Here, here. There are essentially two forces at play that drive the current default work culture -- 1) Fetishization of work itself -- which I happily stole f

Here, here. There are essentially two forces at play that drive the current default work culture -- 1) Fetishization of work itself -- which I happily stole from an article posted on HN some time ago. 2) Arbitrary deadlines -- these usually come from the business side ("suits") in collusion with one's superiors. Notice I said arbitrary. If the competition has rolled out a new feature that seems to have a payoff, then a crash program - pardon the pun - might have justification. But a lot of times deadlines are set by a manager's vacation calendar or horoscope, who knows?