A big company should aspire to make life better, not worse. People don't need to work more than they already do (unless they really want to, which is fine, but most of the time they are expected to be always available).
For a number of earlier jobs i had work could only be done in the office due to technological or security restrictions. Heck, even for a number of my clients i first had to work on-site, then figure out how to migrate things to a remote setup.
But now i work entirely from home and never even visit any offices. This has freed me up considerably. I still get the same amount of work done in practice, but the hours i bill are now half of what i spent previously just in the office. Even less if you consider that i have zero commute anymore.
And yes, i have worked in weird places and at weird times. Bathroom, bed, weekend, 2 am, at a conference in another country.
But the difference is, those things were me responding to emergencies. Emergencies that in all cases would have come up the same regardless of where and when i was. Having set up the technology i had meant the difference in practice for me was:
Instead of spending an hour to get to the office at 2 AM and back, i got up from the bed, walked to the computer, fixed the problem in ten minutes and went back to bed.
My life got considerably better.
I'll have taken about 8 weeks holiday this year. But for about half of it I'll do 30 min or even 2 hours work. Actually it's been less than half.
That's a pretty sweet deal. I've still got that ability to take a good few contiguous days off, completely relaxing so to speak. But I'm more relaxed after spending 5 min checking on progress in my absence, as I know when I come back to work full time, it won't be hell.
It's part of the system. Anytime that you read about a company that does it differently you are seeing an aberration. Let them have some pressures applied and they will revert to the norm. Also, if you are reading about them it's because they are news not the norm.
A big, capitalistic company's only goal is to satisfy their stakeholders, nothing more.
So it's our job to write articles like DHH wrote and make them as visible as possible. No company is able to foresee all the negative consequences they can cause (they should try, however, because it will and should hurt them).
It's up to the society to create strong negative signals that will counteract and negate positive economic signals coming from any activities harmful to the society.
Why exactly?