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It’s not at all like sales quotas. The salesperson’s upside is directly linked to their quota, they are incentivized to fudge it as much as they can. What’s t
by jnovek 3y ago
It’s not at all like sales quotas. The salesperson’s upside is directly linked to their quota, they are incentivized to fudge it as much as they can.
What’s the incentive for a developer to inflate their estimate? The only reason I have to inflate an estimate is if I know some non-engineer boss-type is going to swoop in and try to convince me to lower it.
- bloopernova 3y agoIncentive to increase estimate might be: Deliver under estimate and get a bonus, raise, influence, or just plain old "well done" Be lazy and only work half the time while delivering "on time". Only work on the project half the time, spending the other half on something more worthy/interesting.
- replyifuagree 3y ago>Only work on the project half the time, spending the other half on something more worthy/interesting. This is actually a pretty common motivation for devs who work under legacy management.
- Detrytus 3y agoAnd those who, thanks to WFH can handle two jobs at once.
- ghaff 3y ago>What’s the incentive for a developer to inflate their estimate? Under-promise. Over-deliver. I'm not doing software development most of the time but it absolutely works out better for everyone concerned if I get things done on or ahead of schedule without mostly having to resort to a lot of unnatural acts to do so. If there's a real need for something faster, I'll tell people I'll do my best and (usually) I can get there absent blockers from dependencies. But I try to manage things so that I can meet/beat estimates sanely. It probably helps that people think I work quickly even given some sandbagging.