this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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I once had a manager hand me a project brief and ask me how quickly I thought I could complete it. I was managing my own workload (it was a bad situation), but it was a very small project and I felt that I had time to put everything else on hold and focus on it. So, I said that I might be able to get it done in four days, but I wouldn't commit to less than a week just to be sure.
The manger started off on this half-threatening, half-disappointed rant about how the project had a deadline set in stone (in four days' time), and how the head of the company had committed to it in public (which in hindsight was absolute rot). I was young and nervous, but fortunately for me every project brief had a timeline of who had seen it, and more importantly, when they had received it. I noticed that this brief had originated over three months prior, and had been sitting on this manager's desk for almost a month. I was the first developer in the chain. That gave me the guts to say that my estimate was firm, and that if anyone actually came down the ladder looking for heads to set rolling (one of the manager's threats), they could come to me and I would explain.
In the end nothing ever came of it because I managed to get the job done in three days. They tried to put the screws to me over that small of a project.
This used to happen to me all the time! Except I always gave an estimate of a minimum, "six weeks". Which was always going to be shorter than the other folks/teams who would always start with a minimum of, "three months".
It was a trick, you see. It meant I was always the first person they asked to do anything which meant I got first pick of any given work coming down the pipe ๐. It was more than that though: From experience I knew which projects were real and which were, "management whims". That is, projects that were going to ultimately get cancelled.
If you know how the system works you can always get a deadline extended. Especially if you, "went out of your way" to try to get it done faster than everyone else. With this knowledge in mind I would accept the, "six week" project with the anticipation that it would get cancelled after a month which happened at least 50% of the time and 100% of the time if it was a, "management whim".
This situation was an extreme disincentive to actually work on any projects at all; because if you spent all day every day working on a project for a month and then in the 4th week it gets cancelled that means you wasted all of your time. You could've been surfing the web or learning new skills/frameworks/operating systems/whatever in that time!
Once I had the system completely figured out I would accept these, "six week" projects and not work on them at all for the first month (I had much better things to do, trust me). If they were still pining over it after that time I'd just request an extra two weeks which would give me a month to actually get it done. Then I'd complete the project--usually in a fucking day or two of dedicated work (e.g. "don't talk to me; I'm not joining any conference calls today"). Then I would deliver the project on the day it was originally due: Two weeks early.
I was a hero at that company. The bosses would regularly throw my name out there whenever someone else's project went over time or over budget, "we should've given this to Riskable!"
Company ended up laying me off and then re-hiring me ~1.5 years later at a vastly increased salary because they, "just couldn't find anyone that delivered" like I did ๐
The breathtaking hubris of even laying off "the guy who always gets things done ahead of schedule."