Developer Burnout Diagnosis

Detect and diagnose engineering burnout through data analysis of workload patterns, after-hours activity, and incident load.

Purpose

• Identify burnout warning signs early
• Analyze workload distribution
• Detect unsustainable patterns
• Recommend interventions
• Prevent attrition

Burnout Indicators

Git Activity Analysis

Metrics to analyze:

# Commits by hour (detect after-hours work)
git log --author="Name" --date=format:'%H' --pretty=format:'%ad' | sort | uniq -c

# Commits by day of week (weekend work)
git log --author="Name" --date=format:'%u' --pretty=format:'%ad' | sort | uniq -c

# Commit velocity trend
git log --author="Name" --since="6 months ago" --pretty=format:'%ad' --date=short | uniq -c

Warning Signs:

• 20% commits outside 9am-6pm

• Regular weekend commits (>10% of total)
• Declining commit volume over time
• Late-night activity spikes (after 10pm)

On-Call Analysis

Metrics:

• Incidents per on-call shift
• After-hours pages
• Time to resolve
• Rotation frequency

Warning Signs:

• 3 incidents per week on-call

• 5 after-hours pages per shift

• Uneven rotation (same person always on-call)
• Long incident resolution times (>4 hours)

Workload Distribution

Metrics:

• PR review load per engineer
• Number of concurrent projects
• Meeting hours per week
• Context switches (number of different projects/repos)

Warning Signs:

• 10 PRs to review per week

• Working on >3 projects simultaneously

• 20 hours meetings per week

• Frequent context switches (>5 different areas)

Burnout Risk Assessment

{
  "employee": "Name",
  "assessment_date": "2026-01-22",
  "risk_level": "high",
  "indicators": [
    {
      "category": "After-hours work",
      "severity": "high",
      "evidence": "35% of commits between 8pm-1am",
      "trend": "increasing"
    },
    {
      "category": "On-call load",
      "severity": "medium",
      "evidence": "4.2 incidents per on-call week (team avg: 2.1)",
      "trend": "stable"
    }
  ],
  "recommendations": [
    {
      "action": "Reduce on-call frequency",
      "details": "Currently 1 week per month, reduce to 1 week per 6 weeks",
      "timeline": "immediate"
    },
    {
      "action": "Audit workload",
      "details": "Working on 4 projects - consolidate to 2 max",
      "timeline": "next sprint"
    },
    {
      "action": "Investigate after-hours work drivers",
      "details": "1:1 to understand: deadline pressure? personal preference? timezone issues?",
      "timeline": "this week"
    }
  ]
}

Intervention Strategies

Immediate (High Risk):

• Reduce workload (remove from projects)
• Pause on-call rotation
• Encourage PTO
• 1:1 check-in

Medium-term:

• Redistribute work more evenly
• Address systemic issues (too many incidents)
• Improve tooling/processes
• Add headcount if needed

Long-term:

• Build sustainable practices
• Improve incident prevention
• Cross-train team (reduce dependencies)
• Establish work-life boundaries

Using Supporting Resources

Templates

• templates/burnout-indicators.json - Metrics checklist
• templates/recommendations.md - Intervention playbook

Scripts

• scripts/analyze-workload.py - Git activity analysis
• scripts/on-call-metrics.py - On-call load calculator

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