[alwa]

> In some cases they even try to compensate by doing it themselves (especially first-time managers).

It’s ok to ask people to work a bit harder. It’s your job to find the right balance.

It’s an error to work as hard as you ask your subordinates to, in service of an arbitrary deadline you cooked up just to put pressure on them?

> I always feel responsible for delivering on time, so I used to work my ass off (weekends and nights included) just to meet a random date. […]

Once I became a manager, I finally saw why they were needed, but felt guilty about using them.

Perhaps it’s worth listening to that twinge of guilt. There’s nothing virtuous about tricking or cajoling people into that kind of a cadence—especially just as routine way of running your shop. Emergencies, maybe—real deadlines, maybe—but run a respectful shop and I bet people will step up when times call for it.

[lanyard-textile]

It is not a fun reality — but in a business where profit is the goal, cadence deadlines are helpful.

When used right, they give you a good gauge on how much time the company would like you to spend on the problem. Ideally they calculated that risk higher up for the business’s needs, and you are being assigned the work for a strategy.

The frustrating part is this rarely happens in practice :) I’m working at a place now where they actually do this, and they strike the right balance: Not too demanding, but gives a good idea on the effort I’m expected to give for this, and my work clearly has an effect on the grander vision.

I can make a beautiful program in one month — or I can make some compromises and get it out by Friday. That’s programming vs. engineering.

[alwa]

That makes a lot of sense to me. I think I reacted more to the idea that fake deadlines are an appropriate technique for the purpose of squeezing people until they always scramble through their nights and weekends as a routine matter, like this guy seemed to like to do when he was on the front line.

“We’re going to spend the next two weeks working on X, so scope your ambitions accordingly—what’s realistic to expect in that timeframe?” seems like a perfectly reasonable and healthy negotiation to have, one compatible with respectful working relationships.

[lanyard-textile]

Yeah I see what you mean too :) It is big suck.

[steveBK123]

This kind of behavior also rewards the wrong behaviors. A lot of "I think my team isn't working hard enough" is optics not output.

It's very easy to be performatively more busy to please these types of bosses. This does not add any value and erodes trust. It also makes me lose all respect for a manager when I feel I need to do this.