I recommend to devs to take this a little bit farther. If a dev is willing to work overtime "if we have immediate deadlines", management will increase the freq

I recommend to devs to take this a little bit farther. If a dev is willing to work overtime "if we have immediate deadlines", management will increase the frequency and urgency of deadlines. Rather commit to working overtime if the company/team will miss a deadline that you committed to for a reason that you are responsible for. That closes temptation to create deadlines that you never committed to. An example: Manager: Dev, we need you to stay extra because we've got to get Facebook Connect integrated by tomorrow! Dev: I wish we'd talked about if that was a reasonable expectation given the other development priorities we have for this week. Next time we have a feature with a deadline, ask me in advance and I can tell you the earliest date I can guarantee it can be finished by. Then be reasonable, with a good buffer, about future deadline commitments. If you make a commitment, keep it. If you have a deadline commitment, and a new "urgent" request comes in, you can then ask the manager if they'd rather you delay the new request to honor the first deadline, or if they'd like to push back the deadline of the original request. Using this I never worked evenings or weekends when I was an employee