Luckily I don't work at a place like this anymore, but I sure hate it when a company touts that they are an effective company who has implemented agile "the right way", then when they describe their process in detail, it is almost exactly the opposite of what agile is supposed to be.

I've worked for a couple places that just couldn't get their head around the fact that one of the reasons agile exists is because estimating software is hard, and only after doing agile the real right way for an extended period of time can a company expect to have realistic estimates. The business can't go a week without hard deadlines.

This is my company in a nut shell. They always say we are agile, but then they ask for estimates for hard deadlines. And when I say something is too hard to estimate, they press me to estimate it and then get mad when we aren't able to launch on time. "We are agile in the sense that we are fast" even though that's not what agile means at all.

@FidgetyDigits I feel for ya... the worst was when I would get dragged into meetings to provide "high-level estimates." Spoiler alert, it's a trap. I would say things like, "it will likely take longer than that" and "it will only take that long if the other teams are heads down on this project, too". We would then have a kick off meeting for the project and said that our hard deadline was the exact date that I gave. Then they proceeded to tell me, "Well if you weren't sure we could get it done then, then why did you estimate it then?" So many words and feelings of anger... so glad I'm at a place that understands technical debt, and quality over quantity (speed in this case).