I never experienced the dynamic you are talking about. Sounds like your workplace is terrible.
I've almost always had business partners that were just that - partners - invested in the product and the team long term. I am the same way now that I am "the business."
Estimation is a useful forcing exercise for thinking through what something takes, identifying risks and hard parts and deciding upfront what to do about them.
It also becomes a good measure of people's integrity - what they do once it's apparent the estimate is off. 100% of the time, when engineering came back saying "we underestimated X, it's much harder" - it was totally fine.
I've almost always had business partners that were just that - partners - invested in the product and the team long term. I am the same way now that I am "the business."
Estimation is a useful forcing exercise for thinking through what something takes, identifying risks and hard parts and deciding upfront what to do about them.
It also becomes a good measure of people's integrity - what they do once it's apparent the estimate is off. 100% of the time, when engineering came back saying "we underestimated X, it's much harder" - it was totally fine.