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When did estimates turn into deadlines?

(domainanalysis.io)
318 points alexzeitler | 1 comments | 19 Nov 24 20:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.309s | source
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redleggedfrog ◴[19 Nov 24 22:06 UTC] No.42188611[source]▶
I've gone through times when management would treat estimates as deadlines, and were deaf to any sort of reason about why it could be otherwise, like the usual thing of them changing the specification repeatedly.

So when those times have occurred I've (we've more accurately) adopted what I refer to the "deer in the headlights" response to just about anything non-trivial. "Hoo boy, that could be doozy. I think someone on the team needs to take an hour or so and figure out what this is really going to take." Then you'll get asked to "ballpark it" because that's what managers do, and they get a number that makes them rise up in their chair, and yes, that is the number they remember. And then you do your hour of due diligence, and try your best not to actually give any other number than the ballpark at any time, and then you get it done "ahead of time" and look good.

Now, I've had good managers who totally didn't need this strategy, and I loved 'em to death. But for the other numbnuts who can't be bothered to learn their career skills, they get the whites of my eyes.

Also, just made meetings a lot more fun.

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aoeusnth1 ◴[19 Nov 24 23:27 UTC] No.42189183[source]▶
In my experience, super large estimates don’t make you look good in the long run, they make you look incompetent. The engineers who are most likely to be under-performers are also those who give super inflated estimates for simple tasks.

Maybe this is a good strategy for dealing with people who aren’t going to judge you for delivering slowly, or for managers who don’t know what the fuck is going on. For managers who do, they will see right through this.

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tivert ◴[19 Nov 24 23:44 UTC] No.42189291[source]▶
> Maybe this is a good strategy for dealing with people who aren’t going to judge you for delivering slowly, or for managers who don’t know what the fuck is going on. For managers who do, they will see right through this.

I think a manager who doesn't know the difference between and estimate and a deadline is one who "[doesn't] know what the fuck is going on," and that's the kind of manager the GP uses this strategy with.

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1. jjk166 ◴[20 Nov 24 17:16 UTC] No.42196104[source]▶
The big issue is when a manager knows the difficulty of the task but not the context it's being done in. A project may be perfectly reasonable to complete in 4 weeks if it's given the priority it deserves, but I know that I'm almost certainly going to get pulled off to do something else so it's going to wind up taking 12 weeks, and then with a very moderate 33% padding giving an overall length of time of 16 weeks, the manager (who has no visibility to the thing which will pull me away) thinks I'm adding 300% padding. Then they say "surely you can do it in less time if we just don't let you get pulled away" and of course you say "well I've been pulled away from all of the past 27 projects over the last 5 years" and they say "don't worry I'll make sure this time is different."

It's not a lack of technical competence, it's a lack of introspection and managerial soft skills.