alt Hacker NewsOne thing I think is missing is an understanding of why there is such a top-down push for timelines: because saying "we aren't sure when this feature will be delivered" makes sales people look like they don't know what they are talking about. Which.... well.
They would much rather confidently repeat a date that is totally unfounded rubbish which will have to be rolled back later, because then they can blame the engineering team for not delivering to their estimate.
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The top down push for timelines is because:
In Australia, an SDE + overhead costs say $1500 / work day, so 4 engineers for a month is about $100k. The money has to be allocated from budgets and planned for etc. Dev effort affects the financial viability and competitiveness of projects.
I feel like many employees have a kind of blind spot around this? Like for most other situations, money is a thing to be thought about and carefully accounted for, BUT in the specific case where it's their own days of effort, those don't feel like money.
Also, the software itself presumably has some impact or outcome and quite often dates can matter for that. Especially if there are external commitments.
If you hired someone to do some work on your house, and they refused to give an estimate, would you be happy?
If you had a deadline - say thanksgiving or something - and you asked “will the work be done by then” and the answer was “I’m not going to tell you” would you hire the person?
The no estimates movement has been incredibly damaging for Software Engineering.
I think this is unfair to sales.
I've made your argument before, but realistically, much of the word revolves around timelines and it's unreasonable to expect otherwise.
When will you recover from your injury so you can play the world cup?
When will this product arrive that I need for my child's birthday?
When will my car be repaired, that I need for a trip?
How soon before our competitors can we deliver this feature?
"It'll be done when it's done" is very unsatisfying in a lot or situations, if not downright unacceptable.
I'm a dev, not a salesperson, but let's be realistic. A company tells you "yeah we're interested in signing at $1M/yr, but we really need this feature, when will you have it by?", to which saying "eh we don't know - it'll be done when it's done" will lead to the company saying "ok well reach out when you have it, we can talk again then" (or just "eh ok then not a good fit sorry bye"), and in the meantime they'll go shopping around and may end up signing with someone else.
Having a promised date lets you keep the opportunity going and in some cases can even let you sign them there and then - you sign them under the condition that feature X will be in the app by date Y. That's waaaay better for business, even if it's tougher for engineers.