Maybe people are going on vacations (not necessarily Burning Man) and returning with renewed perspective and distance from things and are more willing to close down things. Not sure how one could test this...
I'm happy to report that I have successfully forgotten exactly when perf happens. There was one supposedly optional perf and one supposedly non-optional perf per year. I'm not sure exactly how that would affect cancellations of projects, though.
One thing I do remember seeing was a LOT of half-baked crap being foisted upon people (especially internal customers) because the end of quarter was approaching. Someone had to make their OKRs, and they didn't care how...
I'm not sure if it's good or bad that I somehow never managed to work for an employer that offered any kind of bonus, ever. It granted a perspective of "this is what you get, and no more, unless you fight for it," which... again... can be good or bad depending on how you look at it.
I wonder how many 20- and 30-somethings are now or have recently been in a position where bonuses are reasonably common, and how that correlates with the size/type of company they're working for.
This isn't true. Internships aren't only during the summer for many schools. I'll be starting a four month internship in September as will thousands of my peers.
I love how people say Google is awful because it is a corporate hell where engineers have no autonomy, and then claim that most products are launched and run by rogue indivuals.
September: all of the interns go back to school. These people who exist on the fringes of the system manage to get a lot of work done, possibly because they are free of most of the overhead facing real employees. Once they leave, it's up to the FTEs to own whatever was created, and that doesn't always work. I wish I could have kept some of them and swapped them for some of the full-timers.
March/April: Annual bonus time? That's what it used to be, at least, and I say this as someone who quit in May, and that was no accident. Same thing: people leave, and that dooms whatever they left.