I've worked at various points in a startup, banking and aircraft design/manufacture. My wife is a civil engineer. I've seen Crunch Mode in some form in all of t

I've worked at various points in a startup, banking and aircraft design/manufacture. My wife is a civil engineer. I've seen Crunch Mode in some form in all of them but the rationale will differ. For example, my wife did both offshore and tunnel engineering and would work very long shifts plus be on call between them. The main difference with the sort of thing I've done in software is pay: she received overtime even as a professional engineer and this was the main draw, particularly offshore. In aircraft design, there was never any crunch on the actual design because it was pointless; the review and audit processes went on for years. However, we'd work extended hours for trade shows etc but it was much less common than in banking or the startup.