“We’re Not Just Fighting Hackers — We’re Fighting the Clock”: Burnout Deepens Among Canada’s Retail IT Workers

Calgary, AB —

As Canada’s retailers race to modernize their digital infrastructure, a quieter, more personal crisis is taking shape behind the servers — and it’s not one that can be patched with a software update.

Retail IT professionals across the country say they are facing crippling levels of burnout, driven by unrelenting demands for speed, security, and uptime. From frontline pharmacy platforms to national inventory systems, the people who keep Canada’s digital retail infrastructure running say they are stretched thin, overlooked, and on the verge of breaking.

“We’re not just fighting hackers — we’re fighting the clock,” says Devika Ramesh, a senior infrastructure engineer based in Calgary. “The deadlines keep moving up. The threats keep scaling. The downtime gets shorter. But our capacity? It’s flatlined.”

Ramesh works for PharmaNorth, one of Canada’s largest retail pharmacy chains. She agreed to speak with ODTN News under her own name — a rarity in an industry where silence is often expected during crises.

Migrations on Fast-Forward

Much of the pressure, Ramesh says, stems from a wave of rapid-fire digital transformation.

“We were supposed to migrate over 70 systems in 18 months. They’ve asked us to do it in eight. Legacy software, modern cloud tools, predictive inventory engines — everything’s converging, and no one’s breathing.”

While cybersecurity has dominated headlines, insiders like Ramesh say the operational load — not the threat landscape — is what’s burning teams out.

“It’s the blur, not the breach”

“People think the hard part is dealing with a cyberattack,” Ramesh explains. “But it’s the blur. The constant switching between tasks. Patch a system at 2 a.m., fix a pricing model at 8 a.m., do compliance documentation by noon, and prep a rollback before dinner. It never stops.”

According to a recent internal survey conducted by the fictional National Alliance for Retail IT Professionals (NARITP), 68% of retail IT workers in Canada reported “moderate to severe burnout symptoms” in the last six months.

A Widening Disconnect

Part of the issue, experts say, is that IT teams are often tasked with managing systems they didn’t build, integrating vendor software under relentless time pressure and with limited support.

“It’s like trying to renovate an airport while planes are still landing,” says Ramesh. “And when something goes wrong — a pharmacy outage, a delivery delay — people assume it’s your fault, even if it was a third-party glitch no one warned you about.”

Despite growing acknowledgment of the burnout problem in other sectors, there has been no coordinated federal response or guidance for tech professionals working in retail, logistics, or consumer healthcare.

A Fragile Foundation

“Everyone’s talking about resilience at the system level,” Ramesh says. “But people forget that humans are infrastructure too.”

While retailers continue to invest in AI forecasting tools, zero-trust architecture, and centralized platforms, some insiders warn that failure could come not from a breach — but from exhaustion.

“My team runs in crisis mode 60% of the time,” she says. “At some point, something gives.”

Breaking down systems, one layer at a time. — Mira Evans

ODTN News’ Ayaan Chowdhury contributed to this report.