Anyone else noticing uneven workload distribution in tech teams?

I’ve been talking to a few friends working in mid-size tech companies, and a pattern keeps coming up.

In the same team, you’ll often find:

• One or two people constantly overloaded, handling critical tasks, firefighting, and staying late
• Others technically “on the team” but sitting idle or on the bench for weeks with minimal assignments

What’s interesting is that this isn’t usually about skill or intent. Most of the time:

• Managers rely on task completion tools that don’t reflect real effort or cognitive load
• Knowledge stays concentrated with a few people, so work keeps flowing to them
• No one has visibility into who is close to burnout and who has capacity
• Reassigning work feels risky because quality and context aren’t visible

Over time, the overloaded folks burn out or leave, while underutilized employees disengage — and leadership only notices once productivity drops or attrition spikes.

Curious if others have seen this “invisible imbalance” in their teams.
How do companies currently identify and fix this before it turns into burnout or attrition?

Author: HuckleberryNo6642