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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> How long does it take you to go to the store? Yes you might die in the process and take ∞ time, but one normally considers common inconveniences in this. A senior who can't estimate isn't a senior.

A senior who can't navigate the politics around estimating is missing key skills. But they still can't estimate. To estimate something you have to know what you are building and the steps to take to build it in advance. Senior engineers usually don't have enough political weight to stop that changing half way through a project and therefore cannot provide estimates. They can estimate hypothetical scenarios that are unlikely to happen.

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It's called "estimation" because it's not supposed to be precise.

Of course the only way to obtain a precise measurement is to start the clock and do the thing.

And yet in the politics of a company, an estimate becomes fact, and then if you don't meet it they are angry.

Am I the only one who watched star trek?

Estimate, multiply by 4, give the number.

It will take 4 units of time, time units are subjective.

I dont know if you are joking but when managing i do exactly that and that work (with a factor of 3 to be precise, with most people, some aldready take that into account). Works also with myself, i askmyself 'how much i think it will take, i double it and i assume half the day i will be bothered by other unplanned things'. It work remarkably well especially for longer projects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9SVhg6ZENw

I was always told to multiply by pi. Results that are not round numbers look more thought-out.

Much like estimates, pi is irrational

And pi squared if it is a new team doing something new...

There's a three-pronged approach when dealing with it:

- Pad.

- Communicate risks.

- Communicate assumptions.

Then when assumptions are wrong, immediately communicate that this will change the estimate. When risks hit, communicate that a risk hit, and whether or not you can absorb the impact in the planning. If not, communicate the expected delay. Pad that too.

Communicate, communicate, pad, and communicate.

(Padding, BTW, may feel dishonest, but it isn't. It is making the assumption that a certain share of you risks will strike and making allowances for that.)

If you still get in trouble for missing estimates, pad more and communicate in writing. Then when people start blaming, you can point to the emails sent. To their/your boss if necessary.

> (Padding, BTW, may feel dishonest, but it isn't. It is making the assumption that a certain share of you risks will strike and making allowances for that.)

This. It helps to realize that when someone asks "how long will X take". What they are actually asking is "When can I rely on X being done by?". If you say 2 days and it takes one, no problem. But if you say one and it takes 2, they've already told the client it'll be done tomorrow, arranged for the machinery to be in place, and now everything is jammed up based on your delay.

Estimating is as much art as science and requires understanding the context around the estimate and how it will be used.

also offer alternatives, preferably at the same time you communicate the risk. When the risk hits you can then start making recommendations about the workarounds you've already communicated.

This stuff is fluid but too many technical people feel as if it's not.

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