I’ve worked at some companies where it takes a whole weekend to deploy their software. People have to stay up all night running one command, waiting for it to finish, checking the results, then running the next command. They do this for hours. Everyone knows this sucks, but if you only deploy once every few months, it seems like a small price to pay relative to all the features you’re adding. Besides, once the ordeal is over, the last thing anyone wants to think about is how to improve it. Everyone is just thankful it’s done.
These long deploys are a cost that lowers profits. When your employees work all night and day, it’s demotivating. It messes up their work/life balance and they can’t give 100% the next day because they’re exhausted. That’s the human element. But, from a purely economical standpoint, it would be much better if they could spend all those hours working on new features instead of deploying.