If it weren't for schedules I'd have no defense at all for 'wasting time' on something that saves each of my teammates an hour of pain per week. (I've had a lot of shitty managers. Stuff like this shouldn't need a defense).

Well,this is basically lack of trust between you and your devs. Or lack of common understanding of priorities. I'm not sure if you're a project mgr or a client, but clearly some expectations are misaligned. Perhaps you don't see their barriers or they don't agree with your priorities

The existing contract doesn't work, so some mediation is due to close that distrust before any damage is done. After all it's the team that you currently consider yours.

It’s pretty amusing how many definitive responses I’m getting from devs who are diagnosing my problem without any knowledge. It’s also telling how different they are.

Like I said, there are reasons, and I’m aware of them. I’m also fully aware of the technical barriers.

The devs are padding their schedule, and think they’re being clever about it. They are not. Some of it does boil down to trust (i.e. bad history with previous managers), but a lot of it is just that they don’t want to do the thing because it’s less fun than other things, and nobody has ever held them to account in the past. A sufficiently lazy developer will find endless Legitimate Technical Justifications for not doing something he doesn’t want to do.

I’m not trying to generalize to all developers here, but I do know the people and problem I’m working with.

Also, if they give you non-padded estimate, that is the one they will occasionally miss, will typical manager of your company force them to work weekends and evenings or otherwise punish them? Or will typical be ok with it and accept it as risk factor?

I am asking because the one manager that complained about paddings was the one that took pride in manipulating people into weekends - including by claiming they promised it. I do tight estimates when I know I can be late and generous when I assume it will be law or don't trust management.

To answer your question: no. I don’t do any of that. Also, this situation has nothing to do with aggressive schedules.

That particular manager was not worst.

Note: I'm a dev and I can tell you I very much dislike working with prima donnas.

Yes, but not the way I think he’s thinking (and maybe not the way you’re thinking either). If you were actually in a room with him and said, “ok, let’s just walk in there right now, fire these clowns and replace them with somebody better” he’d immediately hold up his hand and say, “but I can’t find anybody better…”. So yes, it’s probably a hiring problem but the problem is that he’s putting unreasonable expectations on the people he’s hiring.

Ate they having bloted estimates or not shipping within estimates? Why there are such large features anyway? Why is manager not a ten member but instead someone who don't belong?