Bulldozer00's Blog

I make a similar mistake, pushing back against ridiculous time-frames, and then do my damnedest to beat the deadline anyway, causing undo stress at the onset of a project when expectations are not in line with capabilities, and then at the end when the deadline looms and I rush to meet it, regardless of how ‘finished’ the solution is.

In the end, having not been given sufficient opportunity to develop a concept to it’s fullest, we fail more often than we succeed, causing the finger of blame to point down from above, accusing us of being bad designers, despite management’s culpability in not providing enough time to develop.

Interestingly, there are many here who somehow manage to get away with nodding their heads at an imposed deadline, and then like you said, ‘missing it by a mile’. But they are never chastised for being late, nor are they held accountable for the missed deadline, like it’s some kind of unwritten rule that deadlines are just a fallacy, and it’s ok as long as you don’t raise a stink.

I always think back to every Star Trek episode, where Scottie is asked to pull the impossible out of his ass to save the ship, just because the Captain decided to shack up with the daughter of the near-by planet’s Emperor and cause an intergalactic incident. I even have a red shirt that says “Expendable”.

The only time I push back is when I have worked on scheduling the task or project and then been told to cut xx% because some reason.

Fighting against a handed down schedule is always useless. There always is a reason for the short schedule, money either allocated or the amount to be asked for. In the business world once a project is going, killing it is sometimes just as hard as getting it started. So once its rolling it is hard to stop that is why those that don’t complain up front are not the “problem” children.