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From my experience (3 technical co-foundings, 1 additional top-tier startup, other companies) it’s rare for management to incorporate our estimates. I’ve been c

From my experience (3 technical co-foundings, 1 additional top-tier startup, other companies) it’s rare for management to incorporate our estimates. I’ve been coached by a VP Eng on how to blow off actual estimating, in that top-tier startup. Sometimes, it may be quasi-rational in that the apparent business constraints just don’t care about the estimates, in which case, yeah, just cut to the deadline and budget and we’ll see if we can do anything that isn’t embarrassing. Management usually dictates rather than engages, that’s how you get to be CEO in the first place. “We” are usually not at all clueless. “They” tend to be.

yachtman 7y ago
The original title was closer to what you are alluding to here. Idk why but hacker news changed it to say "We"
- Mathnerd314 7y ago
  It's part of the line before the picture of "the The Parsimonious Yachtman".
- dang 7y ago
  On HN, moderators edit titles that are misleading or linkbait, as the site guidelines ask: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). It's a linkbait trope to use "you" in a title, because it grabs attention whether the topic has anything to do with the reader or not. That's why "you" is headline writers' favorite pronoun. Combining it with a pejorative ("you have no idea") makes it even more sensational. That's definitely the sort of title we edit. When we edit a title, we look for a representative phrase in the article itself that expresses its point in a more neutral way. That's what a moderator did in this case. The language comes from the article's own summary of itself: "After all of these years, I finally came to one simple conclusion. With all due respect: we are completely clueless about how long things should take." Reading the article text to find how it states its own conclusion, removing any residual linkbait (such as the superlative "completely"), and making that the title instead is the best way we've found to correct titles that break the site guidelines.

yachtman 7y ago

The original title was closer to what you are alluding to here. Idk why but hacker news changed it to say "We"

Mathnerd314 7y ago
It's part of the line before the picture of "the The Parsimonious Yachtman".
dang 7y ago
On HN, moderators edit titles that are misleading or linkbait, as the site guidelines ask: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). It's a linkbait trope to use "you" in a title, because it grabs attention whether the topic has anything to do with the reader or not. That's why "you" is headline writers' favorite pronoun. Combining it with a pejorative ("you have no idea") makes it even more sensational. That's definitely the sort of title we edit. When we edit a title, we look for a representative phrase in the article itself that expresses its point in a more neutral way. That's what a moderator did in this case. The language comes from the article's own summary of itself: "After all of these years, I finally came to one simple conclusion. With all due respect: we are completely clueless about how long things should take." Reading the article text to find how it states its own conclusion, removing any residual linkbait (such as the superlative "completely"), and making that the title instead is the best way we've found to correct titles that break the site guidelines.