Actual work that week gives employee 3 hours of non-meeting time, each daily meeting adds 0.5 hours of high-urgency administrative work. Friday’s we have a mandatory all-hands town halls…
Repeat that cycle for every customer facing issue, every demo facing issue, and internal political issue and you quickly drive deep frustrations and back talking.
I think there’s a fundamental truth: no one in their right minds, not even motivated engineers, actually hears anything but calendar when getting “days” estimates. It’s a terrible misrepresentation almost all the time, and engineers do a disservice when they yield to pressure to deliver them outside the broader planning process.
Project schedules should be the only place that time commitments come from, since they’re informed with necessary resource availability.