Exactly this, and what a lot of less senior developers don’t understand is that the fixed timeline is actually a defensive mechanism for the development team. If the date is fixed the functionality has to be variable and the best people to assess what fits or not is the development team who thus can be in control of their own planning.
No, for many managers the fact that the deadline is fixed means they can death march you for all the functionality they decide needs to be complete at that date.
The idea that adding additional process to manage your managers is laughable at best.
Manager can't hold your fingers and force you to type code. Agile's short sprints mean that managers learn in 4 weeks instead 16 that death marches don't work.
Managers can be managed as much or little as reports are.
I know currently of several companies being managed into the dirt by people who dont learn no matter the scheduling mechanism or level of machiavellian maneuvering by their employees.
So no, you cant manage your boss, you can inform them, maneuver them, help them, cajole them; but at the end of the day you cant get them to change their behavior if they truly don't want to(and they can just fire you for being too annoying.)
In the current environment one can get away with a lot of push-back because managers with any fraction of a clue know if they piss you off too much you'll be giving them your notice, new job in hand, in a few weeks, if not days. That won't last—which is why if we're going to organize for better leverage against abuse in bad times, now'd be the time to do it, but I guess enough people've been convinced unions will impoverish them that we're not gonna, maybe next boom, see y'all then—but for now it's pretty nice.
