Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> "Good enough, done in a week" is a perfectly viable option that is rarely offered by timesheet-padding developers.

I see it all the time from timesheet-padding developers who also are in a position that they'll benefit from the higher long-term support costs that that approach generates.

It's just a matter of whether they want to pad timesheets in the short term or the long term.




Are you aware that your observation does not generalize very well to developers overall?

Or are you referring to some sort of government bureaucracy dealing with loosely coupled contractors bidding on jobs?

Back on earth I can tell you full time devs at big 4 tech companies padding estimates would be a very difficult thing to pull off, for a variety of realities.

Same situation for many other developers.


> Are you aware that your observation does not generalize very well to developers overall?

I was responding to (as should be clear, since I quoted it) an upthread​ generalization about what “timesheet-padding developers” would or would not do. It's expressly not a statement about developers generally.

> Back on earth I can tell you full time devs at big 4 tech companies padding estimates would be a very difficult thing

And pointless, since they aren't paid hourly. Timesheet-padding is only incentivized when developers are paid (or work for a company that is paid) based on timesheets, that is, hourly.

But, anyway, I wasn't talking about padding estimates, that was the poster I was responding to. My observations was that developers with incentive to pad timesheets often will do the opposite of padding estimates, going for quick and dirty development solutions which create more maintenance and support hours (of course, that only occurs as a result of structural incentives where the contractors building the system or feature also expect to be supporting it, but that's often the case.)




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: