And when they’re requested or demanded, something is going really poorly

Yes.

Good planning and requirements don’t require (constant) heroics. Looking back on the times in my career when all-nighters, or their equally abhorrent sibling “working late” were required, they were overwhelming products of the process. In some ways, I could have made them better, but inherently, the projects themselves had structural issues.

In a management role, I understand there are cases of poor time-management. But looking at my team, if I’m seeing someone pull an all-nighter, my first question is, “What part of my job did I screw up?”

A QA engineer interview question you sometimes hear is, “Tell me about a time when you had to put your foot down for quality.”

My response is: if things get to the point where I have to ‘take a stand for quality’, then the process is seriously broken, and furthermore, I have not done my job of assessing risk throughout the process. That seems similar to me to your ‘all-nighter.’

http://www.librarian.net/stax/3126/on-heroism/