I didn't notice our team was burning out. The commit history did.
It started as an idle observation — I was scrolling through a repo's activity graph looking for something unrelated, and noticed a pattern I hadn't consciously clocked before: commits at 11 PM. Then 1 AM. Then a Sunday afternoon that was supposed to be nobody's problem but somehow was. Not from one person. From most of the team.
Nobody had said anything was wrong. Standups were normal. Sprint velocity looked fine, maybe even good. But the timestamps didn't lie, and once I saw the pattern, I couldn't unsee it.
The Illusion of "Fine"
Here's the thing about remote engineering teams: the signals that used to tell you someone was struggling just don't exist anymore. In an office, you'd notice if someone was still at their desk at 8 PM, or if the usual joker in standup had gone quiet for a week. Remotely, all you get is output — PRs merged, tickets closed, Slack messages sent at reasonable-looking hours (timezone permitting).
