
Ask HN: How do you deal with a manager who knows the estimates better than Devs? - dandare
In one case the manager is my superior, in another it is my superior&#x27;s yes-man. They have no real background in IT but are quite handy with computers - which probably contributes to the problem. They would say things like &#x27;I could hack that website myself in Dreamweaver in 2 days&#x27; ignoring things like responsiveness, cross browser compatibility, all teh edge cases, connection to backend, QA, deployment etc. Obviously they are bad managers and they are embarrassing themselves in front of the developers. I could easily ridicule them and hand over my notice but I am curious how would a great product manager handle such situation.
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fiedzia
I see two options. 1) - let them do it. Give them list of requirements, 2
days, then pass it to QA and let them deal with all the fixes. Then measure
how much time it actually took to get 100% of required functionality. That's
the best way, but requires their cooperation - usually forced from above.
Alternatively you can try to split features you working on into detailed tasks
(adding a button: add a button, test in browser 1, test in browser 2, write
backend logic, write tests for backend logic, deploy, etc.) detailing how much
time each step can take. This will make you job more visible. Some people are
not fixable though.

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dandare
I wish I could do the first! :)

