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The contractor was a senior engineer who had been working on and off with Spotify for years. Overall they've been in the field since 2009. That's quite a while.

The contractor was a senior engineer who had been working on and off with Spotify for years. Overall they've been in the field since 2009. That's quite a while. They must have some gut instinct on timelines by now. I've had my fair share of curve ball estimates over the years, if push came to shove I'd just give a ballpark estimate. Example: 3-6 months. If pushed for a specific time I'd go with the longer one - 6 months. If the manager wanted a shorter timeframe then just tell them what they want to hear. End of the day a bad estimate shouldn't get you in trouble with the company - if it does then that's not the sort of company I'd want to work with.

Aeolun 4y ago
> End of the day a bad estimate shouldn't get you in trouble with the company I don’t know what companies you have worked for, but I’ve never worked for any where the ‘vague estimate that we are absolutely not going to hold you to’, is not seen as the word of god. It’s not that you get fired if you fail to live up to it, but the constant “why isn’t this done yet” gets fairly annoying really quickly.
- gedy 4y ago
  Yeah flat out some companies insist on "estimates" from engineers to get them to commit to date and will hold them to it. The other fun one is "that's too long an estimate, let's break it down" then you are forced to try and design and analyze some vague feature in long meetings with project managers while you are busy with other work.
- yardstick 4y ago
  Yes that can happen, I wouldn’t want to work somewhere like that either. “Why isn’t this done yet?” Answer: It was a ballpark estimate. Now we know more information we can revise the schedule. That’s all you can do as a non-manager. If the company culture makes your employment unenjoyable I would start looking for a better workplace, or find a coping mechanism to deal with the resulting poor management.
eptcyka 4y ago
>If the manager wanted a shorter timeframe then just tell them what they want to hear. What's the point of giving an estimate in the first place then?
- ghaff 4y ago
  Somewhere between "Let's ignore it for now" (i.e. zero which is a very exact number as a professor of mine used to say), a few days, and "I'm not even sure we can do what's being asked for here" are a whole lot of other numbers which may be useful even if they're off by a factor of two or more. I've absolutely had management insist on putting overly optimistic stretch goals into schedules but, at the end of the day, they haven't been totally outside the envelope of reality.
  - yardstick 4y ago
    Exactly. Well put.
  - eptcyka 4y ago
    Once you've established that you've given a best-effort answer, and you're being pressed for a different hallucination of a bright future, what is the point? What is the point of giving any answer if the manager can just pull the handle and roll for a better one? If the manager in question wanted to prioritize a specific thing, there can be a discussion about that. Pressing the same button hoping for a different answer just strikes me as a behavior that necessitates record levels of cynicism (which in my experience disqualifies people from managerial positions) or room temperature levels of cognition.
    - yardstick 4y ago
      If management is like that, then time to move on. I’m guessing they also expect you to frequently work more than a standard working day (~8 hours). It’s not the normal behaviour I’ve seen with most managers I’ve dealt with.
      - 4y ago

Aeolun 4y ago

> End of the day a bad estimate shouldn't get you in trouble with the company I don’t know what companies you have worked for, but I’ve never worked for any where the ‘vague estimate that we are absolutely not going to hold you to’, is not seen as the word of god. It’s not that you get fired if you fail to live up to it, but the constant “why isn’t this done yet” gets fairly annoying really quickly.

gedy 4y ago
Yeah flat out some companies insist on "estimates" from engineers to get them to commit to date and will hold them to it. The other fun one is "that's too long an estimate, let's break it down" then you are forced to try and design and analyze some vague feature in long meetings with project managers while you are busy with other work.
yardstick 4y ago
Yes that can happen, I wouldn’t want to work somewhere like that either. “Why isn’t this done yet?” Answer: It was a ballpark estimate. Now we know more information we can revise the schedule. That’s all you can do as a non-manager. If the company culture makes your employment unenjoyable I would start looking for a better workplace, or find a coping mechanism to deal with the resulting poor management.

eptcyka 4y ago

>If the manager wanted a shorter timeframe then just tell them what they want to hear. What's the point of giving an estimate in the first place then?

ghaff 4y ago
Somewhere between "Let's ignore it for now" (i.e. zero which is a very exact number as a professor of mine used to say), a few days, and "I'm not even sure we can do what's being asked for here" are a whole lot of other numbers which may be useful even if they're off by a factor of two or more. I've absolutely had management insist on putting overly optimistic stretch goals into schedules but, at the end of the day, they haven't been totally outside the envelope of reality.
- yardstick 4y ago
  Exactly. Well put.
- eptcyka 4y ago
  Once you've established that you've given a best-effort answer, and you're being pressed for a different hallucination of a bright future, what is the point? What is the point of giving any answer if the manager can just pull the handle and roll for a better one? If the manager in question wanted to prioritize a specific thing, there can be a discussion about that. Pressing the same button hoping for a different answer just strikes me as a behavior that necessitates record levels of cynicism (which in my experience disqualifies people from managerial positions) or room temperature levels of cognition.
  - yardstick 4y ago
    If management is like that, then time to move on. I’m guessing they also expect you to frequently work more than a standard working day (~8 hours). It’s not the normal behaviour I’ve seen with most managers I’ve dealt with.
    - 4y ago