If this is how you see your management, your interaction with them, or how your firm works, then here's some advice
- You've likely connected your career to a firm that's going to leave you high and dry pretty soon.
- Making credible estimates is part of any well run firm.
- Knowing how to make credible estimates is part of any managers role in this well run firm.
- Knowing the estimates say their name E-S-T-I-M-A-T-E, roughly calculate or judge the value, number, quantity, or extent of - is a critical success for any project, any firm, any customer.
- Don't recognize that, understand that, or apply that - you're headed for the ditch
- You've got a boss that not only doesn't understand how to manage a project or support you, probably doesn't know how to manage the business side of the project.
- Estimating is taught in high school, and likley before that.
- How much dog food do we need for our dog when we take her to the kennel?
- How long will it take install the upgrade to SAP ECC6.0 from EHP4 to EHP5?
- If I gave your $500,000 could you redo the COBOL core accounting engine in JAVA in 18 months with 3 people?
- You're working in a toxic environment, that may not be recognized as one yet, but that will come soon.
- Management that think they can hold you to your estimate, without actually understanding the notion of estimates, the probabilistic nature of estimates, the underlying statistical processes driving estimates - is missing lots of other understanding as well.
Here's what you do as soon as you have the chance.
If you don't Run Away, I guess you can sit around and grouse about how bad your management is, how to do your job without having to be accountable for how much money you are spending, or pretend that someone else, somewhere in the firm will figure how to estimate before you RUN AWAY.
But in the end if the Monte Python gang is the view of the world of your management, ask yourself if you've hitched up with the wrong crowd but don't know it yet.
