> It isn't just software that goes double, look at most custom building projects or government contracts. Most everything takes twice as long and costs twice as

> It isn't just software that goes double, look at most custom building projects or government contracts. Most everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much. There's definitely a correspondence here, but it's a bit indirect. Government and even private contracts are often knowingly lowballed to secure the deal. Rules like "must choose lowest bid" reward entering an unrealistic bid and then inflating costs after work is going. Or, if overruns come with sufficient penalties, doing work at a loss and then charging a fortune to support a fragile and proprietary result. In the metaphor to non-contracted software, developers generally don't correspond to the contractors but to the government. Sometimes blown estimates are simply errors, but other times somebody wanted to secure customers, so they pitched an unrealistic scope and arranged to make the inaccuracy land on the programmers. Where the government ends up with late delivery or runaway costs, programmers end up working crunch time or sacrificing quality. And where the government ends up locked into paying for support, programmers end up locked into maintaining rushed, tech-debt-riddled work. (As for pushing sales for revenue and contract estimates, do it! Some of the most productive teams I've been part of have been ones where sales applied this pressure, but also responded well to the reverse version and kept everyone informed.)