1. A method for allocating work items in a work stealing data structure, comprising: setting a barrier pointer to partition the work stealing data structure into a public section and a private section, the private section comprising one or more work items to be performed by an owning processor and the public section comprising one or more work items to be performed by one or more foreign processors; executing a steal operation via a first foreign processor of the one or more foreign processors to acquire, by the first foreign processor, a first work item of the one or more work items comprised in the public section; setting an advertising flag upon detecting an attempt to perform a second steal operation by a second foreign processor of the one or more foreign processors when no work items are remaining in the public section to generate a set advertising flag; and moving the barrier pointer to cause a second work item comprised in the private section to become comprised in the public section based at least in part upon detecting the set advertising flag, at least some of the method implemented at least in part via a processing unit.