I can attest to this. I've been at my current (remote) job for 3 years and we don't really do much of performance reviews (there exists some reviews but nothing super formal like any other company I worked at before). There isn't much of the dark patterns you describe here. I totally have that same feeling of "When I'm at a red light, I don't feel like I'm rushed to get home anymore" now, whereas that really wasn't the case back at previous jobs.