[boatsworth]

This is exactly it. In my first software job, I found it very difficult to communicate the status of a project because we had no project management. I naively thought I was only a few brilliant coding sessions away from getting on top of things, but that slipped into a few more months of crunch mode.

Also, learning to say "no" is vital to preventing crunch mode. Wanting to please my superiors, I would typically say "yes, I'll do my best" or "maybe" when things were dire but never "no, that's not possible".