How about making the manager estimate the project, that way if the deadline is not met, the manager receives the blame? It's the manager's job to manage resources, and if the deadline is not hit, then they can hire/bring on more resources. If an engineer works as hard as they can for 40 hours a week, why is it the engineer's fault if the arbitrary deadline is not met? If the engineer estimate's time for a project, the engineer will always have to work more than 40 hours a week because some estimates will be too optimistic.
