5 ms·

I used to do real estimates and was borderline prophetical on them. Didn't matter. I stopped and now just do a rule of thumb plus two weeks, two months, two y

I used to do real estimates and was borderline prophetical on them. Didn't matter. I stopped and now just do a rule of thumb plus two weeks, two months, two years depending on the project. Professionally it changed nothing. For me it made my life much better and now projects come in "early" and make customers happy. Instead of people frothing at the mouth because it was a "day late" Why do we as an industry put up with this? Lawyers Don't, Doctors Don't. Pretty much any Degree based industry doesn't. If it goes over budget/time they all just shrug and say that's how it is if you want it you have to pay more. Yet Devs are somehow supposed to know to a dollar how much the unknown will cost?

trentnix 5y ago
> Lawyers Don't, Doctors Don't. And both deliver abysmal cost-benefit and have obfuscated competence to the point that it is nearly impossible to discern good ones from bad ones, as long as the bad ones meet the minimum standards of the license. In fact, both doctors and lawyers have fought hard to prevent any sort of evidence of their relative competence and performance from being accessible to their customers. > Pretty much any Degree based industry doesn't. Only non-degreed people should be accountable? > Yet Devs are somehow supposed to know to a dollar how much the unknown will cost? "To a dollar"? Straw man.
handrous 5y ago
> Why do we as an industry put up with this? Lawyers Don't, Doctors Don't. It's a class difference. Fussell places the typical doctor or lawyer in the Upper Middle. Most developers are, in their relationships with their employers and their employment (not in terms of income!), Mid-Prole, High-Prole, or solidly Middle, under a Fussellian classification. Elevating us to Upper-Middle would put us on par with much of upper management, and where most middle managers want to be but are not and are constantly irritated that they are not, in terms of freedom and respect. No surprise that corporations (managers, in particular) resist this inversion of class-liberty compared with the corporate hierarchy, especially since they (managers) set the rules and the tone. It's bad enough we might make more money than they do. And besides, most developers haven't been socialized, in childhood, in school, or in their early career (so, the periods of life when class education occurs) into the Upper-Middle. We don't really expect better, would probably feel uncomfortable or like beggars requesting better, and (truly) may even feel uncomfortable or lost with the resulting freedom. Put another way: who do doctors in a hospital answer to? Who do lawyers answer to, in a law firm? Classically, doctors and lawyers, right? Notice how upset doctors are about professional management infiltrating hospitals? That's them resisting dropping down in social class.
tutuca 5y ago
Agile, is in practice, a way to have the dev team under more strict scrutiny than anyone else in the org. It doesn't happen anywhere else, mostly because other industries have a long standing unions and working rights instead of free "professionals" doing services.
- regularfry 5y ago
  Which is ironic, because one of the driving design decisions in both XP and Scrum was to provide protection for the dev team from overbearing project management.

trentnix 5y ago

> Lawyers Don't, Doctors Don't. And both deliver abysmal cost-benefit and have obfuscated competence to the point that it is nearly impossible to discern good ones from bad ones, as long as the bad ones meet the minimum standards of the license. In fact, both doctors and lawyers have fought hard to prevent any sort of evidence of their relative competence and performance from being accessible to their customers. > Pretty much any Degree based industry doesn't. Only non-degreed people should be accountable? > Yet Devs are somehow supposed to know to a dollar how much the unknown will cost? "To a dollar"? Straw man.

handrous 5y ago

> Why do we as an industry put up with this? Lawyers Don't, Doctors Don't. It's a class difference. Fussell places the typical doctor or lawyer in the Upper Middle. Most developers are, in their relationships with their employers and their employment (not in terms of income!), Mid-Prole, High-Prole, or solidly Middle, under a Fussellian classification. Elevating us to Upper-Middle would put us on par with much of upper management, and where most middle managers want to be but are not and are constantly irritated that they are not, in terms of freedom and respect. No surprise that corporations (managers, in particular) resist this inversion of class-liberty compared with the corporate hierarchy, especially since they (managers) set the rules and the tone. It's bad enough we might make more money than they do. And besides, most developers haven't been socialized, in childhood, in school, or in their early career (so, the periods of life when class education occurs) into the Upper-Middle. We don't really expect better, would probably feel uncomfortable or like beggars requesting better, and (truly) may even feel uncomfortable or lost with the resulting freedom. Put another way: who do doctors in a hospital answer to? Who do lawyers answer to, in a law firm? Classically, doctors and lawyers, right? Notice how upset doctors are about professional management infiltrating hospitals? That's them resisting dropping down in social class.

tutuca 5y ago

Agile, is in practice, a way to have the dev team under more strict scrutiny than anyone else in the org. It doesn't happen anywhere else, mostly because other industries have a long standing unions and working rights instead of free "professionals" doing services.

regularfry 5y ago
Which is ironic, because one of the driving design decisions in both XP and Scrum was to provide protection for the dev team from overbearing project management.