You and I have very different career experiences. I have worked for 5 Fortune-100 technology companies over the past 20 years and never once did I feel like I was an expendable resource. Outside one particular experience, every one of my managers (Directors, Sr Directors) treated everyone with respect and honesty. Furthermore, they were genuinely concerned about health and family issues (family health, PTO, etc). Even in my current role, my company goes out of its way to provide a solid work-life balance (additional PTO for COVID, extra volunteer time, etc).

I hope others on HN have had the opportunity to work in places such as these...

>They do this because they fear the alternative

they do it because they can. Engineers have the tendency to be overly individualistic and ignore collective bargaining which is the primary means by which people can gain better working conditions. As long as people are willing to put in those 60 hours to climb up the next career rank ahead of their peers it's gonna be that way.

If you are organized you can call their bluff. But if more than a couple of people defect and keep insisting they can make the unreasonable deadlines, then those people get attention because they are saying what management wants to hear.

One of my goals in life is to get better at identifying (read, admitting/accepting) when the team has defectors and finding someplace else to apply my skills. But the few times it has actually worked are a mighty incentive to try again, even when I should know better.