> The reality is you have deadlines because your customers have deadlines and problems they need solved. And this is actually part of the issue (and in part wh

> The reality is you have deadlines because your customers have deadlines and problems they need solved. And this is actually part of the issue (and in part what the article mention). Most project, including the one of the clients don't need deadlines. I never saw a project where the deadline was not arbitrary or govern by another project deadline who was also arbitrary. I also worked in many different context, some with hard deadline, some with 0 deadline. Almost all the time, the project with hard deadline stem from the fact that the management didn't trust their engineer. They taught that without this "pressure" we would just sit on our asses and not do anything. While I certainly encounter co-worker who would gladly not do a thing and be paid, almost every engineer I worked with was happy to work and took some pride in his job. The no deadline / soft deadline project usually faired much better with a much more happy team and client. First off there was a mutual trust between management and the team "on the ground". They trusted us to do our job and we trusted them to steer the project direction and give priority. This made the job just that much more satisfying. Secondly, there was almost never a period of rush / crunch. It could happen that we had to rush a feature, but it was infrequent, short lived, and never to the extent of putting an all nighter. This means that the team had a very consistent and predictable productivity, we didn't have any burnout and people where not likely to leave in the middle of the project, so we were never short staffed out of nowhere.