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?
One time we spent like more than an hour in a horrible meeting to plan out how long the next step of a project would take. 4 weeks, we said. Management came back and said to do it in 2. Well, why did we fucking have the meeting if they had a deadline in mind already?
On the other hand, at my current job I have seen a lot of “oh that’s going to take a couple days” protests for things that are 20 minutes of work.
Seems like the solution is to get rid of out of touch management.
I’m of the opinion that it’s always better to overestimate something rather than underestimating it or estimating it accurately. If something takes 20 minutes and you are given a couple of days you have multiple options.
Management loves when things are done early, expects things to be done on time, and gets angry when there’s a delay (and no warning of the delay), so it’s the smart choice in my view.
That’s a good point.
Though sometimes people are just sandbagging. Like I know one guy is just watching Netflix instead of working. I’m downstream from his work, so it’s a little annoying that I have to wait a couple days to get started.
I wouldn’t rat him out because my labor solidarity beats out my annoyance, but the annoyance is real.