Drupal and Developer Burnout

While not strictly a Drupal topic, the issue of developer burnout affects us all. Community maintainers and project developers alike sometimes get a little more than just "tired" of our work; we can be legitimately burned out.

This session is meant to discuss developer burnout and how to identify the symptoms of burnout and how to address it (but not to commiserate or complain). It will also examine Hero Culture as an anti-pattern to community participation.

Developer burnout can be caused by "bad" projects, but can it can also be self-inflicted. Drupal makes so many things simple, that it's sometimes easy to over-commit to a feature set for a project. Sometimes scope creep on a project can happen for the same reason, and while the client or a project manager is saying "there's a Drupal module that does X," a Drupal developer may be saying "that won't work!" And sometimes, life just happens, but the issue queue doesn't stop growing.

Whatever the cause of burnout, this session hopes to:

• Identify some symptoms and ways to alleviate them.
• Help prevent burnout on your next project.
• Examine "Hero Culture" as an anti-pattern.
• Determine who's responsibility is it, anyway?