I don't think you can really understand what burnout is until you have actually experienced severe and complete burnout (aka chronic fatigue syndrome). For man

I don't think you can really understand what burnout is until you have actually experienced severe and complete burnout (aka chronic fatigue syndrome). For managers of highly creative and productive developers there are some very simple things you can do to help prevent burnout in your employees: [1] give them interesting stuff to work on, [2] give them freedom, and [3] don't be an asshole. Very simple in theory, but unfortunately most managers fail on at least 2 of the 3.