We are all "self-taught", we learn by research, experience and by working with others. Stuff we learn at undergraduate (sometimes graduate) school is pretty muc

We are all "self-taught", we learn by research, experience and by working with others. Stuff we learn at undergraduate (sometimes graduate) school is pretty much useless from a pure software engineering perspective. What we learn in school is how to do research which makes the learning part easier. As far as estimations go, unfortunately companies are no charities. There's usually a limited yearly budget that needs to be allocated to each team to build things that make the company a profit, so sometimes estimations are a necessary evil for managers to negotiate that budget and align their resources. It's not a perfect science and it is not expected to be. Also in some business domains estimations can be easy and highly accurate, so they are not necessarily pseudo science for everyone. In any case, the ability to provide estimates with lack of information is a skill that all experienced software engineering must have.