Question: I work at a very young start-up company. We have had turn-over rates (mass resignation of staff, thrice) in the past but changes in the system have led to a more a stable employee retention and better technical-skilled employees. We do games, and I don't know with other software fields, but the "[death march](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development/)" is quite popular in our field.

My boss believes that the only way for us to catch-up to top companies is to exert more effort, which generally translates to more time working. Hence, we've had a culture of working a lot of hours (we work an average of 65 hours a week, peaking up to 90hours a week).

Our deadlines are either very difficult and sometimes impossible (since the team is pretty young) but our management sets deadlines at the "if people at company X can do this in X days, we can do it too"

I personally believe that raising team efficiency is one of the factors that can help eliminate too much overtime.

I've seen my subordinates/junior staff often not focused enough during the day, but I don't know how to objectively measure this (I've seen questions here relating to KPI's, or key performance indicators).

I'm in a position where I have good relations with my boss (our CEO), the management and the entire team and I believe they're more than willing enough to hear out what I have to say.

How can I approach this in a way that is beneficial for both the staff and the company?

Answer: 
To change from a culture of overtime to efficiency you will have to stop the death marches. Each person has a limit, after that they can actually produce negative work. The density and severity of their errors will mean that that last few hours they worked, the project went backwards. Their mistakes may be obvious , they broke the build. Or it may be subtle, they picked the wrong choice of the size of a field in the database so that next week the tables will have to be rebuilt. 

If you try to tell them that they are inefficient but you still expect 60-90 hours a week they will not have a reason to change. If they can produce more quality code in less hours, but you don't reduce the expected number of hours, they can't help but be demotivated and inefficient.

One way to address the issue runs counter to the arguments in the mythical man month. You need more developers. Yes increasing the number of the people on a project does greatly increase communication issues. But expecting too many hours also is inefficient. Unless you are paying them for every hour of overtime, your costs will rise by adding members to the team. But you have already had 3 incidents of massive numbers of employees quitting.

I know nothing of your company, but a great way to demotivate people is to have management be able to flaunt their free time, hobbies and wealth. Management that leaves every day at 5, and has time for fun filled weekends, without a way to compensate the developers, designers, and artists is doomed to be facing mass exodus #4.
**Seems to be working** If you're meeting the deadlines, I don't see how you can justify calling them impossible. Your boss thinks he's the next Steve Jobs. Just push for more-it's really that simple.

**Negative Consequences**
I haven't found any mention of what happens when deadlines aren't met. Has anyone been fired? If management is correct, and you aren't competitive in your market, everyone suffers the natural consequences of a weakened company. Does it affect your bonus?

**Rewards** If this company makes it 'big', are you all going to be millionaires? I'd expect more turnover unless they pay better than average salaries. 

Like too many programmers/engineers, you've developed an "all or nothing" mentality about your job. The boss set this impossible deadline, oh my! So what? The programmer is afraid they will release more bugs, but the management would rather meet the deadline because the level of bugs is acceptable in their mind AND THEIR USERS. We'll have to spend even more time fixing things. So what? They know this will happen. Everyone expects a quick patch after a major release. 

**It's all in your head** I'm willing to bet as the deadline nears, features get removed. Cut back on your hours. Get some sleep. Do something fun. You'll be more productive. You can only suggest others take this advice. When everyone realizes the sky isn't falling, your management may figure out you've learned to play the game.