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This is the type that refuses to tell you if they think, completely ballpark, whether something will take a day or a week or a month A comment in the article m

This is the type that refuses to tell you if they think, completely ballpark, whether something will take a day or a week or a month A comment in the article made a similar point. QFT: I dare say you wouldn't win much work though turning up to pitch to potential customers and declaring that you'll definitely deliver something, but you don't know how long it will take or how much it will cost. Every employee needs to be aware of time, of deadlines, and needs to understand that the money to pay their salaries needs to come from somewhere. Or they need to find a job working for some government agency, or in academia, not in the real world.

mobiuscog 11y ago
If businesses didn't make promises before they knew if they could keep them, the deadlines wouldn't be such a problem. If an employee agrees to a deadline, it's fine. If an employee is just told they have to complete a task within a deadline that they're weren't included in estimating, that's not the employee at fault.
- gearoidoc 11y ago
  Thats not what gyardley is saying though. He's talking about developers who refuse to estimate how long a chunk of work will take.
  - mobiuscog 11y ago
    An interesting point on developers who refuse to estimate, is how often they are then asked "Why ?". I'm definitely someone who has either refused to give, or given massively exaggerated estimates in the past, for various reasons, the main being "I don't know". Think about this for a moment - why wouldn't an (experienced) engineer know how long something will take ? The most likely answer (and in retrospect the only reason I ever did this) was that the project was far too large / complicated to visualise, and needed to be broken down. By asking an engineer to break the task down into smaller tasks, until they can 'ballpark' estimate each part, is the best way to solve this problem. Maybe more design or investigation will be required to manage the breakdown. Instead of writing off 'problem' engineers, try to work with them and find the common ground.

mobiuscog 11y ago

If businesses didn't make promises before they knew if they could keep them, the deadlines wouldn't be such a problem. If an employee agrees to a deadline, it's fine. If an employee is just told they have to complete a task within a deadline that they're weren't included in estimating, that's not the employee at fault.

gearoidoc 11y ago
Thats not what gyardley is saying though. He's talking about developers who refuse to estimate how long a chunk of work will take.
- mobiuscog 11y ago
  An interesting point on developers who refuse to estimate, is how often they are then asked "Why ?". I'm definitely someone who has either refused to give, or given massively exaggerated estimates in the past, for various reasons, the main being "I don't know". Think about this for a moment - why wouldn't an (experienced) engineer know how long something will take ? The most likely answer (and in retrospect the only reason I ever did this) was that the project was far too large / complicated to visualise, and needed to be broken down. By asking an engineer to break the task down into smaller tasks, until they can 'ballpark' estimate each part, is the best way to solve this problem. Maybe more design or investigation will be required to manage the breakdown. Instead of writing off 'problem' engineers, try to work with them and find the common ground.