[agentultra]

Advocating for fake deadlines means, to me, that you aren't an effective leader and don't understand knowledge work in the least.

When I did eng. manager work I had to put up with my managers giving us fake deadlines all the time. It was a mess. Absolutely political and had no real value. It simply stressed every one out.

And no amount of, but you weren't doing it right, will convince me.

Deadlines exist but they are a social construct. They combine an agreement, an optimistic prediction of the future, and the anticipation of punishment. There are cases where they are absolutely necessary... that chip foundry isn't going to be able to flash that ROM without the code you want on it and they have orders for the next couple of years, so you better deliver the final code on time! However they are also flexible. The world isn't going to end if you need to take another few weeks to ship the feature you've been planning.

Sales is one of the bigger sources of frustration for development teams when it comes to deadlines. They're used as a negotiating chip to make buyers more comfortable with their investment. And smart sales teams have learned how to manipulate software development teams by providing fake deadlines in order to keep up appearances.

I find it all works better if folks are simply honest.

And that's why I got out of management.