The leadership burnout no one talks about: IT executives who are afraid to ask for help

A CIO client of mine drove himself to the emergency room recently, convinced he was having a heart attack. After many hours of testing, the doctor diagnosed him with a panic attack. IT executives are burning out at alarming rates. Foundry’s 2025 State of the CIO research found that 15% of IT leaders describe themselves as burned out, and another 33% report experiencing some burnout in their current role.

Many are hiding burnout from nearly everyone in their lives. As an executive coach who’s worked one-on-one with more than 1,000 tech professionals and leaders, I’m often one of the only people they tell.

In the months before his hospital visit, the CIO was leading his company through more than a half-dozen mergers and acquisitions. He worked seven days a week, including nights and weekends, and he shared with me how much he missed having time with his school-aged children. Nobody at work knew how much he was struggling.

The panic attack became the wake-up call that pushed him to finally address his mental health and burnout. He scaled back at work, started prioritizing his mental and physical health, and spent more time with his wife and kids.

His story is dramatic, and not all burnout leads to a hospital visit, but I’ve seen that the pattern behind overwork is more common than many leaders realize. In coaching sessions, I hear dozens of IT executives describe the same exhaustion and the same reluctance to tell anyone about it.

Why IT executives hide their burnout

When I ask executives who they’ve told about the fact that they’re running on fumes, the answer is usually me and maybe their spouse.

Their boss is the CEO, and they tell me that in their experience, the CEO doesn’t typically have the time or the interest to discuss their mental health. Their peers are fellow C-suite executives, and they worry about being judged if they disclose their concerns. They tell me it feels inappropriate to confide in their direct reports.

The result is a profound sense of loneliness at the top of the IT organization, and it can persist for years before anyone notices, if anyone ever does.

Several forces make this harder in IT than in other functions. Many IT executives came up through deeply technical ranks, where 12- to 14-hour days were normal and expected. They built their careers trying to outwork and out-code the people around them, and they carried that work ethic into their executive role. Because relentless hours are so familiar, many of them don’t even register their burnout as a problem.

Technical culture only compounds the silence. Engineering and IT organizations are notorious for avoiding conversations about feelings. At the same time, few IT leaders have practiced saying they’re struggling, and many worry that talking about it will be read as weakness.

IT also occupies an unusual position in the enterprise. As one client put it to me recently, IT rarely makes the company money in a direct way. Rather, it serves as what she described as the company’s internal customer service department, absorbing pressure and complaints from every stakeholder while the credit flows to the revenue-generating functions.

Layoffs have added even more weight, which few outsiders ever see. Tech companies cut more than 120,000 jobs in 2025 alone, according to Layoffs.fyi, and the cuts have continued into 2026. My clients consistently report that IT departments have taken some of the hardest hits within their organizations. Many of the IT executives I coach have helped make the call—in partnership with their CEO, board, CFO, CHRO, and executive peers—to cut hundreds or even thousands of jobs. They carry those decisions, coupled with their own survivor’s guilt, and the combination is taking a real toll on their mental health. They share with me that they feel they can’t talk about that toll because they were part of the decision.

Lastly, AI pressure now sits on top of everything else. One executive I coach watched other departments shrink while their own organization more than doubled in size to absorb an AI transformation mandate from the CEO and investors. CIOs are often expected to deliver in weeks what realistically takes months or years. CIO.com has reported that rising AI expectations without adequate guidance are driving employee burnout, and the research matches what I hear in my coaching sessions. A July 2025 study from the Upwork Research Institute found that the workers reporting the biggest productivity gains from AI are also the ones who are most burned out. Among that group, 88% report burnout, and they’re twice as likely to consider quitting as workers who are less productive with AI.

What hiding burnout costs executives and their organizations

I see executives come to sessions exhausted, week after week. Several of my clients have needed extended personal or medical leave to recover from chronic, extreme burnout. The comparison I share with clients is simple, yet it resonates: a genuine week-long vacation once or twice a year costs far less than being out of the office for months. In the most serious cases, executives risk losing their roles altogether when unresolved burnout erodes their performance.

My clients aren’t alone. ISACA’s 2025 global survey of nearly 8,000 technology professionals found that heavy workloads (54%) and long hours (43%) are the top work-related stressors in IT.

Burnout also affects executives’ families. Leaders tell me they’re doing all of this for their family, then disclose in the same session that they have little time with that family. They tell me their spouse says they work too much. They also share that they haven’t taken a vacation in years and that they feel they must be on their phone even when they’re with their kids in order to keep up with demands.

The same instinct to hide often shows up in how executives seek help, too. When burned-out IT executives first sit down with me, they usually say they want support with career strategy, communication, or confidence. When we get into it, we discover that underneath their dissatisfaction is exhaustion they’ve been concealing, sometimes even from themselves.

I say this without judgment because I’ve lived it. Before I ran my coaching practice full time, I worked 60-hour weeks at my university job while building my business on nights and weekends. I’ve since written openly about being a recovering workaholic. It took me too long to finally admit that I was burned out and ask for help, so I understand why people hesitate.

What asking for help can look like

The reframe I use most often is a technology metaphor that IT executives immediately understand. When an iPhone receives a software update, it doesn’t mean the phone is broken. It simply means the demands on the device have changed and it needs new capabilities to keep performing. I remind clients that the same is true for them. There’s nothing wrong with them, it’s just that their role now demands capabilities it didn’t a year ago, and asking for help is how they build them.

I also remind IT leaders that success at the senior executive level requires far less technical wizardry than they assume. The higher a leader climbs, the smaller the technical share of the job typically becomes, and much more of the role involves communicating and leading people. Asking for support with this side of the job is a normal part of leading at this level.

When clients are ready to ask for help, I often suggest two starting points.

The first is finding community with fellow executives. This can take many forms. Some of the IT executives I work with join Slack groups or informal meetups, while others choose to invest in formal peer networks that meet on a regular cadence with a facilitator. The common thread is that they look for support beyond their organization, from people who “get it.”

The second is therapy, which I recommend regularly. Coaching and therapy serve different purposes, and senior leaders working through burnout often benefit from both.

My client’s health scare became the moment he gave himself permission to ask for help. My hope is that IT executives reach out long before their minds and bodies reach that point. In my experience, the leaders who ask for help early are the ones who stay healthy and remain in their roles, and their organizations are better for it.