Impossible projects with impossible deadlines seems to be the norm and even when people pull them off miraculously the lesson learned is not "ok worked this time for some reason but we should not do this again", then the next people get in and go "it was done in the past why can't we do this?"

Wow, sounds so familiar! I've once had to argue precisely against this very conclusion - "you saved us once in emergency, now you're bound to do it again".

Wrote to my management: "It is, by all means, great when a navigator is able to take over an incapacitated pilot and make an emergency landing, thus averting the fatality. But the conclusion shouldn't be that navigators expected to perform more landings or continue to be backup pilots. Neither it should be that we completely retrain navigators as pilots and vice versa. But if navigators are assigned some extra responsibility, it should be formally acknowledged by giving them appropriate training, tools and recognition. Otherwise many written-off airplanes and hospitalized personnel would ensue."

For all I know the only thing this writing might have contributed to was increased resentment by management.