You can be extremely well paid and still be running on fumes. The RSUs don't invalidate the exhaustion — they just make it confusing.
Tech burnout has its own furniture: the fourth reorg in two years, dread refreshing the layoff subreddit, on-call that trained your body to flinch at a phone buzz, and the spreadsheet where you calculate what walking away from unvested equity costs. The general burnout page → covers the clinical picture; this one covers what's specific to your industry.
The tech-specific knots
Layoff-survivor syndrome is real load. Surviving three rounds means chronic threat-state plus guilt plus doubled scope — a recognized occupational stress pattern, not weakness. Golden handcuffs are a values problem wearing a math problem. A therapist won't tell you whether to leave; they're good at finding out what the staying is costing, which is the number the spreadsheet doesn't have. On-call is physiological. Sleep fragmented by pages produces anxiety symptoms all by itself — the insomnia page → is often the right first door. On a visa, everything compounds: an H-1B layoff starts a 60-day clock, which turns job stress into immigration stress. Therapy is confidential regardless of status, and if the layoff lands, the job-loss page → has the insurance clock.
Your comp package is hiding the routes
Tech employers are exactly who buys the good benefits, and usage is confidential — your employer sees counts, never names: Lyra, Spring Health, or Modern Health → (free sessions — ask for a licensed therapist, not a coach), an HSA/FSA that pays for therapy pre-tax →, and insurance where the 10-day rule → applies. If it's crossed into can't-function territory: SDI pays 70–90% of wages on certified leave → — it applies to salaried engineers the same as everyone else.
The stigma runs backwards here, by the way: the industry that measures everything treats therapy as an optimization. Fine. Take the door however it's framed.
The question people carry in quietly
Q: Is it burnout or should I just quit? A: Wrong order — decisions made from depletion are the ones people redo. Stabilize first (therapy, sleep repair, sometimes certified leave at 70–90% pay), then decide from clarity. If the same job feels workable after eight weeks of treatment and boundaries, it was burnout; if it doesn't, you'll leave well instead of crashing out.
If the workload was never the whole problem
Across 43 studies, perfectionistic concerns, not high standards, predicted burnout, and the work domain was where the concerns did the most damage. A lighter sprint treats the exhaustion; it does not treat the engine. Is my burnout really perfectionism? → · The four-question test →
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Sources
- WHO ICD-11, QD85 burn-out — icd.who.int · Maslach & Leiter (2016), World Psychiatry — occupational burnout dimensions.
- USCIS, 60-day grace period after employment ends — uscis.gov
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