Deadline driven development ... Wtf. What a great way to annoy developers, managers and clients at the same time.

Had that today. Kickoff meeting with customer began with the statement that there is a hard deadline for the project, that cannot be delayed, because marketing is already shouting out the new features with the planned date. Needless to say that it can never be done in that time, but someone (presumably sales guy) had told the customer before he signed the contract that the deadline wouldn't be a problem.

So PM and devs are already pissed of, although not a single line of code has been written. Customer will be pissed off in about 6 weeks.

The only option to not get mad is give a fuck about project stuff and do my job. But I hate it when I know it's gonna get bad. But I cannot save the world on my own...

One of the most powerful lessons I've picked up over the years; let it fail.

Once it fails, and ONLY once it fails, someone with actual power will want to know why. And the answer is a sales guy committed to a deadline that wasn't possible, without consulting dev.

Things only change after something fails.