Not sure if it's what was meant, but an HOA board isn't too far off of that description. In my experience, the job is necessary but relatively thankless and uncompensated. No one wanted to volunteer their time, and I was interested in cash flow and a building improvement so I served for a year. The only other board members ran uncontested and also had very demanding jobs outside of the association. Everyone else was happy to let us take care of all the minutiae of coordinating maintenance, budget, property management, etc. It was a lot of work.

So to answer your question, I've observed that it attracts people who are already ambitious in other aspects of their life (and maybe a little too generous with their own time), and the extra work it entails compounds with their other commitments which can lead to burnout.

I've observed the opposite.

A realtor once told me that "the only people who serve on HOA boards are people who have no power anywhere else in their life."

Since then I've learned how shockingly true that is.

It's often people who have a hard time saying no who end up spread thin over a number of gigs - this leads to burn out. Or not showing up to meetings... The 3/5 of the board who can't be rounded up are also signed up for too many things.

When I was chair of a small non-profit (currently still a board member after a hiatus for a few years), I'm not sure I'd have described it as burnout but increased lack of engagement and interest definitely became a problem over time. When we did require in-person votes/quorums, that did become a problem because it usually required traveling for most board members 2 or 3 weekends a year.

At some point, while I was on hiatus, the board did change its rules to allow telephone and, later, Zoom attendance which has been IMO something of a mixed bag but probably inevitable especially post-COVID. I'd like people to get together in person more but it's harder than when the board skewed younger; people have more family responsibilities at this point and, of course at this point, a lot of people just have less patience about getting together physically when business can mostly be taken care of over a couple hour Zoom call.

Fortunately, the non-profit's regular activities and finances have been on a pretty even keel so the board mostly just keeps an eye out for problems.

IME: because the people who are ok with abandoning things are gone, and people who are not ok with abandoning things are stuck there due to some kind of fucked-upness (in the grandparent, lack of quorum) that makes it impossible to 'properly' depart until they just can't do it any more. I chaired an organization for four years (in a planned term of two years) and had nobody interested in being my successor. Finally I said "I can't be involved in this any more" and basically disappeared on them.

Non-profit boards have so many varied issues it's a little silly, but since the pay is low or non-existent you end up with a lot of them run by the only person willing to be nominated.

I have seen the only person nominated to positions get elected scores of times because the depth of potential candidates is like 100 max and 99 of them have jobs and families or just don't feel like being responsible for it. A non-profit requires someone to deal with taxes and tax-status forms and real estate maybe and certainly insurance, someone has to be on the hook for it being correct. I don't know how to get insurance for a non-profit and would need advice on what even is necessary, if I don't know that I'd be a fool to take the role and put my entire family at potential legal risk.

It's a stretch to get someone to be on the hook for that unless there's an existing healthy board. Plus no one wants to volunteer for a position where they have responsibilities but no control or ability to make decisions, so if the leadership are control freaks it's an absolute depressing nightmare.

I was treasurer of a small sports club non profit. Thankless job with monetary liability. Also tried to get the board to manage a small GDrive for group documents.

Bleh. No one cares as much as the board.