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Comment by pizlonator | Hacker News Reader

Nah. The people I’m thinking of are fucking magicians.

If they are hiding their true skill then OMFG.

Back when I was on product teams I could do this. The trick is knowing the codebase and problem space well enough that you're doing all the planning upfront in your head*, so the estimate given is basically just implementation of an already-existing plan, with few unknowns - just some padding for testing and bugfixing near the end.

Nowadays I'm on a maintenance team with products I'm not very familiar with, so when something needs fixing I have to spend time investigating it before being able to come up with that plan. I can usually still give vague estimates based on guesses of where the problem is, but nothing like I used to be able to.

* Okay maybe not all all, but enough that you have an outline of the entire solution where you can fill in the details as you go. Some details will increase the overall estimate as you get to them, others will be simpler than you thought and reduce the overall estimate - for me it tended to balance out.

This sums up my experience as well, giving mostly accurate estimates maybe comes naturally for some of us. I’ve been doing this for a long time though and I think that plays into it. It takes a lot of intuition that really just comes from experience but it does require a knack to some extent.

I didn’t think I was an outlier here but the more I read these comments the more it seems like we are.

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.

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.

> 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.

Causes problems because of jealous creatures?

Sounds like a really bad work environment. I tend to stay away from those.

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