out your entire team.
Strategies for Sustainable Delivery
1. Ruthless Prioritization
You can't do everything. Stop pretending you can.
The Exercise: List every active project and commitment. Force-rank them by actual business impact, not political importance or how long they've been in flight.
Then draw a line where your team's sustainable capacity ends. Everything below that line either gets delayed, cancelled, or resourced differently.
The Hard Part: Defending those decisions to leadership who believe everything is equally important.
2. Visible Workload Management
Create visibility into what your team is actually working on and how loaded they are.
Tools That Help:
Capacity planning that shows "available hours vs. committed hours"
Project dashboards that show all active work
Clear definitions of team member utilization (50-70% on projects, the rest for operations, learning, etc.)
The Benefit: When leadership asks for more work, you have data showing: "Here's the current load. To add this, we need to remove something else. What's the priority?"
3. Aggressive Scope Management
Projects grow. Requirements creep. Before you know it, a three-week project becomes three months.
The Discipline:
Define the minimum viable product clearly
Distinguish "must have" from "nice to have"
Defer enhancements to future phases
Say "no" to scope creep disguised as "small additions"
4. Strategic Use of External Resources
Sometimes the answer is contractors, consultants, or vendors - not asking your already-loaded team to do more.
The Business Case: "We can deliver this project with our internal team in 6 months while delaying three other projects, or we can bring in contractors for 3 months at $X cost and maintain current commitments. What's the business priority?"
The Mistakes to Avoid
The Hero Manager: Stepping in to do the work yourself when your team is overloaded. This seems helpful, but creates several problems:
You're not managing, you're doing
Your team sees their manager drowning too
You're not sustainable in this mode
The real problem (too much work) doesn't get addressed
The Optimistic Estimator: Agreeing to timelines you hope are possible rather than realistic timelines. When you inevitably miss deadlines, you damage credibility and stress your team.
The False Equality: Treating all team members as having equal capacity. Some people work faster. Some have deeper expertise in certain areas. Some are already carrying more load. Distribute work based on actual capacity, not equal division.
The Silent Martyr: Not communicating upward about workload constraints. Suffering in silence doesn't help your team - it just means leadership doesn't understand the problem.
The challenge of capacity management and realistic planning connects to what I discussed in what I look for when hiring network engineers - sometimes the answer is additional team members, not stretching existing capacity further.
Manager Burnout: The "Do More With Less" Reality
Now let's talk about manager burnout - the kind that comes from the impossible position of being responsible for outcomes while lacking the resources to achieve them.
The "Do More With Less" Mandate
What It Sounds Like:
"We need to find efficiencies."
"Work smarter, not harder"
"Think outside the box"
"Optimize resources"
What It Means: Deliver the same or more results with fewer people, smaller budgets, and less time. Somehow.
The Reality: There's no magic "efficiency" that suddenly makes your team 30% more productive. Work takes time. Projects require resources. Quality demands a proper process. When you cut resources, something suffers - usually your team's wellbeing and your own sanity.
The Manager's Burden: You're expected to:
Maintain service quality with reduced budgets
Deliver projects with understaffed teams
Support business growth without infrastructure investment
Keep team morale high despite increasing pressure
Somehow make it all work through "leadership"
What This Feels Like: You're constantly choosing between bad options:
Overwork your existing team or miss deadlines?
Cut corners on quality or delay projects?
Push the team beyond a sustainable pace or damage relationships with leadership?
Absorb the work yourself or admit you can't deliver?
The Breaking Point: You're working 60-hour weeks trying to compensate for insufficient resources. You're doing technical work because your team is overloaded. You're sacrificing your own development to keep the operation running. And still, it's not enough.
Handling Unrealistic Expectations from Executives
The Scenario: Executive leadership has expectations that are fundamentally disconnected from technical and resource reality. They expect:
Enterprise-level network reliability with small business budgets
Rapid deployment of new technologies with undertrained staff
24/7 operations support with a team sized for 8/5 coverage
Flawless execution of projects while handling all operational demands
The Manager's Position: You understand both sides. You know what's technically possible. You see your team's capacity. You understand business pressures. But you can't make the impossible possible through willpower.
The Exhausting Cycle:
Step 1: Leadership sets unrealistic expectations
Step 2: You explain constraints and risks
Step 3: Leadership sees this as resistance or negativity
Step 4: You compromise on timeline, quality, or both
Step 5: Problems occur (as you predicted)
Step 6: You handle the fallout and work to prevent repeat issues
Step 7: Leadership sets the next unrealistic expectation
The Emotional Toll:
Frustration at not being heard or believed
Resentment at being set up to fail
Guilt when the team experiences consequences
Anxiety about being seen as "negative" or "not a team player"
Exhaustion from constantly fighting the same battles
What You Can Control:
Document risks clearly and get acknowledgment
Provide options with realistic trade-offs
Deliver on what's actually possible, even if it's less than desired
Build credibility by being consistently honest about constraints
Accept that sometimes you'll implement bad decisions and manage the fallout
What You Can't Control:
Executive decision-making processes
Organizational budget allocations
Business priorities that override technical needs
The speed at which leadership learns from consequences
IT as Cost Center: Fighting for Scraps
The Fundamental Problem: Many organizations view IT as overhead - a necessary expense to minimize rather than a strategic capability to invest in. This shows up in:
Budgets that barely cover maintenance, let alone improvement
"Justifying" every technology investment with ROI calculations
Being told to "make do" with aging equipment
Deferred maintenance is creating a technical debt crisis
Training budgets that are first to be cut
The Manager's Frustration: You're asked to support digital transformation with an infrastructure budget that hasn't increased in five years. You're expected to improve security while being denied modern tools. You're responsible for the reliability of equipment that should have been replaced years ago.
The Impossible Conversation:
You: "We need to upgrade our network infrastructure. Current equipment is end-of-life and creating business risk."
Finance: "What's the ROI? Can we defer this another year?"
You: "The ROI is avoiding a network outage that could cost $500K in lost revenue."
Finance: "But that's not guaranteed to happen, right? Let's revisit this next budget cycle."
The Burnout Factor: You're fighting for resources constantly. Every initiative requires justification. Every budget request is scrutinized, while other departments get approval without question. You're watching your infrastructure age and your team's frustration grow, knowing the organization won't invest until something breaks catastrophically.
The Energy Drain:
Preparing business cases for things that should be obvious necessities
Watching competitors invest while your organization "saves money"
Dealing with the consequences of underinvestment while being blamed for problems
Trying to keep the team engaged when they see the organization doesn't value IT
Building effective business cases for IT investment is something I explored in making the business case for network modernization, but it's exhausting when you have to justify every basic necessity.
Fighting Imposter Syndrome as a Manager
The Internal Narrative: "I've been a manager for three months. I don't know what I'm doing. Everyone can probably tell. Sooner or later, they'll realize I'm not qualified for this role."
What Triggers It:
Team Member Questions Your Decision: Internal voice: "They're right to question me. A real manager would have thought of that. I'm clearly not good at this."
Project Goes Wrong Despite Your Planning: Internal voice: "A better manager would have prevented this. I'm failing my team."
Another Manager Seems More Confident: Internal voice: "They have it figured out. I'm the only one struggling. Everyone else is a natural leader."
Executive Questions Your Recommendation: Internal voice: "They don't take me seriously. They know I'm not qualified. I shouldn't be in this role."
The Reality Check:
Every new manager feels this way
Doubt doesn't mean you're incompetent
Making mistakes is how you learn management
Your technical expertise still matters
Asking questions is a strength, not a weakness
What Makes It Worse:
Comparing your behind-the-scenes struggles to others' public success
Expecting to have everything figured out immediately
Believing good managers never feel uncertain
Hiding your struggles instead of seeking support
What Actually Helps:
Connect with Other Managers: You discover they're all figuring it out too. The confident ones have just learned to fake it better or have more experience managing their uncertainty.
Document Your Wins: Keep a record of things you've accomplished, problems you've solved, and positive feedback you've received. Review it when doubt creeps in.
Separate Learning from Failing: You're not failing at management - you're learning management. There's a huge difference.
Find a Mentor or Coach: Someone who's been through this transition and can normalize the experience while providing guidance.
Be Honest About Not Knowing: "I'm not sure about the best approach here. Let me think about it and get back to you" is better than pretending you have answers you don't.
The Long-term Reality: Imposter syndrome doesn't disappear. You just get better at managing it. Even experienced managers doubt themselves sometimes. The difference is they've learned that doubt doesn't prevent effective action.
The Unique Loneliness of Management
Something Nobody Warns You About: Management is isolating in ways individual contributor work isn't.
You Can't Vent to Your Team: When you're frustrated with executive decisions or organizational dysfunction, you can't process that with your team. You're supposed to be the positive, steady presence even when you're screaming inside.
You Can't Complain to Executives: When your team is struggling or you're overwhelmed, you can't show weakness upward. You're expected to "handle it" and shield leadership from operational stress.
Peer Managers Are Competitors: Other managers are dealing with their own teams and competing for the same limited resources. They're not necessarily safe confidants.
The Weight of Responsibility: When your team member is burned out, when projects fail, when you can't provide the support people need - that weight sits with you alone. You can't share it, delegate it, or escape it.
What This Creates:
Emotional exhaustion from constantly managing everyone else's feelings
No safe space to process your own stress and frustration
Guilt about struggling when you're "supposed to be the leader"
Isolation even when surrounded by people all day
What Helps (What I'm Learning)
Three months into management and burned out myself, here's what I'm discovering actually helps:
1. Build a Manager Network Outside Your Organization Connect with other technical managers who understand the unique challenges. They can be sounding boards without the organizational politics.
2. Set Boundaries (Practice What You Preach) If you tell your team to disconnect after hours but you're always available, you're creating a culture you claim to oppose. Model the behavior you want to see.
3. Accept What You Can't Control Some organizational dysfunction is beyond your ability to fix. Accepting that is liberating. Focus energy on what you can influence.
4. Celebrate Small Wins Management wins are often invisible - crises prevented, team members developed, gradual improvements. Acknowledge them even if no one else does.
5. Be Honest About Your Capacity You can't do everything. Saying "I'm at capacity" to your leadership is better than silently drowning while pretending everything is fine.
6. Remember Why You Took This Role On the hardest days, remember what attracted you to management. For me, it's the opportunity to create an environment where engineers can do their best work. That purpose matters even when the execution is messy.
Conclusion: The Complexity of Manager Burnout
Manager burnout looks different from engineer burnout, but it's just as real and just as destructive.
Engineers burn out from work overload, unclear direction, and feeling undervalued. Managers burn out from being responsible for people's wellbeing while lacking control over the factors causing their stress.
Here's what I want engineers to understand about their managers:
Most managers aren't oblivious to your burnout - they're trying to shield you from worse. They're fighting battles you don't see. They're absorbing organizational dysfunction before it reaches you. And they're often burned out themselves while trying to support you.
That doesn't excuse bad management. It doesn't justify poor decisions. But it might explain why your manager sometimes seems to be making choices that don't make sense - they're working within constraints you're not seeing.
Here's what I want other managers to know:
You're not alone in feeling overwhelmed. The impossible expectations, the resource constraints, the constant battle between business needs and team wellbeing - we're all navigating this.
Your imposter syndrome is normal. Your exhaustion is valid. Your frustration with organizational dysfunction is justified. And your value as a manager isn't diminished by acknowledging that this is really hard.
For both sides:
The goal of this series isn't to make everyone agree or eliminate conflict between engineers and managers. It's to create understanding of what's happening on both sides of the desk.
Sometimes that understanding leads to better collaboration. Sometimes it just creates empathy for why things are difficult. And sometimes it helps people recognize when situations are untenable and need to change.
Burnout on either side of the desk needs to be addressed through systemic changes, honest conversations, and an organizational commitment to sustainable work environments.
Because ultimately, we're all trying to do good work in broken systems. Understanding each other's reality might not fix the systems, but it can help us work together more effectively within them.
Continue the Conversation
Both Sides of the Desk Series:
Burnout (The Engineer's Perspective) - The first post in this series
Burnout (The Manager's Perspective) - You are here
More topics coming: Career progression, remote work, technical debt, organizational change
