I'm a software engineer, turned tech lead and project manager for large scale web platform projects.
I've seen crunch happen and been dragged through it myself. With my background of having dealt with it, now that I have some semblance of decision making weight, I am very deliberate with the teams I work with and help run that crunch is not allowed. I walk around a 5pm and tell people to go home, tomorrow is another day.
Sure, we may need to do a little over time around a launch window for a week give-or-take, but thats it. And if I am doing my job right as the manager and tech lead of the team (and of the client expectations), come launch time the project should already be done and we should be just waiting for launch day, not crunching. Crunching only makes you rush and make mistakes anyway.
A fundamental issue I find is that most company heads and managers act like the team works "for" them. A good project manager has the opposite view. I work for my team. As a team lead, our job is to facilitate the team, remove blockers, communicate needs/issues/expectations/etc. We should be thinking ahead and doing everything in our power to help the devs, since they in turn are doing everything they can to actually build the project. I'll also add that the best dev PM's i've worked with while I was learning are the PM's who were super star developers too, who also had the soft skills to earn and keep the respect of the team.
Delays happen for lots of reasons, and in some cases crunch happens, but, I agree, it should be a rare exception, not the rule. We have lives and families that want to see us once in a while too. Making a successful project is critical for business, yes, of course. Balance is critical for everything else in your life. And as developers, we have the actual desirable skill set in this case. They can't do development without our development skills. You don't have to tolerate being taken advantage off.
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