Linux model prone to burnout?

Posted Sep 15, 2025 7:56 UTC (Mon) by taladar (subscriber, #68407)
Parent article: Creating a healthy kernel subsystem community

Thinking about that whole bus factor issue, it seems to me that the Linux model with the hierarchy of individuals responsible for the entire thing, a whole subsystem, a whole part of a subsystem,... is inherently prone to problems like burnout since everything relies on individuals instead of teams that can take the load off any given individual depending on their need to recover for a while.

Linux model prone to burnout?

Posted Sep 15, 2025 14:32 UTC (Mon) by koverstreet (✭ supporter ✭, #4296) [Link]

You get burnout when you've been stuck doing things that have to be done for too long, to the point where you have no freedom for yourself in your day to day life.

The cause can be insufficient resources, in the more hobbyist/non corporate world. Or, in the corporate world, where it's just a job and I see people the most burned out - poor time management skills.

In the corporate world, there's chronically too many managers running around and too many meetings - leading to "when everything is a priority, nothing is" syndrome.

For me, I'm not feeling burned out - and I think that's in large part because I jealously and religiously protect my autonomy. And I've the other things that I've found help the most are the things no manager is going to ask you to do: spend time cleaning up the codebase, both for your own future sanity and to make easier for other people to contribute. And spending time on the community; getting people involved, teaching them what you do - it means there's more people to talk to about the cool stuff you're doing, and then those people start to do cool stuff all on their own.

Linux model prone to burnout?

Posted Sep 15, 2025 21:03 UTC (Mon) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

> it seems to me that the Linux model with the hierarchy of individuals

We are more and more a hierarchy of teams..

> of individuals responsible for ...

I think it is important to note that those individuals (or teams) take on that responsibility themselves, they don't have it imposed upon them by others. So they are free to relinquish it when it becomes a burden, either for a time or permanently.
I think it would be interesting to explore the dynamics of why they don't or when they do.