Dave Rahardja on Nostr: There was one major project at a BigCorp I was involved in where some executive ...

There was one major project at a BigCorp I was involved in where some executive wanted to launch a product at date n. Everyone fell in line and proceeded under the assumption that the product will ship on that date. I looked at the work left to be done, and I pulled my director aside, and said: this will never ship on n, it will ship at n + 9 months, and we have to plan for that magnitude of date slip. Well, that was…politically untenable. So we never did plan for that.

Date n approached, and the project slipped. And slipped. And slipped. Until they shipped their first product…at n + 9 months.

People were absolutely *killing themselves with overwork* every month of the way. I didn’t, because no amount of work can overcome a waterfall of dependencies nine months long.