> How else could burned out developers organize to create a space for recovery?
There are thousands of ways to organize people, from TAZ's[1] to 12-step programs[2] to Kibbutzim[3].
A company as it's done in the modern US is an oligarchy in which leadership threatens the underlings with withholding the means of meeting their basic needs if they don't meet demands. It's fundamentally inherently stressful to be an underling in such an organization, because you don't have freedom or security.
Your can say, "what if we make the oligarchs kinder" but that's not a real option: if kind people are starting an organization from scratch they don't set themselves up as oligarchs. There is that company that came up on HN a few weeks back where everyone was paid the same, but they made no pretense that if that model becomes unsustainable they'll abandon it.
And sure, you can fundamentally change the structure to make it more equitable, but at that point it's different enough from a company in the normal sense of the word, that I don't think I'd call it a company, even if it technically files articles of incorporation.
employees behind a company labor to create value, they don't necessarily define the company - the owners do. owners set the policies, hours, hire and fire to promote a particular culture (or set the rules or expectations to). this power imbalance between employer and employee is exactly where the burnout tends to happen.
How else could burned out developers organize to create a space for recovery?
*edit: to mention the elephant in the room: caring without control results in self-doubt. What does it mean for humans to be 'self'?