Morning, rainy, bathrobe, rant: estimates.

tl;dr: no hard dates, nobody knows anything, and practical risk management is a myth

They don't care about the success of the project. They just need someone to blame if it fails, and they will take credit if it succeeds. They're already getting paid. Their currency is reputation. Not cash. The naive laborer is just trying to do a good job.

I worked at a company that did 2 big releases a year. We had to plan and commit each release. My team always under promised and over delivered because we took a similar approach. I got asked several times how we always hit our goals. Good advice

Clicking the like button based solely on the first twenty seconds with the pups

😅

whats the difference between programmers and used car salesmen? used car salesmen know when they are lying to u

I had a manager who told me to take my original estimate, double it and then double it again. We didn't name it, but it feels akin to the Scotty Principle.

Some memories are triggered

You can't even get people to do estimates in many cases because the prevailing belief--and in many cases it is justified--is that it is a punitive and not collaborative exercise.

What is your stance on the "No Estimates" approach?

If you can measure progress, you don’t need to estimate progress.