Updated 1 month ago
Modeling SOC analyst burnout: a community survey
A quantitative read on 211 SOC analysts on alert volume, on-call cadence, and self-reported burnout — and what improved retention.
OSCI Editorial
Collaboratively written by mentors and contributors.
Security operations centers run on people. This study surveyed 211 working SOC analysts across 23 organizations between January and March of this year, asking about alert volume, rotation cadence, manager-1:1 frequency, and self-reported burnout markers.
The headline result is unsurprising in shape and surprising in scale: analysts averaging more than 90 alerts per shift report burnout markers at 3.4x the rate of those averaging under 30. Manager-1:1 frequency is the single largest mitigating variable — weekly 1:1s cut self-reported burnout by 41% at the high-volume end.
We publish the cleaned dataset and the analysis notebook so the community can reproduce, extend, and disagree.
Methodology
Self-reported online survey distributed through three professional Slack communities. n=211. Burnout markers via Maslach short-form. Limitations: self-selection bias toward respondents already engaged with mentorship communities; English-language only. Anonymized dataset published at github.com/daddy-development/OSCI-research-2026-soc-burnout.