this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2026
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Nothing is more triggering to me than the question "how long will this take?"
It will take as long as it fucking takes, and you shouldn't be reporting anything until it's done. Measure progress by fully working, end-to-end features, not by a number of hours someone pulled out of their asses.
I used to hate this. I still hate it, but I used to hate it, too.
More seriously, something that has helped from my managers is getting a "product requirements doc" or PRD. Management and customer reps put together a requirements document that says what they need built. Then you can break it down into work units for yourself and estimate the size with milestones and deliverables. It helps a bunch, even if it's extra overhead at the start.
You need to allocate resources and prioritize tasks
If task A takes a day then it might be worth doing. But if it takes 2 weeks then maybe not
You can estimate roughly if you know the scope amd constraints.
And you can't plan if you don't have rough estimates (not counting OPs example)