> Can software development jobs actually be reliably estimated though? That's why I often 3x my estimates. It works great for me. It's never a problem that I

> Can software development jobs actually be reliably estimated though? That's why I often 3x my estimates. It works great for me. It's never a problem that I finish a project early. But when external launch plans are on the line, it can definitely be a problem to finish a project late. Finishing a project on time is one of the things you get evaluated on in performance reviews as a software engineer. It's also up to the software engineer to provide reasonable estimates and to push back on requirements or incorrect estimates coming from higher up.