The US has workers who, on average, work longer hours than anywhere else in the world. Salaries, esp. in STEM, and esp. on the mid-to-high-end, are also wayyy higher than anywhere else.

If you want to make that fat US developer salary be ready to put in the work. Presumably Disney has the money to throw at you via salary... but they're going to get their money's worth.

But aren't these high salaries spent on high living costs as well? Presumably, the places where you make a lot of dev money are also expensive to live at, no?

I often see these kind of bizarre reports about destructive US work culture. I would flat out refuse and probably get fired real quick.

It's a bad way to run a company, and if this is how they plan to run Disney+, it's going to be a disaster.

No, it is absolutely not the norm.