I've always been an optimistic and motivated person, so I can't speak for depression and laziness. But I can speak for burnout. For me, burnout is the result o

I've always been an optimistic and motivated person, so I can't speak for depression and laziness. But I can speak for burnout. For me, burnout is the result of a long period of intense work and effort that accomplishes little. I experienced this in my last job, where I was brought in to a specific purpose by a motivated boss who quit the company a few weeks later. The rest of the org was too bogged down with politics, lack of tech leadership, and other organizational issues. I put in a lot of effort as an individual SWE to fix bugs and help other teammates when they got stuck, but nobody else was putting in so much diligent effort for the sake of the team. I burned out and a t the same time realized that I was on the wrong team, when (1) people kept coming to me for help with the same things I'd already taught them in the past (2) I had way too many moments teaching other people how their own code works (code that they own, that I'd barely looked at) (3) too much energy was spent dealing with other teams rather than on our own team getting work done (4) I had three managers in 18 months (5) everything was owned by multiple teams, and I wore myself out working with too many components that should have been strictly divided between teams. I have since moved to a new team. This is a much better team -- no politics, no BS, just a few diligent individuals getting things done. But being on the right team doesn't fix burnout. I'm still burned out from my last job. I took the last six months to ramp up on my current job but I need to take time off soon.