5 ms·

>Some folks are scary precise in their estimates. I’d say this is like 10% of engineers. You ask them for an estimate, they tell you, and then it takes exactly

>Some folks are scary precise in their estimates. I’d say this is like 10% of engineers. You ask them for an estimate, they tell you, and then it takes exactly that long every single time. It's possible they are hiding their true skill and sitting inside their comfort zone, so they are really over-estimating based on what they can actually do, but are keeping that truth to themselves. A good reason to do this is to avoid being assigned more work for no real gain and pushing the work-life balance more towards life. This situation annoys some managers when they find out they weren't getting the maximum effort possible from someone for their compensation.

pstorm 4y ago
I came here to say the same thing. It's either that or Parkinson's Law [0], usually expressed as: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. I find that for myself it is true, when I have more time, I take my foot off the pedal. When I am running late, I work harder to meet the deadline. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
mumblemumble 4y ago
This was roughly my first thought, too. It may not be nefarious, though. In many software projects, if you know what you're doing, there's a lot of work that's useful-but-optional that can be delayed to the end stages of the project. So then you front-load all your hard requirements so that you can minimize the risk that you'll miss any of them. Once that's sorted, you can just knock your way down the rest of the to-do list until you run out of time. This is actually how Scrum is supposed to work, and most the Scrum rituals are just a formalized process for doing that in a collective ownership setting. But at some point we forgot that and started confusing the means for the ends, and it all kind of fell apart.
pizlonator 4y ago
Nah. The people I’m thinking of are fucking magicians. If they are hiding their true skill then OMFG.
- engineeringwoke 4y ago
  I am 100% one of these people. Unless something really unexpected comes up, then I choose whether I'm working that morning (which is less than 50%) and will usually finish the work after a few hours, then commit it either at EOD or next morning. I am still considered an over-achiever by a vast margin.
  - pizlonator 4y ago
    Good for you. I don’t mind working with such people. I have zero interest in knowing how much of your 40 hours you actually spent working, only whether you did the thing you said you were going to do. An engineer that is more productive than everyone else but only works 5 hours a week still deserves to be rewarded the same way as an engineer who worked 40 hours but achieved the same result in the same calendar duration. If you really can overachieve while working very little then all it means is that you could have achieved more in your life if you spent more time working. And that’s none of my business.
    - engineeringwoke 4y ago
      > If you really can overachieve while working very little then all it means is that you could have achieved more in your life if you spent more time working. I mean, not really right? That's the whole thing with the totem pole systems we create. You are only rewarded for over-achieving so much. Anything above that causes problems, because we are jealous creatures. There are daggers in mens' smiles. I have other interests in life and don't care that much about work, which is why I understand how it works in the first place. If I didn't like philosophy and speak four languages and lived around the world, then I wouldn't know that. Most engineers don't. If my company were willing to make me a principal and comp me with a big chunk of equity, then hell yeah. But almost no one is, and until I have kids, I don't want to start my own company or put too much effort into office politics. C'est la vie, c'est la mort.
      - pizlonator 4y ago
        Causes problems because of jealous creatures? Sounds like a really bad work environment. I tend to stay away from those.
pcurve 4y ago
Manager here. Managers know this too. As long as the estimate falls somewhere between over-estimator and under-estimator, most managers don't care. Good managers understand slack capacity is needed.
justeleblanc 4y ago
If the manager's happy with the employee's output, and the employee is happy with their task and compensation... Then how is that a problem?
- khazhoux 4y ago
  Our field is based on trust. When the backend is having massive performance problems, and Steve tells you it will take a week to fix, that might make sense to you because you’ve seen hairy backend problems in the past, and he’s the one that looked into the technical details on this one. But you’d be pissed to later learn that it was a one line fix that he knew about all along, and he just took a week at home chilling out while others were waiting on him.
  - justeleblanc 4y ago
    Every field is based on trust, so I don't see why you emphasize that. Once again, if as a manager, you are happy with your employee's output and feel that their compensation is fair; why would the knowledge that they could have done more change that? It was fair before. Why should the worker do more to earn their salary?
    - McSwag 4y ago
      As an engineer, I mean it kind of comes down to competition doesn’t it? If entity A is able to get something done 5x faster than entity B and just as well, wouldn’t you choose entity B in the future? Sure entity A might have been acceptable but at a certain point, who’s more likely to get a contract, a promotion, a raise, a pay cut, or laid off? This stuff matters, it’s how the world works, it’s no secret. Generally, pay cuts and layoffs are reserved for when the company is suffering but really what is happening the tolerance for slack is dropping, and productivity will absolutely play into that.
    - khazhoux 4y ago
      > Every field is based on trust, so I don't see why you emphasize that. Most workers around the world have no "trust" from their manager on the number of hours they spend in a week. > Once again, if as a manager, you are happy with your employee's output and feel that their compensation is fair; why would the knowledge that they could have done more change that? It was fair before. Why should the worker do more to earn their salary? Because there is a tacit understanding between the two parties (if most cases, apparently you disagree) that the engineer is working the "standard" number of hours in a week (35+, more or less). If you tell your manager "I work one hour a day, and this bug took me three days to fix" and your manager doesn't mind, then it's all good. But if you tell your manager "this bug took me three days to fix" I can guarantee he'll think it was a challenging problem that took 15+ hours of your time, and he would be pissed to know that everyone else was forced to wait for what was actually a quick fix.
bradlys 4y ago
Dude. Stop giving away our secrets. Some of us want to have a reasonable WLB!

pstorm 4y ago

I came here to say the same thing. It's either that or Parkinson's Law [0], usually expressed as: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. I find that for myself it is true, when I have more time, I take my foot off the pedal. When I am running late, I work harder to meet the deadline. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

mumblemumble 4y ago

This was roughly my first thought, too. It may not be nefarious, though. In many software projects, if you know what you're doing, there's a lot of work that's useful-but-optional that can be delayed to the end stages of the project. So then you front-load all your hard requirements so that you can minimize the risk that you'll miss any of them. Once that's sorted, you can just knock your way down the rest of the to-do list until you run out of time. This is actually how Scrum is supposed to work, and most the Scrum rituals are just a formalized process for doing that in a collective ownership setting. But at some point we forgot that and started confusing the means for the ends, and it all kind of fell apart.

pizlonator 4y ago

Nah. The people I’m thinking of are fucking magicians. If they are hiding their true skill then OMFG.

engineeringwoke 4y ago
I am 100% one of these people. Unless something really unexpected comes up, then I choose whether I'm working that morning (which is less than 50%) and will usually finish the work after a few hours, then commit it either at EOD or next morning. I am still considered an over-achiever by a vast margin.
- pizlonator 4y ago
  Good for you. I don’t mind working with such people. I have zero interest in knowing how much of your 40 hours you actually spent working, only whether you did the thing you said you were going to do. An engineer that is more productive than everyone else but only works 5 hours a week still deserves to be rewarded the same way as an engineer who worked 40 hours but achieved the same result in the same calendar duration. If you really can overachieve while working very little then all it means is that you could have achieved more in your life if you spent more time working. And that’s none of my business.
  - engineeringwoke 4y ago
    > If you really can overachieve while working very little then all it means is that you could have achieved more in your life if you spent more time working. I mean, not really right? That's the whole thing with the totem pole systems we create. You are only rewarded for over-achieving so much. Anything above that causes problems, because we are jealous creatures. There are daggers in mens' smiles. I have other interests in life and don't care that much about work, which is why I understand how it works in the first place. If I didn't like philosophy and speak four languages and lived around the world, then I wouldn't know that. Most engineers don't. If my company were willing to make me a principal and comp me with a big chunk of equity, then hell yeah. But almost no one is, and until I have kids, I don't want to start my own company or put too much effort into office politics. C'est la vie, c'est la mort.
    - pizlonator 4y ago
      Causes problems because of jealous creatures? Sounds like a really bad work environment. I tend to stay away from those.

pcurve 4y ago

Manager here. Managers know this too. As long as the estimate falls somewhere between over-estimator and under-estimator, most managers don't care. Good managers understand slack capacity is needed.

justeleblanc 4y ago

If the manager's happy with the employee's output, and the employee is happy with their task and compensation... Then how is that a problem?

khazhoux 4y ago
Our field is based on trust. When the backend is having massive performance problems, and Steve tells you it will take a week to fix, that might make sense to you because you’ve seen hairy backend problems in the past, and he’s the one that looked into the technical details on this one. But you’d be pissed to later learn that it was a one line fix that he knew about all along, and he just took a week at home chilling out while others were waiting on him.
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  Every field is based on trust, so I don't see why you emphasize that. Once again, if as a manager, you are happy with your employee's output and feel that their compensation is fair; why would the knowledge that they could have done more change that? It was fair before. Why should the worker do more to earn their salary?
  - McSwag 4y ago
    As an engineer, I mean it kind of comes down to competition doesn’t it? If entity A is able to get something done 5x faster than entity B and just as well, wouldn’t you choose entity B in the future? Sure entity A might have been acceptable but at a certain point, who’s more likely to get a contract, a promotion, a raise, a pay cut, or laid off? This stuff matters, it’s how the world works, it’s no secret. Generally, pay cuts and layoffs are reserved for when the company is suffering but really what is happening the tolerance for slack is dropping, and productivity will absolutely play into that.
  - khazhoux 4y ago
    > Every field is based on trust, so I don't see why you emphasize that. Most workers around the world have no "trust" from their manager on the number of hours they spend in a week. > Once again, if as a manager, you are happy with your employee's output and feel that their compensation is fair; why would the knowledge that they could have done more change that? It was fair before. Why should the worker do more to earn their salary? Because there is a tacit understanding between the two parties (if most cases, apparently you disagree) that the engineer is working the "standard" number of hours in a week (35+, more or less). If you tell your manager "I work one hour a day, and this bug took me three days to fix" and your manager doesn't mind, then it's all good. But if you tell your manager "this bug took me three days to fix" I can guarantee he'll think it was a challenging problem that took 15+ hours of your time, and he would be pissed to know that everyone else was forced to wait for what was actually a quick fix.

bradlys 4y ago

Dude. Stop giving away our secrets. Some of us want to have a reasonable WLB!