I like the idea of getting employees to 'dream big' but pushing their families and personal time to the side or outright eliminating it is a huge problem with companies like Amazon (imo they're not an isolated company as I've heard similar stories from friends who have worked in SV). It just doesn't seem to me that productivity for its own sake is a dangerous precedent since it doesn't pay back to the employees what's lost (time with one's children, spouse, and friends).
Programming is not anything like working on a factory line. On a factory line you fill one tiny task of assembly and/or inspection within an allotted time frame and production quota. Programming it's a matter of analysis even on the most mundane task of bug fixing. Analysis takes a variable amount of time which sometimes over shoots estimates since a problem or a desired feature per business requirements can be found to be novel to the existing codebase. Or sometimes we're lucky as programmers and it's as easy as expanding on a tiny sliver of existing business logic but that isn't a guarantee by any stretch of the imagination.
Programming is not anything like working on a factory line. On a factory line you fill one tiny task of assembly and/or inspection within an allotted time frame and production quota. Programming it's a matter of analysis even on the most mundane task of bug fixing. Analysis takes a variable amount of time which sometimes over shoots estimates since a problem or a desired feature per business requirements can be found to be novel to the existing codebase. Or sometimes we're lucky as programmers and it's as easy as expanding on a tiny sliver of existing business logic but that isn't a guarantee by any stretch of the imagination.