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Comment by AstroJetson | Hacker News Reader

I fixed giving “napkin” or “rough estimate” times out. I roll a D6 for number of people, D12 for number of months, D20 for the day we will go to production ( not allowed to do installation during end of month). D% is used to say how accurate the estimate is. With the requester there, I pull them out, roll them, give the estimate.

I did have a VP in a meeting go “I don’t like that estimate.” I pushed the dice over and said “Ok, you roll”. Their hand got about 1/2 way before their brain caught on to what was happening and they pulled their hand back.

We normally agree on them writing a 2-3 page scope and I do an estimate based off the scope. Slow learners ask, How long to get the estimate, I look them dead in the eye and reach for the dice again saying “I’d like to see the scope beforehand but ....”

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I like your style

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man

>The Dice Man is a 1971 novel by American novelist George Cockcroft, writing under the pen name "Luke Rhinehart".[1] The book tells the story of a psychiatrist who makes daily decisions based on the casting of a die.[2] Cockcroft describes the origin of the title idea variously in interviews, once recalling a college "quirk" he and friends used to decide "what they were going to do that night" based on a die-roll, or sometimes to decide between mildly mischievous pranks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/15c3yd4/every_yea...

>The newest thing here is a flock of self-proclaimed “coin boys” who carry a quarter on hand at all times and constantly flip it. They have their entire personality revolve around coins, coin flips, and chance. When we went around doing an ice breaker, 4 or 5 of the kids said some variation of “I live by the coin and die by the coin” as their fact.

>Just about an hour ago, when I assigned the first assignment of the school year, one of the coin boys was bold enough to say “heads I do it, tails I don’t.” I told him if he flipped the coin he would be getting a call home on the first week of HS. He flipped it anyway and it came up heads (thank god for that at least).

>But then the other coin boy in that class flipped his coin and it came up tails. He said the coin has spoken and he’s not doing it. I say very well, enjoy your 0 and your call home— what a great way to start off the school year and your high school career.

There's a great Donald Duck comic on making decisions based on a coin flip, written by the legendary Carl Barks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Decision

Didn't end too well for Donald and the boys.

When I'm told "I don't like that estimate" I take it as an invitation to negotiate (same as when you don't like a quote from a tradesman) and so counter with "OK, we may be able to shave x off of it if you give us y and z in addition to what we have now or if we cut w out of the scope".

This turns into nickel and diming, then bike shedding. For me, it's easier not to enter the process

And then a year later I’m the only one who can remember that the reason we are in the middle of a grotesque rewrite is that we got a promise from management that we could treat all X as Y and they didn’t keep their word because that was last year and this is now.

Why can’t you idiots figure out how to code?

I have told a few people that when we substituted their judgment for mine this became their problem. I really think I should have said it more often.

And here I thought I was the only one. This is great. Although, I don’t roll as many dice since I don’t estimate long projects. But now I do know what to do if ever needed.

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