[hugh3]

If you're working all-nighters to meet deadlines, it means that you're poorly organized, not that you're dedicated.

If the deadline can be met by working an extra sixteen hours on the night before it's due, it just means you should have set the deadline two days later.

I've worked all night precisely once in my life, and it's not an experience I plan to ever repeat.

[shasta]

If you can move it, it isn't a deadline.

[fshaun]

I would add "without consequence" before the comma. Most deadlines aren't an all-or-nothing affair: schedules slip, costs rise, customers scream... but life goes on. Sure, as a buyer I could choose not to accept any work past a deadline -- but then how am I going to solve the problem? Sometimes the best alternative is still worse moving the deadline.

[shasta]

Yes. Good point.

[msbarnett]

If you can't move it, and you can't meet it without running all-nighters, you should never have agreed to it in the first place.

[shasta]

That's a bullshit answer. In the real world there are deadlines that arise for many reasons:

- any external event like getting a product out before Christmas

- change in circumstance like a coworker quitting or getting sick

- the problem is harder than anticipated (I know it always is, but sometimes it's much harder)