That doesn't sound like burnout. It sounds like you lost faith in shitty managers and left. Trust me, this is an experience that almost everyone will have.
The movie portrayal of success is that you become someone's protege and he takes you under his wing. Bud Fox meets Gordon Gekko. The douchebag character that Shia LaBeouf played in that execrable sequel gets a $1.5M check for kissing a suicidal old man on the top of the head. The real world trajectory is rockier. No one powerful gives a shit about you, no one powerful looks out for you. You work your ass off anyway, because it's the right thing to do. You do your best to deliver on promises you make to colleagues, because it's the right thing to do. You get really, really good at a few important skills (written communication, computer programming, and social skills are all very important). If your boss takes interest in your education and career development, you reciprocate with extreme diligence and loyalty. If he doesn't, you steal an education and find ways to learn anyway. Self-mentoring. That's how most successful people will actually come up.
I don't like the term burnout. It suggests finality. It's an artifact of the Western obsession with age and entropy and transience, the idea that people who excel can only persist for so long. It's not true. There's such a thing as "motivational crisis", but it's usually transient. Like earthquakes, most are harmless, and the only ones that are remembered in 10,000 years are those that produce features of beauty. As I get older, they come on quicker but they're of much shorter duration. That tends to be a general pattern. Permanent burnout? No such thing. All fear comes from a fear of permanence (including fear of death) but Buddhism teaches there is no such thing and therefore nothing to fear.
The movie portrayal of success is that you become someone's protege and he takes you under his wing. Bud Fox meets Gordon Gekko. The douchebag character that Shia LaBeouf played in that execrable sequel gets a $1.5M check for kissing a suicidal old man on the top of the head. The real world trajectory is rockier. No one powerful gives a shit about you, no one powerful looks out for you. You work your ass off anyway, because it's the right thing to do. You do your best to deliver on promises you make to colleagues, because it's the right thing to do. You get really, really good at a few important skills (written communication, computer programming, and social skills are all very important). If your boss takes interest in your education and career development, you reciprocate with extreme diligence and loyalty. If he doesn't, you steal an education and find ways to learn anyway. Self-mentoring. That's how most successful people will actually come up.
I don't like the term burnout. It suggests finality. It's an artifact of the Western obsession with age and entropy and transience, the idea that people who excel can only persist for so long. It's not true. There's such a thing as "motivational crisis", but it's usually transient. Like earthquakes, most are harmless, and the only ones that are remembered in 10,000 years are those that produce features of beauty. As I get older, they come on quicker but they're of much shorter duration. That tends to be a general pattern. Permanent burnout? No such thing. All fear comes from a fear of permanence (including fear of death) but Buddhism teaches there is no such thing and therefore nothing to fear.