I Love My Job and It's Exhausting

I heard something on "The Diary of a CEO" podcast recently that stopped me cold:

"I love my job, and I can't turn it off even if I wanted to."

Fuck. That's me.

I do love my job. Being an engineering manager is genuinely fulfilling. Helping my team grow, solving complex problems, building things that matter - I wouldn't trade it.

And it's also exhausting in a way nobody warned me about.

Not the "I worked long hours" exhausting. Not the "that meeting could have been an email" exhausting.

The kind of exhausting where your brain never stops. Where you carry everyone's weight. Where you're always on, even when you're off.

You Don't Just Carry Your Own Load

Here's what they don't tell you: You don't just carry your own work anymore.

You carry your team's issues. Their blockers. Their struggles. Their career anxieties. Their interpersonal conflicts.

You carry your peers' problems too. The other EMs who need to vent. The cross-functional tensions. The org-level stuff that's brewing.

It compounds.

One of my team members told me recently he was going through a divorce. He wasn't seeing his kid for a while.

As a dad, that hit me hard. I felt it. Not just as his manager, but as another parent who can't imagine that pain.

That's the job though. You feel for your team. You understand their struggles. That empathy is essential to being a good manager.

But the emotional load is a lot.

The Browser Tabs That Never Close

My team is working on five projects right now.

Each person focuses on one, maybe two. They can go deep. They can think about their piece and do it well.

I need to hold all five in my head. Plus the three projects the product manager is discussing with me for next quarter.

That's eight projects in my mental stack. At the same time. Constantly.

And it's not just the current work. It's the projects that just finished. Analyzing what went well. How we can improve. Did we miss anything? What are the learnings?

It's like browser tabs. Except they never close. They're just always there, in the background, taking up mental RAM.

The Brain That Won't Shut Up

It's constant. My brain just fires bits of info all the time.

"What if we apply that formula there? Would it solve that issue?"

"What if we do a retro for this project? What would my learnings be?"

"I really want to solve that little UI bug. How could I do it quickly?"

"Oh, we still need to do the Postgres update."

It's 2am and I'm lying in bed thinking about sprint planning. I'm in the shower and suddenly solving someone's architecture problem. I'm playing with my toddler and part of my brain is still working through a team dynamic issue.

The podcast was right. I love my job. And I can't turn it off even if I wanted to.

The Toddler Helps (Sort Of)

Having a toddler at home forces me to step up at home. I have to switch off work time. There's no choice.

If anything, it makes me faster at context-switching. When I'm home, I'm present.

But my mind is still there sometimes.

The phone keeps buzzing. Slack notifications. Incidents. Questions. Updates.

Even when I'm not looking at it, I know it's there. I know something might need me. I know someone might be stuck.

That's the weight. Not the actual time spent working, but the mental space it occupies. Always.

The Part They Don't Tell You

When people talk about burnout in engineering management, they talk about bad managers, toxic orgs, unreasonable hours.

They don't talk about this.

They don't talk about the exhaustion that comes from caring. From being good at the job. From actually giving a shit about your team and the work.

Nobody warns you that loving your job doesn't make it less heavy.

Nobody tells you that empathy has a cost.

Nobody mentions that your brain will hold eight projects at once while each of your team members holds one.

Nobody says "by the way, you're going to carry everyone's emotional load and there's nowhere for you to put it down."

The podcast also talked about that - carrying the emotional weight for your team. How you hold space for their struggles, their stress, their fears. And then... what? Where does that go?

You just carry it. That's the job.

This Is Just the Reality

I'm not writing this to complain. I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm not even looking for solutions.

I'm writing this because somebody needs to name it.

This is what the job actually costs when you care.

You can't turn it off. You carry everyone's load. Your brain never stops. The emotional weight is real.

And you do it anyway. Because the work matters. Because your team matters. Because helping people grow and building things that make a difference is worth it.

But it's exhausting.

Both things are true.

I love my job. And it's exhausting.

If you're an EM feeling this same weight - the always-on brain, the emotional load, the tabs that never close - you're not alone.

This is the part they don't tell you about.

Maybe if they did, you'd still become an EM anyway. Because the work is worth it.

But at least you'd know what you're signing up for.

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Let's connect on LinkedIn—I'm always looking to connect with other EMs who get it.