> “Are you expecting something super thorough, like multiple hours of effort, or a quick write up?” Hahahaha yeah. Ok here's what happens - if an engineer is

> “Are you expecting something super thorough, like multiple hours of effort, or a quick write up?” Hahahaha yeah. Ok here's what happens - if an engineer is honest with a non-engineer about how long something will take, the non-engineer will be shocked and say no. >Clarify the expected time investment: “Please look into this for me. Do not, DO NOT, spend more than 20 minutes on this. Please come back with whatever you have after 20 minutes.” Are you insane? Nothing takes 20 minutes! You may as well say "don't look at this, go for a coffee and then ball park it for me". We're doing complex work, we need time to consider. If you don't want us to spend time considering it, just... don't ask! This is part of the problem - you don't want to tell your boss to fuck off, and you don't want to tell them you spent 6 hours on something they think takes 20 minutes. So instead.... everything else slips. Which is why good engineering management is keeping the engineers as far away as possible from the people who are going to unwittingly nerd snipe them.