The broken process may not be company-specific. We are in an industry that is driven not just by getting things to market, but by getting things to market faster than the other guy. As we all know, software does not really scale too well to adding people to the problem. Thus, being to market faster is often achieved by coaxing more work out of the same number of people, this results in long hours.
Thought experiment: Imagine some sort of truce declared among startups to skip this part of the arms race. Or, imagine a law passed capping work weeks for software engineers at 50 hours, no exceptions (again, the reason this happening by law would be to eliminate the arms race). What would it do?
That's a good thought experiment.
I imagine we would very suddenly see an explosion of automation solutions for making engineers accomplish more with less time. We would also see an almost perfect eradication of most time-sinks in software development.
Thought experiment: Imagine some sort of truce declared among startups to skip this part of the arms race. Or, imagine a law passed capping work weeks for software engineers at 50 hours, no exceptions (again, the reason this happening by law would be to eliminate the arms race). What would it do?