How CTOs can prevent burnout in tech teams
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How CTOs can prevent burnout in tech teams
Matt Saunders
Published on 1 December 2025
8 min read
Matt Saunders
Published on 1 December 2025
8 min read
CTO's seven step guide to preventing burnout
CTO's seven step guide to preventing burnout
Step 1: Build teams that match your needs
Step 2: Consider the importance of experienced leadership
Step 3: Working sustainably, all of the time
Step 4: Create psychological safety
Step 5: Improve the developer experience
Step 6: Balance results and health
Step 7: Continually develop your own skills
Frequently asked questions about tech team burnout
The human cost of digital transformation: An Adaptavist report
Discover the hidden drivers behind technostress—and learn how to get your teams on the path to technojoy.
In this 7-step guide, we explore the strategies CTOs can use to prevent burnout, support team well‑being, and create a healthier, more productive engineering culture.
Growth in companies is often measured in the expansion of their development teams, with many organisations hoping that scaling their teams will scale the delivery of value. But, what usually happens instead is that the scaling is not linear; with teams expected to work on projects that are increasingly niche and less directly connected to delivering value to the organisation's customers. Employees who grasp the purpose of their work are more than twice as likely (61% vs 29%) to feel energised and motivated by their work environment, according to our research.
Engineers suffer existentially and struggle to see their purpose, whilst feeling stifled due to a lack of autonomy. But burnout doesn't arrive suddenly. It builds slowly, hidden behind phrases like 'just one more sprint,' until your best engineers start doing the minimum expected of them or begin looking for new jobs.
Tech workers consistently report high rates of burnout. The constant switching between tasks, unrealistic deadlines, and rapid pace of change wear people down. The challenge is to grow your teams in a way that actually works for the long term.
Step 1: Build teams that match your needs
In a growth phase, as a CTO, it's important to figure out not only what your organisation needs in terms of scaling, but also how to add those people effectively in a way that doesn't break your existing people. Adding new specialists to cover specific situations in-depth may seem like the way to go, but this often creates silos and friction, which can hinder internal communication and workflow. Instead, look for people with deep expertise in one area who can also contribute across other areas when needed.
Working in small, cross-functional teams and applying agile principles can help prevent burnout. Splitting work into manageable chunks and allowing the team to self-assign this work across a group of T-shaped people, who are subject-matter experts in at least one area and knowledgeable or skilled in several others, provides a fluid and human way of spreading the load. When someone needs time off or struggles with their workload, others can help without stopping the entire project. They understand how different parts of the system connect and can communicate across disciplines. Reducing dependencies between teams gives engineers much more autonomy and sets them up to deliver the right thing with less friction.
Step 2: Consider the importance of experienced leadership
Good teams run well with a blend of experienced and new people. Teams with happy engineers need a blend of senior people who understand the technology in play, who can also set sensible expectations with clients, and then build up the core strength of the team through pairing seniority with exuberance. Good leaders also look for the signs of burnout, spotting when productivity or morale might take a dive and doing something about that as early as possible. Protecting the team by working with the business to come up with realistic delivery goals, and giving everyone a chance to develop their skills with the right blend of project work and personal development, really helps here.
Step 3: Working sustainably, all of the time
You can't sprint continuously. With so much pressure from market forces and the business as a whole, many technical teams consider constant urgency as normal; however, it can destroy people over time. As your company grows, teams need sustainable work rhythms, regular time to address technical debt, and protected periods for focused work.
Stop measuring success purely by speed. Yes, shipping quickly matters, but so does building something that won't fall over in six months because nobody had time to do it properly. Build in real slack time, not so people can slack off, but so they have space to see the big picture. This means meeting-free days, buffer time between projects, and space to think and solve problems properly.
Step 4: Create psychological safety
It's not the only factor, but actively working to ensure everyone can work psychologically safely really does prevent burnout. When developers feel comfortable speaking up about unrealistic deadlines, questioning poor decisions, and admitting when they struggle, problems can be identified and solved much faster than when everyone remains quiet. People who feel safe at work are more productive and creative.
Step 5: Improve the developer experience
Good internal tooling, which is calibrated for developers to work with the tools instead of fighting them, and having friction-free and reliable testing and deployment pipelines, removes impediments from teams working productively, safely and happily. New team members can contribute quickly rather than spending forever just getting things set up. Investing in the developer experience protects people's well-being, as they don't lose time fighting dissonant workflows that weren't designed with them in mind.
Step 6: Balance results and health
As a CTO, you need results from your teams. But you can't just ignore their mental health, expect them to get on with it with a 'well, that's the job!' mentality. Burned-out developers make mistakes, lack creativity, and the good ones will eventually leave for somewhere that values them, taking their knowledge with them.
Focus on clarity rather than just capacity. People need well-defined goals, clear priorities, and the ability to say no when incoming requests don't match these priorities. Confusion and complexity are exhausting, and your developers will have to waste their energy on this rather than delivering value. Minimise context switching, because every task switch costs time and mental energy. Reduce unnecessary toil... could that meeting be an email? On average, knowledge workers spend 50 hours a week in meetings.
Celebrate outcomes rather than hours worked. Nobody looks back fondly on 60-hour work weeks. Instead, celebrate project milestones, positive feedback, and individual growth. Be honest about constraints, involve teams in decisions, and genuinely care about their well-being. This is not just soft, cuddly management; it's a strategic gambit to get the best out of people and deliver better value.
Step 7: Continually develop your own skills
Keep developing as a leader by looking outward to how others are doing it. Join meetup groups and chat informally with your peers, acknowledging that everyone has similar problems to solve. Attend conferences and stay hands-on with tools. Read widely. Books like Team Topologies, Accelerate and Sooner Safer Happier offer valuable and pragmatic insights into how to scale your teams without burning them out. Most importantly, listen to your people regularly.
The connection between meaningful work and avoiding burnout is direct. When people understand why their work matters, have clear goals, feel safe speaking honestly, and work at a sustainable pace, they tend to stay engaged. When they feel overwhelmed, confused about priorities, unable to voice concerns, or constantly rushed, they burn out. Your role as a CTO and leader is to create an environment where people can do work that matters without compromising their well-being in the process.
Frequently asked questions about preventing burnout in tech teams
How can CTOs identify early signs of developer burnout?
Early signs include declining productivity, increased errors, irritability, lack of engagement, and frequent absences. Regular check‑ins and monitoring workload patterns help spot issues sooner.
What steps can CTOs take to prevent burnout during rapid scaling?
CTOs can set realistic timelines, streamline processes, hire strategically, encourage rest, and build a culture that prioritises transparency and psychological safety.
Why is burnout prevention important for tech team performance?
Preventing burnout reduces turnover, improves code quality, boosts morale, and helps teams maintain consistent productivity—especially during periods of high growth.
The human cost of digital transformation: An Adaptavist report
Discover the hidden drivers behind technostress—and learn how to get your teams on the path to technojoy.
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Written by
DevOps Lead
From a background as a Linux sysadmin, Matt is an authority in all things DevOps. At Adaptavist and beyond, he champions DevOps ways of working, helping teams maximise people, process and technology to deliver software efficiently and safely.
Digital transformation
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