>To me, not saying that you require 5 senior programmers, or more time, is a form of grinfucking your manager and producers. It is intentionally keeping them out of the loop
This means they in first place took the decision without asking you or without having metrics, not polite of them.
>The trick is to manage your time wisely
First law of thermo dynamics.. energy cannot be created or destroyed. Politely I ask you to please complete the work with the assigned resources.
>It would be both rude and irresponsible of me to allow myself to be so mismanaged.
People who care first about them are called egoistical... on the other hand they said the first person you should care about it's you.
It's up to you, always.
This is just a point of view, take informed decisions.
Depends on how you define politeness.
To me, not saying that you require 5 senior programmers, or more time, is a form of grinfucking your manager and producers. It is intentionally keeping them out of the loop, which is rude. It is disrespecting their ability to take well intentioned, reasonable, important, and professional feedback as fellow professionals and adults, and ultimately undermining their ability to perform their jobs. Worse, not properly trying to manage expectations may leave your coworkers on the hook for crunch and overtime to try and meet said expectations - which I certainly don't consider "polite"!
This is not to say there aren't rude ways to go about the task of informing your manager that you're understaffed, over-committed, and dealing with a unrealistic schedule. You can beat a dead horse, enumerate individual's faults (perceived or real) instead of focusing on what strengths the team needs (that it lacks), or whine about your boss's inability to estimate instead of trying to collaborate to figure out the discrepancy in your estimations, among a million other possible mistakes.
The trick is to thoroughly internalize and stick to this definition of politeness.
> not helping them is not polite
Junior programmers can help me get the project done. The trick is to manage your time wisely. "Let me swing by after I finish up X" - either they'll figure it out, or they could really use the extra help. "I forget, does it say on the wiki?". I am assuming they're trying and have some basic competency though.
> and of course you do on free your extra mile time and help the company avoid paying the senior devs...
Crunching - or otherwise overworking - and burning out would decrease my overall productivity. It would be both rude and irresponsible of me to allow myself to be so mismanaged.