Your job doesn't start when your fingers touch the keyboard. It starts when someone utters the words: "How hard would it be?"

This is a crash course in estimating work, identifying hidden costs, and dealing with constraints. Along the way we will also learn how to defend against tricks from the Dark Side such as estimation bargaining, ego manipulation, and crunch time.

They taught me Big-O notation, I wish they taught me this.

I'm a full stack Rails developer at LiquidPlanner, and have been writing software that helps people get work done for the past dozen years. You'll find me running, walking, biking and eating about town.