I gotta tell you folks. One thing we need to talk way more about is estimates. Engineers are getting way too comfortable with this notion that things are impossible to estimate. Good estimation is a skill. People do it all the time. Yes it can be tough. Yes you can still fail at it. But pretending it's not a reasonable expectation to ask of people making huge amounts of money makes us sound ridiculous. https://mastodon.social/@bitmaker/112366918452706612
scope doesn’t change without re-evaluating estimates
If management can’t commit to that (and they almost never will), devs should not commit to estimates. Not because it’s comfortable, but because it’s pointless.
@anderseknert@bitmaker management commits to that all the time. I just don't understand why people love making these blanket statements about management when they don't want people doing that about their role.
The thing I'm referring to with enginewrs is literally happening in the thread we are in. You also chose to use the word "never". Whereas I have spent several tweets seeking to explicitly make statements about nuance and balance.
@polotek@bitmaker So I wasn't sure why you'd try to call out "blanket statements" when that was clearly where you started from. Just as I'm not sure why you'd remove "almost" from a sentence saying "almost never", and then ask for nuance.
Engineers showing up in a Mastodon thread and not management isn't exactly surprising. But even if this was LinkedIn, I doubt you'd see many jumping in to defend vague requirements.
@polotek@bitmaker To answer your last question — I think we could be? At the end of the day, we're all going to comment from our own lived experience first, and one person's blanket statement is someone else's reality, and vice versa. In my 20 years in tech I've worked in perhaps 2-3 projects where I've felt like providing estimates wasn't a waste of time. Someone else could have an entirely different experience, and we could still both be right.
@polotek@bitmaker Not sure I follow, but I shared my experience to provide my (different) perspective, just like you shared yours. I don't see anything in my post to suggest I was trying to frame it as a universal truth. But oh well, there wasn't really much of a disagreement to begin with if we both agree that useful estimates come with requirements not just on engineers but the organization at large. And we've clearly had different experiences on that front.
@anderseknert@bitmaker yeah I'm sure you think so. I don't assume you go around making people feel like shit on purpose. The question is whether you can actually hear other people when they give you feedback about how you're coming across.
@anderseknert sounds like you didn't plan to find out. I think that's unfortunate in general. Because there was definitely a point where I would've been open to it. But you're right that you've pretty much ruined any chance at this stage. Anyway, take care.
@polotek lol, how you went from making bad faith assumptions based on some triviality to spirit counselor cosplay kinda caught me off guard, I guess. All the best.
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