This isn't something you can get away with in many businesses (at least not in terms of the kind of businesses that would put you in that position to begin with) - and the few you can do this, it's not something you'd want to do frequently because you can end up being seen as an obstruction and that ultimately works against your interests.

I've found it's better to work with them on a compromised phased released / MVP so the customer still gets what they asked for and you are still seen a miracle worker albeit without actually having to do anything unrealistic in the end.

Unfortunately though, there are some businesses that place their sales team too far ahead of the health of their engineers for any compromise to happen and there isn't really much you can do aside taking the overtime pay and move on shortly afterwards.

> you can end up being seen as an obstruction and that ultimately works against your interests.

I always worked in small companies < 200 people, so this might be different in bigger ones.

If you are the competent software engineer that always delivers quality software, and is always pushing the company towards a better and more progessional way of working, you will not easily be seen as an obstruction. I never was, and always had good to excellent reviews.

A sales person that sucks a deadline out of their thumb is in no way to be seen as professional. Questions such as "who estimated this? Was anyone from software development involved? Did you account for testing? Do you expect the custommer to find all our bugs?" Etc, should reveal that there is another way of working.

I had a sales guy respond to me "I've been doing this for 30 years, so I know". This guy was fired half a year later

Sales people setting deadlines without consulting the people that need to do the work, is very unprofessional, and there is no way that anyone can defend that. You just have to make this very clear, in a diplomatic but clear way.

It sounds like we’ve had very different experiences but from what I’ve seen I think it depends more on the management / CEO than the company size. Some of the smaller companies I’ve worked for have been worse than any of the larger companies and that was entirely down to the fact that the CEO saw the sales team as the money bringers because they scored the lucrative deals, where as the engineering team were seen as replaceable work horses.

But as I said, the best thing you can do in those sort of places is take the money and move on because you aren’t going to change the CEO’s attitude.

Changing the CEO's attitude is indeed impossible, even with multiple people that he respects.

If you are seen as a replaceable work horse, you lose a lot of leverage indeed.

Here in Belgium there is a huge shortage of software developers, which places the programmers in a stronger position than the companies.

I can leave a company and instantly get the same or a higher pay somewhere else.

A company on the other hand, first has to find somebody, and then still overpay the first few months before the new employee becomes productive. From that point it's a bad position to be in.

There's definitely a shortage here as well. But that doesn't mean that a CEO has respect for the trade.

My thinking is if a CEO comes from a sales background then they will run their company in that mindset. Much like how some CEOs who are developers sometimes struggle to release products because they're focused on the technology rather than the product (gross exaggeration there - but I hope you understand the point I'm making)