this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
157 points (99.4% liked)

Programmer Humor

42711 readers
117 users here now

Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)

Rules:

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Manager: We (meaning you) need to do task A. How long will it take?

Me: Task A will take X days to do.

Manager: That seems awful long.

Me: How long do you think it should take?

Manager: It surely could not take any longer than Y days.

Me: Ok, it seems you have an answer to your question then.

Later:

Manager: It’s been Y days, why isn’t task A done yet?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Made me want to become that notorious software architect, just to be the reason that "X is going to take Y days. Want faster? Change your fucking expectations/scope of X"

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It's nice having that kind of pull/weight to throw around, but sometimes the boss still won't listen. Different industry, we had a major change in tax law happen. I read about it, figured out how to do it, then told the boss that we needed to start now training the company on the new method because it would take a year for us to catch up.

His response was to ignore it, because "congress is going to undo the law". I left for another firm, precisely because I didn't want to be in charge of the last minute project he'd assign with a month to go on a hard legal deadline. Got a phone call about two weeks before the deadline. Fortunately it went to voicemail because I couldn't stop laughing for like half an hour.

[–] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 1 points 46 minutes ago

Wow. Idiots being idiots. The guy tried to play with legal rules and - surprise - lost. I am glad you got out of there in time