Just a quick note, the reason many developers give quick estimates is that they know management won't give them the time to perform a proper estimate or they wo

Just a quick note, the reason many developers give quick estimates is that they know management won't give them the time to perform a proper estimate or they won't accept anything they don't want to hear, or after all is said and done will just override whatever you say and tell you how long it takes. This is wrong on all accounts but I would say this happens at 80-90% of companies. So after a while developers learn there's no point in even trying to give a proper estimate, or at least not spend a lot of time trying to be too accurate. That and many times there would be change requests, changes in features and functionality, but even less common was to see a revision of the estimate. I never saw a single revision, the original estimate was used, regardless how much chbage had happened since. I'm all for changing the features as you learn more but I've never seen an estimate be adjusted. If it's a year it stays a year. What's even more interesting is that most of the discussions around anything tend to be bike shedding discussions, discussing the color of the paint, rather than actual hard stuff. There are exceptions but that's much more the norm. You estimate based on what you know right now and it will never be adjusted if things get added. And you will only be given the minimal amount of time to make an estimate. And of course you hope they listen and agree, many many times your estimate gets overridden.