Why does management give us arbitrary deadlines without explaining why?
When managers hide financial deadlines and project goals, employees are left guessing what matters most and are punished when they guess wrong. This lack of transparency causes high stress and prevents teams from planning effectively, making the pressure feel entirely arbitrary.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from September 2026.
- It is not one crowd: 4 people on Reddit and 2 on Stack Exchange ran into the same thing.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1guessing management expectationsDid this help you?
- 2pushing back against unrealistic deadlinesDid this help you?
- 3using agile processes like Scrum to manage sprint commitmentsDid this help you?
- 4Clarify expectations for next time by telling the manager to explicitly state urgency upfrontDid this help you?
- 5Asking leadership how they arrived at the target date and trying to back into a realistic planDid this help you?
- 6Gathering background information and talking to stakeholders to figure out what problems need to be solvedDid this help you?
- 7Negotiating critical path items to see what can stay in or out of the releaseDid this help you?
- 8Skipping the mandatory training to complete the urgent tax returnsDid this help you?
- 9Telling management it is impossible to finish everything in the given timeDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“The person straight up told him it wouldn't be possible to both do the training and get the tax returns done in such a short amount of time, at which point the partner said "Well what am I supposed to tell the client"”source ↗
“I joined this project as PM before any resources had been hired or the scope had been defined. However, the director had already communicated to stakeholders that we would complete the project by the end of next year.”source ↗
“Literally dealing with this now. Itsa bad time mane.”source ↗
“Do you know any reasons why leaders do that with project? Whenever I talk to him its like they are trying not to answer my questions and just repeat the same story that it is possible. No one else in the team is able to provide me any guidance”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2How to tell management a deadline is impossible
- 6Why are project deadlines and estimates always wrong?
- 4Why is month-end close so rushed with a skeleton crew?
- 5Why do administrators reward misbehaving students?
- 8How to survive a completely mismanaged project with terrible leadership
- 8Why do managers care about arriving 5 minutes early?