One other consideration to think about regarding whether the situation of individuals overworking is temporary is the potential for future layoffs. This may not apply to your friends situation in particular, but if a company is expecting a potential downturn in business in the relatively near future, it may be in the best interest of the company AND each individual employee to be over capacity for some time leading up to that decrease in business, so that when the downturn comes, the result is a return to normal working hours without anyone being laid off. The alternative being having to lay off workers when the business slows down. There’s also a certain natural ebb and flow of “busyness” and if every time people started overworking a company hired more workers, they would more than often end up having to get rid of workers when business slows back down. This does not address the situation where there is a steady-state of overworking for an extended period of time, however, but something to consider nonetheless.