Businesses—in the guise of mediocre managers—absolutely invent arbitrary deadlines as a mechanism of control. If the deadline were real, it would have context,

Businesses—in the guise of mediocre managers—absolutely invent arbitrary deadlines as a mechanism of control. If the deadline were real, it would have context, engineers could use that context to adjust the scope and design of what they're building and we wouldn't be having these conversations in the first place. The problem begins when deadlines are used to limit agency rather than support it.