It is all too common to see developers experience burnout from 60+ hour weeks in order to attempt to meet a deadline because managers were awful at planning. A

It is all too common to see developers experience burnout from 60+ hour weeks in order to attempt to meet a deadline because managers were awful at planning. Another pattern I've seen is the dreaded "artificial deadline" from on high. A project is structured to meet a tight deadline, resources are reallocated, nights and weekends are worked, stress ripples through the team. At great emotional expense the deadline is met, and the team submits the project, victorious. And then nothing is heard for several days. No feedback from the heavens. Inquiries are made, and it's discovered that, well, no, in fact there was no particular reason this project had to be finished by that particular date. Managers have moved on, checkboxes have been checked. Because the project was nominally successful, the episode is used to further confirm the management theory that "the dev team needs deadlines, even arbitrary ones, or things don't get done." The project size and time frame is now baked into management's institutional memory as the new baseline.