The thing that sucks is that when I avoid giving estimates, I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm being honest about the unknowns of the project and the inherent uncertainties and messiness of software development. I'm helping protect myself and the rest of the team from making plans based off of bad estimates.

But I get all this pushback when I do that, such that the path of least resistance is to give some bullshit estimate anyway. Or I get asked to make a "rough guesstimate", which inevitably turns itself into some sort of deadline anyway.

Garbage in, garbage out. Inaccurate estimates, unreasonable timelines, stressed devs and upset PMs.

I'm so over working on software teams.