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Comment by HollowMan | Hacker News Reader

> Estimations will be asked even when you don't want to give them

Actually this particular point reminds me of young-arrogant-me saying things like "I can't give you an estimate since its software, and everybody knows thats estimates are impossible, duh." to my boss.

Boy was I young, and arrogant!

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When I was young I didn't want to give them because I thought they had to be accurate, and pined over being wrong, wasting hours trying to ensure I covered all my bases and basically doing the work to get there. I was quite good with accuracy, which helped feed my belief, but the effort to be accurate was monumental.

Thankfully, I eventually came to realize that you can choose a random number. Nobody gives it another thought after you've answered.

I think it's literally what the word estimate means though. There's a reason people use the word estimate and not prediction. They want to know whether it's going to take 3 days, 3 months or 3 years.

Yes, but what wasn't clear was around the margin of error. I assumed there was an expectation of being close. If I said eight hours and it took nine, close enough. But if I said eight hours and it took a year, that was once concerning, but I eventually learned that I could say eight hours for a year's worth of work and nobody would actually reflect back on it anyway. All that mattered was answering the question with something.

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