[oceanghost]

In a rational world yes... The company scheduled 8hrs/day of work on a project in its schedules-- no time taken out for breaks, mandatory trainings, meetings, etc. They wouldn't even account for things like vacation time, holidays, or even pregnancy. I remember one engineer became pregnant, and she still had a development schedule of 8/hrs a day in the estimates. This problem was pretty obvious 6 months out or so.

You'd say it is just bad management-- and it is-- but its a control technique.

[setr]

I’m not sure how much control it really creates... it seems more like a recipe for slipping milestones

[oceanghost]

Well then let me elaborate... it's a gaslighting technique.

It creates a no-win scenario for the workers where the employee/team/etc is always blamed for managerial incompetence.