I think the important thing here is that there's a clear and obvious reason that the deadline exists, with demonstrable costs for missing that deadline. I think

I think the important thing here is that there's a clear and obvious reason that the deadline exists, with demonstrable costs for missing that deadline. I think a lot of people can get overly defensive about this because it's incredibly common for deadlines to exist primarily as an accountability / motivation mechanism - nothing really happens if the deadline isn't met, but to keep the team aligned we'll invent a deadline. Which isn't really a problem in and of itself - but when that's used to justify crunch time, it can lead to taking shortcuts and making sacrifices with real costs that were wholly unnecessary, and it's a huge morale hit to be sacrificing your free time to work for essentially no reason.