I believe working on the weekends is a failure, and we should treat it like any other engineering failure. Why did it happen, how can we improve things so this failure doesn't happen again. Track and assign AIs, and hold people accountable to them.

I think, like most things, this is dependent on circumstances. Planned weekend work (downtime needed, pre-planned release, or timing with external factors) isn't always a failure.

Separate but related, an engineering team that is able to coordinate aggressive cycles on a regular basis, with built-in time to recover, is probably more productive over the long term than one that can't.

Amen. Working more than 9-5 four days a week is a travesty. (yes, I said four)

Once you start working weekends for a release it usually will become the norm. You can deal with this by putting a price tag on overwork, e.g. two times salary on weekends or comp time. Don’t give away things for free.

I'm happy to deal with emergencies 1-2 year. Things go wrong sometimes.

It's never become the norm where I've worked. So I don't really have advice for that.

The reason is that tech leadership is doing what I described. Making clear to involved stakeholders that this is not normal and can't be expected every time. As parent commenter has seen, it doesn't happen automatically.

Yeah, I keep hearing that, but - over 10+ jobs - have never experienced it.

Maybe I screen out those jobs in my searches. Or they screen me out :)

My bigger point is that there are many different SW engineering worlds even in SV. You, and everyone you know, may be in the one you describe.

But there are other and better ones out here. One caveat: You may have to "level up" to join some of them.

I believe you misunderstood my comment. I am not disagreeing with you. There are organizations that properly value people's time and make sure that overwork is both rare and rewarded. I'm lucky enough to work in one. But, even in those organizations, it doesn't just happen by itself. The management in your company is working hard to keep leadership in check and communicate your value. Because if they don't, organizational inertia will result in your team getting more and more work (or losing resources to do your existing work), no matter how great your company is.

It's not magic, it's good leadership and management.

If employees work on the weekends, just feed them + pay them a premium, and give them an equivalent amount of days off later in the week/month.

It's pretty simple.

It should be simple but a lot of companies don't seem to understand that principle and prefer free overtime.

I've never had time off in compensation for time worked. If it's busy enough to require me to work overtime, it's too busy to take leave no matter how much I have built up.

Many do not have the privilege, particularly now, to push back on such requests if they need their paycheck.