The sad part is that no one forces you to work that hard. You're free to say NO! and work less, even this will results being laid off. Only during 1:1s your manager may highlight that deadline is soon and would be great if the project would be delivered on time, and little hint about a promo. But you set goals and force yourself to do more, single night this less sleep doesn't hurt anyone. Then there are more such nights of coding and you feel barely alive. 90% work is done, only very little left to finish. And then bam!
Upd:
I didn’t mean that this is ok, I’m for workers rights.
The classic comeback - every time I mention simplicity to a particular team member of mine, this is what he says. Complexity is unavoidable. Yes. But if you don't fight it tooth and nail, spend more time than you want trying to simplify the solution, getting second opinions (more minds on difficult problems are better!), then you will increase complexity more than you needed to. This is just a different form a technical debt: you will pay the price in maintenance later.
Exactly! If you don't try to keep it simple, especially in bigtech, things get way too complex. I think choosing simplest solution in bigtech is in orders of magnitude more important than in a simple domains.