Tech Worker Sentiment Survey Overview
A large-scale survey of over 8,200 tech workers reveals complex feelings about careers and work in 2025, including burnout, optimism, leadership, and work environment preferences.
Key Findings
Burnout
- 44.67% of respondents experience significant burnout.
- Burnout correlates with pessimism and quitting intentions.
- Smaller companies report lower burnout; midsize companies show a spike.
- Full-time employees face nearly twice the burnout of contractors.
- Hardware and infrastructure roles have the highest burnout.
- Founders and engineers report much lower burnout levels.
Optimism and Career Outlook
- 58.5% optimistic about their job role; 54.8% optimistic about their career.
- Significant decline in optimism over the past year, except among founders and new grads.
- 32% are more optimistic about their current role than their career; 22.8% vice versa.
- Startup founders are the happiest, with highest optimism, job enjoyment, and lowest burnout.
Leadership Effectiveness
- Only 26.6% rate their managers as highly effective; 42.3% see them as ineffective.
- Effective managers strongly increase engagement (+48%), belonging (+63%), and job enjoyment (+62%), and reduce burnout (-31%).
- Workers with poor managers are 4.3x more likely to consider leaving.
- Remote leadership rated slightly more effective than in-office leadership.
- Leadership perception declines as company size grows.
Work Location and Environment
- Over 50% work primarily remotely; only ~5% always in-office.
- Job enjoyment, burnout, engagement, and belonging are similar across work setups.
- Hybrid workers report the highest job satisfaction; in-office workers feel more optimistic about career
