Hacker News Reader

Comment by cocoa19 | Hacker News Reader

Most maddening thing I've seen is PM translating agile points to man-hours because that's what upper management requests.

Same people: you must complete assignments in the estimated time, or else, be prepared to work overtime including weekends.

It drives me bonkers.

View on HN

We have a great labor market. Don't be shy about quitting when things get cray-cray!

By we do you mean software engineering in general or bay area? Asking because most people commenting on hn tend to assume the entire universe is just the sf bay area.

Even non-bay area SWE in general is still much better than most other job types and probably much better when it comes to having a nice place to live anyway.

I'd say non-BayArea are relatively in the best position, because remote work always gives a chance for salaries much higher than local to you, while unlike the SF, costs of living won't eat most of what you earn.

Quarterly planning is equally frustrating. I don't think we've ever had a quarter where we're on track three sprints in. Something always comes up, we pivot a bit, or our estimates were as uninformative as we all thought they were.

Some people really do need to have the difference between an estimate and a commitment explained to them very carefully.

I had that too. Also they were negotiating down every last estimate while we were doing "planning poker" which was only a façade and was really us committing to unrealistic man-hours estimates unwillingly.

Or you get someone very senior in the company who rocks up in your planning meeting demanding to know the “real estimate”.

The real estimate is ‘as long as it takes’.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com