This industry is like any (every?) other: a minefield of incompetence and laziness interwoven with an unhealthy dose of unjustifiable arrogance.
If they are freezing time and resources and scope, and you dont have much room to move except with quality and debt. But those catch up. If that is the consistent trade-off, i'd go with my original recommendations: trade this stupidity for more salary or find a new employer with better management. Or seek the managerial position yourself and do a better job at it.
As a plus this also gives you the ability to more effectively gauge the difficulty of the rest of the project. The things you thought were simple might be much worse. And then as long as you get concrete feedback, you'll be able to much better predict the amount of time and effort required going forward.