Who ate the $60m? The author's employer, or the client? If the client, which isn't it of the ordinary, then it shows exactly why it is career limiting to tell

Who ate the $60m? The author's employer, or the client? If the client, which isn't it of the ordinary, then it shows exactly why it is career limiting to tell such truths to customers: company got paid regardless of project success. Actual short term success for a services company is not defined in terms of the achievement of any particular outcome for the customer, but in terms of amounts billed and paid. As a result, it is a career boosting strategy for managers in short-term minded organizations to underestimate work scope so that a bid can be made for less money / less time than competition. Then, once the contract is signed and work has begun, "realize" that it's going to take longer and ask the customer for more time/more money. The customer may not have a great choice at that point, given they're already halfway down some path, and especially if their requirements were vague enough going in that this can all be characterized as new scope. This dynamic isn't necessarily explicit or malicious. If people get promoted on the basis of contract wins (as opposed to on time, on budget delivery), for example, the incentives naturally reward overoptimistic managers. I don't have a ton of experience here but whatever experience I do have tells me this is widespread in the computer services industry, as it is notoriously widespread in construction. The parallels with construction indicate this may be a structural feature of markets with information asymmetry...