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I'm totally on board with time estimates, totally not on board with several potential 'weaponizations' of those estimates. There's a fine line between a manage

I'm totally on board with time estimates, totally not on board with several potential 'weaponizations' of those estimates. There's a fine line between a manager being understandably frustrated with poor estimates, and a manager being less understandably frustrated they can't pressure you into crunch - but I do draw that line. I find the former completely understandable, the latter completely unreasonable. There's a similarly fine line between a manager trying to gauge the scope of tasks and help identify unnecessary dead weight that can be cut or delayed, and a manager trying to simply negotiate the estimate down, without cutting anything. The former is reasonable and at times valuable, the latter is either trying to bend the truth to keep their stakeholders 'happy' or pressure games to entice crunch - completely unreasonable - or outright denial (frankly, a failure to do their job right.) Unfortunately, I think the unreasonable folk ruin it for the reasonable folk, to some degree. Even with managers in the former camp, and with devs I'm convinced recognize their managers as being in the former camp, simply trying to even go through the motions of estimating seem to add a lot of stress and heartache. Good signs: They point out stuff that's vague, try and actually try to eliminate some of the blind guesswork, helping to produce reasonable estimates, and try to compensate for your bad estimates while guiding you towards making better ones. Bad signs: They complain about work taking too long, or adjust your estimates down behind your back.

pdimitar 10y ago
> There's a fine line between a manager being understandably frustrated with poor estimates, and a manager being less understandably frustrated they can't pressure you into crunch - but I do draw that line. I find the former completely understandable, the latter completely unreasonable. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! Why isn't this taught in the MBA courses? Why isn't this common sense? As for the rest of your comment, my personal observations have followed Occam's Razor effect -- it's not that people are in denial or are blind or they can't serve the business well per se; they're simply vengeful immature people put in positions of power. They want to RULE and they hate the idea that their subordinates can dictate the pace and the format of the work, and they want "to get back at the nerds" <-- and this is actual overheard conversation between two managers in one of my former jobs. Being a manager requires a lot of emotional intelligence. Most of them don't have it and never will. That's one of the core problems with who to put in a position of power. Apologies for going on a tangent and generalizing a bit. But these views of mine are intertwined with the OP (and your comment of it).
- MaulingMonkey 10y ago
  > Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! Why isn't this taught in the MBA courses? Why isn't this common sense? Hey, you're welcome ;). People are weird. Confusing. Illogical. Communication is hard, management is hard, and emotional intelligence is perhaps not as high up on people's bucket lists of virtues to aspire to as one might hope. Personally, it wasn't until I got to see the difference between extremes of good vs bad management first hand, and in depth (for me, this was heavy involvement in several project's schedules), that I was able to really pick apart the differences between the two, and pick up on the relatively subtle differences in surface level behavior, and trace that all the way back to the more fundamentally different modes of operation. > They want to RULE and they hate the idea that their subordinates can dictate the pace and the format of the work, and they want "to get back at the nerds" <-- and this is actual overheard conversation between two managers in one of my former jobs. Ooof, my sympathies. I'd hope they were being sarcastic, but that's perhaps more the power of denial than anything else. I've seen a borderline case or two. I've also seen plenty of people between a rock and a hard place, and a few layoffs from the resulting collisions.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    Sadly they weren't sarcastic at all. And their policy was dictated by a smug smile in which you can read they don't believe a single word you're saying. Ever. That was when I was 27-28. Working in that place was a VERY educational phase of my life. It was probably the first time ever for me when I decided I don't want to "fight" and give arguments and counter-arguments (which I actually did a few weeks before that but I quickly gave up). I was finally able to make the correct conclusion that people by default don't want to change their views and that I should simply switch jobs, which I did. For what it's worth, I'd be happy to work with a person like yourself. You strike me as very well-connected to human nature reality. Kudos for that.

pdimitar 10y ago

> There's a fine line between a manager being understandably frustrated with poor estimates, and a manager being less understandably frustrated they can't pressure you into crunch - but I do draw that line. I find the former completely understandable, the latter completely unreasonable. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! Why isn't this taught in the MBA courses? Why isn't this common sense? As for the rest of your comment, my personal observations have followed Occam's Razor effect -- it's not that people are in denial or are blind or they can't serve the business well per se; they're simply vengeful immature people put in positions of power. They want to RULE and they hate the idea that their subordinates can dictate the pace and the format of the work, and they want "to get back at the nerds" <-- and this is actual overheard conversation between two managers in one of my former jobs. Being a manager requires a lot of emotional intelligence. Most of them don't have it and never will. That's one of the core problems with who to put in a position of power. Apologies for going on a tangent and generalizing a bit. But these views of mine are intertwined with the OP (and your comment of it).

MaulingMonkey 10y ago
> Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! Why isn't this taught in the MBA courses? Why isn't this common sense? Hey, you're welcome ;). People are weird. Confusing. Illogical. Communication is hard, management is hard, and emotional intelligence is perhaps not as high up on people's bucket lists of virtues to aspire to as one might hope. Personally, it wasn't until I got to see the difference between extremes of good vs bad management first hand, and in depth (for me, this was heavy involvement in several project's schedules), that I was able to really pick apart the differences between the two, and pick up on the relatively subtle differences in surface level behavior, and trace that all the way back to the more fundamentally different modes of operation. > They want to RULE and they hate the idea that their subordinates can dictate the pace and the format of the work, and they want "to get back at the nerds" <-- and this is actual overheard conversation between two managers in one of my former jobs. Ooof, my sympathies. I'd hope they were being sarcastic, but that's perhaps more the power of denial than anything else. I've seen a borderline case or two. I've also seen plenty of people between a rock and a hard place, and a few layoffs from the resulting collisions.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Sadly they weren't sarcastic at all. And their policy was dictated by a smug smile in which you can read they don't believe a single word you're saying. Ever. That was when I was 27-28. Working in that place was a VERY educational phase of my life. It was probably the first time ever for me when I decided I don't want to "fight" and give arguments and counter-arguments (which I actually did a few weeks before that but I quickly gave up). I was finally able to make the correct conclusion that people by default don't want to change their views and that I should simply switch jobs, which I did. For what it's worth, I'd be happy to work with a person like yourself. You strike me as very well-connected to human nature reality. Kudos for that.