I once interviewed with a company that had built in "crunch mode" into their release schedule. I told them that I regarded relying on "crunch mode" as a strateg

I once interviewed with a company that had built in "crunch mode" into their release schedule. I told them that I regarded relying on "crunch mode" as a strategy smelled of management failure & if they couldn't get product out the door without it then they had a problem. Needless to say the interview went downhill from there. Every programmer recognises there might be times when something has gone horribly wrong, or there's an immovable deadline that has to be met. Actually planning to put your team through that amount of stress on a regular basis for no particular reason other than some arbitrary "deadline"? Well, some people were obviously happy to sign up to wear a "kick me" sign on their backs, but it wasn't going to be me. (Yeah, I know all the arguments about startups / success / equity / return on time invested etc etc. Lets just say that they didn't apply in this case.)