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Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

I think the confusion is, if their job is to execute a $60M contract successfully, and you tell them that it’s going to require an extra 12 months, you’re almost literally telling them they aren’t doing their job. Because arguably they weren’t. Their job was to guide the project successfully, which they didn’t do.

In a situation like that, you can recover, but it requires tact. The end of this story was that they left the company. An alternate ending is that they may have been let go.

If they’re paying you to work on a doomed project, you have to work on it, or change it. And if you want to change it, political maneuvering is necessary.

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Well, yeeeeees... If management, whose job it is to swallow their pride when given a nasty surprise like this, isn't up to the task. I'm sure that OP could, with great political skill and subtlety, have had a very decent shot at turning this thing around.

But what's their incentive? They're probably paid as a regular IC, and saving a double-digit million dollar fiasco like this from disaster is super annoying and unrewarding work! You're effectively doing the job of five managers and not even getting their salary -- let alone a percentage of the disaster you're averting! This kind of political-technical skill combination can probably be fruitfully applied in a place that properly rewards the contributor!

I very much agree that this thing could have been handled better, when seen externally. But I'm also pretty sure it wasn't in OP's personal interest to do so! That's a very stupid state of affairs, of course, but I guess that might be par for the course of a failed $60 million project.

This isn't really how big dollar consulting works. Everyone under estimates in order to be the lowest bid and win the deal. Once won then you slowly and gracefully tweak scope/budget to get something done without pissing off the customer too much. That's how the game is played.

Pointing out that you've underestimated by X is pointing out something everyone already knows. And advocating to blow up the estimate by X so early in the project is arguing to piss the customer off and possibly walk away from $60 million. That's why everyone patted them on the head and blew them off. Everyone else understood the game but it's a bit gauche for them to explicitly explain what's going on.

In a situation like that, you can recover, but it requires tact.

I'd bet it doesnt requires tact to convince them anymore.

You just tell them it will take 12 months more. Your the development team. Let them rewrite contracts or lose business. You do not get a bonus for contracts sold or kept.

If necessary someone else will tell them they are not doing there job. Stick to your role.

I prefer to work for companies where this is the case. I get enough equity compensation that finding creative solution to deliver business value _is_ my job and thus am indirectly compensated with the success of the company (even if the overall success is still dependent on other areas of the company succeeding too).

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