[Wavelets]

> Several bosses have explicitly told me they intentionally set an unrealistically aggressive delivery date because of the phenomenon of people taking as much as time as they're given.

Some people call this “phenomenon” planning against the deadline.

[caddemon]

I think a lot of the real world occurrences of this phenomenon are actually due to bad incentive structures though. For example if you finish early (or go under budget) on a project you can generally expect the next project to have a tighter deadline/allowance.

A friend of mine was a postal worker for a brief period a couple decades ago, and at that time (in his location at least) he was told to make sure he took the full day to complete his route, because if there was a consistent pattern of finishing early they would lay off some of the workers.

It's not always possible to make sure incentives are well balanced, but managers should at least take a minute to put themselves in the shoes of the employees. If finishing early has only negative consequences, then maybe that could be addressed directly instead of just setting impossibly early deadlines

[n8cpdx]

Shouldn’t you plan to get the job done as quickly as you can while meeting quality expectations?

If I have 10 hours to make a car trip, but it only takes 5, I don’t drive at half the speed limit. Sure, there may be some extra bathroom and snack breaks, but probably not 5 hours worth.

I see people underperforming due to low expectations quite often, possibly following the classic 80/20 rule. I think this “planning against the deadline” behavior is one of the difference-makers between a hungry startup that outperforms, and the legacy player that barely keeps up despite having 10x the staff.

[Wavelets]

No, you should treat people like adults, set a deadline, and let them execute to that deadline. Many people balance multiple tasks, objectives, and goals and so taking 10 hours for a task that was assigned 10 hours is perfectly reasonable. If you keep planning 10 hour car rides and they continuously come in at 5 hours, you're bad at estimating.

[mcbishop]

So you're ultimately saying people should be given 5 hours for the car trip, even though giving them 10 would only result in a ~6-6.5 hour trip with healthy bladder relief?

[n8cpdx]

No, I’m saying if you have 10 hours to do something that can be done in 5, but is optimally done in 6.5, take 6.5 hours and use the remaining 3.5 to do something useful. Maybe you’ll go on a sightseeing tour at your destination; maybe you’ll resolve a customer-reported bug you didn’t think you had time for this release.

[mcbishop]

I see, thanks.