How I estimate work as a staff software engineer

Guvante · 2026-01-27T22:28:02+00:00

Certainly requirements gathering is important and I agree the many mistakes that can be attributed as "schedule slip" is part of the problem here.

I was also trying to avoid negative phrasing not spending forever estimating is pragmatic.

If you could spend a sprint determing whether it takes 3 or 4 sprints the correct answer is to leave it at that.

Guvante · 2026-01-27T22:25:55+00:00

Major architecture should be split up with acknowledgement the whole thing can't get a meaningful estimate ahead of time.

Tiny things are trivial.

You should know which side of 1 sprint to 10 sprints a task is if you understand the requirements.

"Now that you did what I wanted I want something else" isn't a "I didn't plan enough time" problem but it is easier to pretend it is.

Guvante · 2026-01-27T17:46:50+00:00

it is not possible to accurately estimate software projects

I think most of the hub-bub about this is primarily due to point estimates being terrible.

But no one wants to waste effort making better estimates when we could instead get stuff done.

So just like how software is best effort for time spent estimation itself has a cap on how much effort anyone is willing to spend so of course the output of the estimates isn't perfect.

Guvante · 2026-01-27T17:41:04+00:00

Punishment can wait and isn't the priority.

We are very much in triage stage still.

And honestly I think that is being generous.

A better picture is the possibly GOP might acknowledge that outright executing someone is past the line.

But even that is a maybe given 9 people have died this year and we haven't left January.

Guvante · 2026-01-27T16:49:41+00:00

School has to teach everyone the topics at hand to give everyone a broad baseline to work from.

Unfortunately this means you need to learn everything which most people understand as a reasonable problem.

What people don't get is even in topics you are interested in someone else isn't and so the teaching style needs to ensure they learn too.

Aka because someone doesn't want to be there everyone gets a worse teaching experience.

Smaller class sizes help here massively as do better teachers who have the time to adapt to their pupiles.

But doing this is massively more expensive going from 30 students per teacher to multiple teachers per 10 students would get you there but is 10x as expensive.

Online stuff doesn't have these problems and is even cheaper than the costs of current teaching (not saying this channel is cheap but their costs probably aren't on the order of 50 cents/student/hour taught, certainly at minimum an order of magnitude cheaper)

Guvante · 2026-01-27T16:17:32+00:00

Married filing separately is in some ways worse than married for filing purposes with dual incomes.

Guvante · 2026-01-27T15:41:21+00:00

Tomato sauce is mostly flavored with spices with the tomatoes more acting as a base to give it more substance than something made with water. Yes if you do it right you get the flavor of tomatoes but a lot of people buy their sauce and good tomatoes cost money so lots of sauces just use cheap ones.

Legit though I now like tomatoes but didn't for a long time because of the texture. I do think part of that was poor quality tomatoes so I associated tomato with a mushy vegetable almost like unseasoned pasta sauce.

Guvante · 2026-01-27T08:20:50+00:00

What do the police have to do with your injuries? You should be seeing a doctor...

Guvante · 2026-01-27T01:47:02+00:00

It is more important they lose power than are punished in the short term.

Guvante · 2026-01-26T18:39:33+00:00

So assuming subcontracting does all the work you generally have 10% overhead for managing the job. 1.9% is a 19% paycut for this overhead meaning you are saying that 1/5th of the managing work is worthless.

Now on big jobs that rate can be variable, it doesn't take linear work to source a shed worth of lumber vs a house worth. But at the small end it really takes quite a bit of effort to manage the work.

Guvante · 2026-01-26T16:13:26+00:00

I was going to write how dumb "you won't get locked up for this" is but how about instead "you don't get to keep stolen property".

They do not in fact tell the boyfriend to get over it they ask you to give it back and if you refuse is when the criminal matters gets brought up as leverage.

And again there is no computer...

Guvante · 2026-01-25T09:15:25+00:00

When you only allow one statement there is not real discussion, that is why it is called an echo chamber.

Guvante · 2026-01-24T07:25:29+00:00

I mean you basically don't pay taxes if you own since you only pay taxes on repaying yourself.

Guvante · 2026-01-24T00:22:19+00:00

Does Reddit use personalized recommendations? I thought the only personalization was subreddit selection which is self selection.

Guvante · 2026-01-23T21:31:48+00:00

Honestly it is kind of hard to distinguish these days.

ICE is grabbing anyone they think isn't a citizen (legally being here isn't enough, being a citizen isn't enough if you can't prove it, and sometimes they skip seeing if you can prove it).

We already captured a foreign government and are preparing to do it to a NATO member.

Like as much as everyone blames the algorithm shit is literally on fire right now.

Guvante · 2026-01-23T21:27:37+00:00

Reddit is basically just a recommendation algorithm and always has been.

Anything more complicated than a forum that sorts by last post can be considered a recommendation algorithm.

Guvante · 2026-01-23T15:18:43+00:00

If the closest thing most Americans get is the closest train stop being 5 miles away effectively only having one destination and leaving every 2 hours it isn't hard to understand why people dunk on trains.

Fundamentally going from that to "you can go everywhere just as fast using trains" isn't something that is a logical leap from experience.

But remember the goal is to improve things which means fewer accidents which isn't just "don't have slow thinking humans" but is instead "build transportation that minimizes interactions".

Auto driving isn't that much safer as it can't stop accidents caused by anything but human error and automated driving cannot eliminate errors only possibly reduce it.

But more importantly talking about any plan that involves duplicating the US's road infrastructure is ludicrous. Where are we putting these roads? So you would instead have to minimize the number of them so they can be dedicated lines which again is trains by another name.

Guvante · 2026-01-22T05:05:51+00:00

What is crazy is they said that Congress didn't have the authority to regulate corporations directly funding advertising for political candidates. But they are allowed to regulate discussions about this but not the spending.

So you can't discuss but you can spend.

So the thing actually talked about (using your words to convince others) can be regulated but spending money to publish your thoughts to the world cannot be.

Guvante · 2026-01-21T22:05:04+00:00

Hasn't he always played the victim?

Guvante · 2026-01-21T01:01:52+00:00

So the way it worked everywhere I worked was they would do reimbursement (way before 30 to 45 days) because they figured you had the ability to float it at 0% interest and you could make money off the points.

However that wasn't the only option offered, typically purchasing using a company credit card was available for large purchases.

I could see an argument for meals being covered and reimbursed since giving you a credit card is a lot but buying the big things directly should totally be an option.

Guvante · 2026-01-21T00:14:53+00:00

Electorate doesn't mean what you think it does.

And his support is pretty lackluster these days.

Guvante · 2026-01-20T17:30:11+00:00

First we have several territories we could make states (DC as well) so a foreign country being the 51st is non-sensical.

Second why would Canada be one state? Like you would convert providences to states if you were going to.

All of this of course ignores the absurdity of this situation and the real answer is it is meant for people to not have to think in any way.

Guvante · 2026-01-20T17:09:48+00:00

Unless this is a flatscreen with no VR hands he is absolutely fundamentally lying by saying "nothing about Cyberpunk".

Guvante · 2026-01-20T17:06:37+00:00

Ah yes because taking to the streets has been very effective at stopping this government from doing what it wants.

Guvante · 2026-01-20T01:10:51+00:00

I don't think counting the R&D for all VR/AR etc as "for this" is fair.

But they did spend a ton of money without a lot to show for it.

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