Burnout doesn't announce itself. For Stephen Townsend, SRE team lead and host of the Slight Reliability podcast, it crept in over months of mounting pressure on a massive transformation program, and announced itself overnight with an inability to sleep. Stephen shares his personal story with rare honesty, and brings a responder's eye to what the industry can actually do differently.
Key Topics Discussed
- What burnout actually is — the fight-or-flight physiology behind it and why modern work prevents recovery
- The physical warning signs Stephen dismissed for months before hitting a breaking point
- How low autonomy and oversized teams create the perfect conditions for burnout
- Why managers with too many direct reports can't catch early warning signals
- The full year it took Stephen to recover — and what actually helped
- Slack time, compassionate leadership, and org design as burnout prevention tools
Key Quotes
- "If people have pressure on them to do a thing, but they don't have the autonomy to do that thing, that's fertile ground for burnout."
- "If you're 100% utilized, you've got no ability to respond to the unexpected, to reflect, to learn, to simplify, to innovate."
- "You can't be creative when you're under the pump all the time. You need that space to be a little bit bored."
Resources Mentioned
- Slight Reliability Podcast, Episode 103 with Alexandra on burnout
- On-Call Health tool
- Happy by Derren Brown
In Stephen’s words
What drew you to SRE after years in performance testing?
I'd spent about 10 years doing performance testing across different consulting companies and organizations, then joined IAG as a permanent employee doing performance engineering. After a while I realized the scope was too narrow. I wanted a bigger impact — to be more involved in how we build and operate software in a broader sense. That's when I got into SRE. And honestly, that's also when I started my podcast. It was a chance to do public learning, because I didn't know what I was doing. I'd always been good at performance testing and spoke and blogged about it — so the podcast was a way to say, "I don't know anything. Come learn with me."
You've been through burnout personally. What actually happened?
About six years ago I was the performance test lead on a massive transformation program — hundreds of people, lots of vendors, huge pressure. My job wasn't just to deliver performance testing myself, but to make sure 10 other teams were doing sufficient performance testing, manage all of that, prioritize, get the improvements we needed. Something about that situation led to extreme stress and anxiety, and eventually — without me even realizing it — a tipping point. There was a restructure and I was hoping it would be a chance to escape. When that didn't happen, overnight burnout hit. I just stopped being able to sleep. Bang. And I'm still unpacking why, six years later.
How do you define burnout for people who haven't experienced it?
Our bodies can't tell the difference between being chased by a sabertooth tiger and being on a really stressful Teams call. In both cases, we go into fight, flight, or freeze — cortisol rises, heart races, we sweat. When you're being chased by a tiger, you run, you escape, you get back to the cave and relax. When you're in a meeting, you feel all the same things and then you're straight into the next one. You never get the chance to recover.
As long as you can recover from those situations, you're in a stable place. But if you're going from one high-stress situation to the next without recovering, it builds a series of physiological and psychological symptoms that start to take over your life and your work. That's burnout.
What were the warning signs — and did you recognize them at the time?
Looking back, there were signs for months. The most specific one was a spot in my vision — like a torch had been shone in my eye. I went to an optometrist and she told me my retina was detaching. She said it was a stress response and that if I didn't get on top of it, I could have permanent vision damage. That was a real shake-out moment. And still I didn't connect it to burnout.
Other things: ringing in my ears, a constant buzzing in my brain, the same songs stuck in my head for four or five days straight. Inability to think or make decisions. Dreading going to work every day. Heart beating fast, a general sense of dread, sweating. And all of this was happening during COVID, during lockdown.
The thing that finally broke me was the insomnia. Getting maybe two hours a night — falling asleep at three, waking at five. After the second night, the third night, I started spiraling. That's when I reached out to my manager and went to the doctor.
What role did your manager and org structure play?
My manager wasn't the problem — he was actually pretty good. But he had 30 direct reports. He couldn't effectively support that many people. I was essentially on my own, operating independently inside this massive transformation program, and it was the culture and complexity of that program that was the real source.
When I did speak up, he acted immediately. Within a week I was completely out of the situation. But I think about the structure a lot. I believe strongly in optimal team sizes — seven, plus or minus two. Once you're managing more than about 12 people, it becomes very hard to be aware enough of what each person is going through to support them effectively.
What's the connection between autonomy and burnout?
Think about on-call. What causes burnout when you're responding to incidents? It's not just the incidents themselves. If every incident came along and you knew exactly what to do and could solve it yourself, the anxiety would be low. But the moment you lose that autonomy — when you have pressure to deliver but not the agency to actually do it — that's fertile ground for burnout.
That's what happened to me on that transformation program. Huge complexity, very little autonomy. And I think if organizations don't actively design against that, they're setting people up to burn out.
What did recovery actually look like?
It was about a year before I was a normal functioning human being again. The first step was going to the doctor, getting sleeping pills — I'd never had them before — and just getting some sleep. With sleep came a clearer head. With a clearer head I could start processing what was happening.
My manager moved me off the program within a week and reduced my duties. Then an opportunity came up to join a different team doing SRE enablement work — running workshops, helping teams understand their reliability. Very low stress. That distance was everything.
I also did counseling, tried medication for anxiety for six months. And slowly, over that year, my body calmed down. Not everyone has the luxury of removing themselves from the situation completely — I know that. But for me, that distance was the thing that made it possible to recover.
What should the industry actually do differently?
A few things. First, org structure and enterprise architecture matter more than we admit. Conway's Law means the way you design your systems reflects the way you design your teams. The more you can give small teams autonomy and agency to deliver value without depending on everyone else, the better. Big organizations use "we're too complex" as an excuse — but there are massive tech companies that have broken things up well enough that teams can actually own their work.
Second, slack time. Like a CPU — if you're 100% utilized, you have no capacity to respond to the unexpected, to reflect, to learn, to simplify, to innovate. You need space. We do creative work. You can't be creative under constant pressure. You need to be a little bored before things start occurring to you.
Third, compassionate leadership. If people trust you, they'll come to you early — before they're deep in burnout. If they don't, you'll only find out when it's already serious. Leaders need to model vulnerability and show they actually care.
And fourth, generative culture. Every organization puts "growth mindset" in their values. But how often are ideas actually shot down in meetings? How often do people defensively protect how things have always been done? A genuine culture of curiosity and compassion makes a real difference — because however complex the work is, if people have each other's backs, it helps.
What would you tell someone who thinks they might be burning out right now?
First: if you're experiencing serious physical or mental distress, go see a medical professional. I waited two weeks too long. It's a real thing. You're not making it up. Go get help.
If you can take time off, take it. Remove yourself from the situation, even temporarily. And if nothing's going to change long-term, seriously consider removing yourself permanently.
Once you're on the other side, do some work on yourself. For me, that meant finally acknowledging that I've always had anxiety — things going back to my teenage years I'd conveniently ignored. You're not going to cure it, but understanding yourself better and knowing how to manage it makes a huge difference. Therapy helps. Reading helps. The Stoics, for what it's worth, have a lot to say about training your mind to handle difficult situations.