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Agreed. I feel for the author of this blog post, who apparently has worked underneath some terrible managers.

> Deadlines exist because people need to make plans and be able to rely on them, which is how our entire society and economy function.

This is the core of it. When we're heads down working through code, it's easy to forget that the end product is part of a much bigger business. In most companies, operating without deadlines or target dates is equivalent to expecting the rest of the business to revolve around you. Doesn't work.

That's not to say that deadlines can or should be arbitrary. Healthy teams will sit down and discuss realistic deadlines with engineers, not hide the tasks from engineers and give them unreasonable deadlines without a hint of communication like this blog post suggests.

If you find yourself working for a manager or company that resembles this blog post in any way: Get out! There are many great companies and managers out there who would be more than happy to add good talent to their teams. Mutual respect is the norm at any halfway functional company.

Any company operating like this is doomed to suffer massive turnover, exodus of good employees, and slow descent into failure. Don't let bad managers like this drag you down with them, and don't let bad experiences make you permanently cynical of the industry as a whole.

>Deadlines exist because software doesn't exist in a vacuum, but other people depend on it being delivered.

Exactly, even without external deliverables there are likely other internal initiatives that depend on the project or tie into it. Might even be something as simple as the QA team being booked on another project in a month that does have a hard deadline. So as long as something in the org has a hard external deadline there are going to be ripples that touch all projects in the org.

Also, my experience is that if you communicate early that features need to be cut to meet the deadlines most managers will be happy.

> Software doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Strip down everything to its bare essentials (i.e. just beyond the vacuum) and you have: a Programmer, a Software and (maybe) a User. The sentence above is a common trope that people believe justifies all the friction added between the Programmer and the Software, while attempting to optimize the process of putting it in the hand of the User. But I contend that deadlines are an unfortunate and provably unnecessary byproduct (see many open source projects) of that often wasteful process.

> Deadlines exist because people need to make plans and be able to rely on them

To make a plan you need a list of priorities and some time estimates. Some people just have a knack for turning these into artificial emergencies. The decision to build a new software feature can be taken in an organization by establishing how needed it is and vaguely describing the time it would take to build in terms of days, weeks, months or years. It's enough to know whether you want to spend some resources on it or not. Regardless of deadlines, people will work toward those time frames.

> which is how our entire society and economy function.

Only the parts of our society where such engagements actually matter function like this. In many other parts it's useless to follow such a model. Unfortunately some people observe it in one context and believe that it's a driver that can be blindly transposed onto another. So they start fabricating urgency where it doesn't belong. Meanwhile, it'll be ready when it's ready remains a successful model for many, even in our society and economy.

>People work overtime in every industry to meet deadlines, it's not just engineers. The only question is whether or it's good for you financially.

The article did not speak of "overtime", it was said that the engineer was asked to complete a task that would take a month, in 3 days (regardless of whether the author was exaggerating or not). What in "every" industry is called "labor exploitation" and is not something normal.

Well put and fully agreed. I don’t think engineers are in any way a special case here. In fact it can be much worse for people whose skillset is easier to replace.

If you ask around I think you will discover that non-engineers DO NOT relate to this topic at all the same way engineers do.

That's all the evidence that I need to take the view that this phenomenon is wide-spread and pervasive in engineering and does not usually reach the same level of pathology in other professions -- a level where people are forced into 'playing a game' with regard to estimates and deadlines.

In short this is really UNHEALTHY behavior and whether it occurs in all industries or just engineering seems beside the point.

Ask around who?

Talk to consultants, investment bankers, doctors, lawyers -- you know, other high-intellect jobs like engineers.

Lawyers are playing the game of billable hours. Consultants are playing the game of working day and night to produce the report by the promised deadline, to move on to their next scheduled client the following Monday. Doctors complete grueling residencies with "artificially" insane requirements, then follow insane schedules juggling hospitals and private practice. And the investment bankers I know haven't had a full weekend off in years.

I fail to see what's different about engineering, or what makes it inherently any more of a "game" than what billable hours or hospital residences or consulting deadlines are.

Yep agree. Vote with your feet.