An aside, though I think a worthy one; my favorite casual rebuttal to the pretentious phrase "knowledge worker" exists here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yDXPkor-Wxk

On topic though, I think that to the extent the New Yorker is describing the subset of technical work that many HN participants are engaged in, burn out was already a big problem pre-pandemic. So it's not a complete surprise for burnout to be on the rise during a such a global level catastrophe, even though many in tech have done well for themselves with steady high salary throughout the duration of the pandemic