It's the reality of the development world, as I am sure it's true more most production in all industries, no boss is ever going to come up to you for a client billable job and say "do this at your pace, take as much time as you like, and you'll finish whenever you do"
Clients like budgets, buget costs includes development time. Bosses often lowball estimates to get the job, and then kick their development team in the ass to make the deadline.
If it's one thing I've come to learn about the job market in general, is that it's not run the best and brightest. It's best to think of even a white collar job as an assembly line, and you'll get a better understanding of how things work.
The more work you can put out in a lesser amount of time = more money in their pockets by increasing production and decreasing development time. Economically that makes sense, what suffers are the products output. And take any major manufacturer of anything in any country and examine their products, you'll come to find they've cut alot of corners and produce inferior products.
The same can be said for the software industry, I dont think we should think ourselves the exception.
To that note, it's not always the boss either, granted they dont really help, but often times our clients are poeple who are good at what they do, but not good at what we do, but since it's their cash we have to do it their way, and this is what I like to think at the worst case scenario for development heirchy, because the client who doesnt know crap about any part of your job is now telling you how to do it. And since you are only the employee to the boss that took the job you cant tell them to piss off.
My solution, keep in mind I write code for the company not for myself, and therefor e I dont dont blame myself for bad products. I cannot tell you how many times us creative/production people have come up with brilliant and innovative solutions that after all the mess gets watered down and made impractical and standard.
And dont be surprised when your boss gets mad at YOU for the crappy job. I use to get mad, now I just laugh it off, because I know who the real dumbass is.
