My current workspace relies heavily on me, but I’m completely burned out. I don’t want to abandon the team, but staying is hurting me. How do you exit responsibly without guilt?
Edit: Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions. I decided to directly tell the management and step down from the current position because there is no point in staying and compromising my physical and mental health.

Vinay Rawat

A developer experiencing burnout seeks advice on how to leave a team that heavily depends on them without feeling guilty or abandoning colleagues. After receiving community feedback, they decided to communicate directly with management and step down from their position, prioritizing their physical and mental health over workplace obligations.

How do you leave a team that depends on you… when you’re burned out?

For me, the most important person in my life is me. This is not because of being selfish, but I can’t take care of others if I can’t take care of myself. How am I even supposed to help my team if I am burning out, risking to lose my health and end up in the hospital (or an asylum).
There are moments when sacrifices are needed, but for a business? Totally not worth it. I am just sacrificing my health so that someone else can earn more money. For me, moderation is key.
I used to stay till late at night at my job till one day I realized that what I am doing with my life and what will I live behind? It felt empty and I started crying. All my struggle would have only cost me my physical and emotional health. Since then I try to practice moderation. No one will build me a statue for risking my health for the company, and even if they did, that won’t help me, nor them.
Your team I guess is made up of adults, not children, they should learn to take care of themselves. Dependency upon another is not healthy after a certain age. You don’t do them any good by making them relying on you all the time anyway.
At least, this my experience and how I think.

Honestly it would be stupid for me to assume that i can give you a good answer because i do not know you or your current situation, but an idea could be to work less if that is possible. Another idea could be to tell your employer that you are leaving in 3 months so that they can prepare for that.
Edit: Also another important thing could be to change the way you work. Instead of doing the things you are told you could show others how they could do it, thus making the team less reliant on you.

Document all things for which your team depends on you then tell them to refer and see if that helps, list down areas where team depends on you ask management if you can train a member from for area to handle in your absense.
Take a break for 5-10 days, prepare your exit strategies during that time.
if you put your papers your managemnt will do the same anyways. All you can do is document, Train or give KT 's so when you leave there no guilt. you did all you can. it’s not your company, not your project. (unless team, management is really good to you).
Remember your health is more important than anything in the world. actually it’s up to them to find your replacement and train him. There is no need to feel guilty for choosing your well-being over work. Best of luck. Hope that helps.

Feeling burned out doesn’t necessarily mean you need to leave. What you may need is to slow down for some time.
For me, leaving was not an option. What I did (after some trial and error and if you’ve got a healthy, sane team at least - this is a must), I took the PM on the side and had a little “heart to heart” about how I feel about my participation in the project, feeling burned out and the need to slow down a bit.
You need to think about what would help you. In the end, we arranged things a bit differently. I took some time off to rest properly, we’ve started prioritizing tasks better, some tasks are being delegated to other team members after evaulating them (this also helps spread knowledge and awareness), just to create a bit more “breathing room”.
It’s a slow process, but I feel it works, in my case at least. Sometimes you just need that instead of flipping the table. If you have a good team, they’ll understand and try to help. 🙂

This is late as you already took your decision, but I’ll add my 5 cents. I sort of was in your position, and I had an urge to quit but everyone around me, including my family, told me not to. I stayed for another year, one too many. The net result was 1.5 years in therapy, 2+ years into psychiatric consultancy to undo the damage.
It’s just not worth it. You work to live, you don’t live to work, nothing is worth putting oneself into an early grave.