Well, spent the first 3 years of my life and literally fell sick at being treated like kid playing with fire..:-P.. a master's degree,1yr in a startup and 1 year freelancing later am just beginning to find some semblance of balance between the pressures..

I should say, within any one team working on something these procedures are used to get things done. I don't speak for the company as a whole but this seems to be the precedent for most.