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A company I once worked for wanted to outsource a project to a team in Romania.
So, three managers (also the owners of the company) get on a flight to meet the team and discuss the project for three whole days.
When they get back, one of them asks me "can you make an estimation for the project?"
So obviously I ask if the remote team shouldn't make an estimation since they would be building it.
They did make an estimation, but my manager didn't trust it because it was only one or two months away, which they were never going to make, and now he had more confidence in my estimations.
So I aks him how many developers there were on the project.
He didn't know 
I asked him what the hell they talked about if they didn't talk about (believable) estimates and size of the team.
He answered something like "other things, but not that."
So I asked him how the hell he expected me to plan something I don't know anything about.
His reply was "I know it's just guess work, so just guess"
So I "guessed" their original estimate would be accurate, but he wanted another guess 
I think I answered something like "In that case I guess they'll have a hundred developers so they'll be done by tomorrow", but that wasn't the guess he wanted to hear either
It was hands down one of the weirdest conversations I've ever had 
Ultimately, the only correct guess, and maybe you've already guessed it, was "never" 
I left the company a year later and another year later they abandoned the project and lost the customer.
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You calculate / compile "function points" and using a "gearing factor" (per language), calculate total man-hours based on historical output per FP (one needs in-house FP stats or an industry estimate). That's the number management gets. How many people they budget is then their problem.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Yeah, but this wasn't about hours, but when we could deliver to the customer.
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Ah, yes. The old outsource because you're not smart enough to understand the underlying problems.
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Yup, I sent a "no" to my boss yesterday. Again.
If he wants me to produce "CSV files", I'm going to produce proper "CSV files", e.g. ones which Excel recognizes as "CSV" as it's the de facto Standard for "CSV".
He, of course, replied that I should use vertical bars rather than commas because the whack-jobs downstream are using a tool which can't read CSV! In fairness, Microsoft's BCP utility can't read CSV either, but these people are supposed to be developers. And so it goes around again.
Some uber-whack-job up above must have read a blog post about how good this tool is and dictated that everyone across the enterprise needs to stop using what works and switch to this one. piece of crap. Hey, it's expensive, it must be good! 
And, yeah, the same uber-whack-jobs up above have also dictated that everyone needs to use "Scrum" even though every word out of their mouths proves that they have not the first clue what "Scrum" is. 
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You make the "value" of the delimiter an option; reading and writing.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: e.g. ones which Excel recognizes as "CSV" as it's the de facto Standard for "CSV".
That can bring problems... I am in the CSV world at the moment too, and it is a pity because German Excel wants "," for decimal separation, but c++ wants "." for decimal separator.
Having a:
Line 1_1; Line 1_2;
2 empty
Line 3_1; Line 3_2; Line 3_3; Line 3_4;
Line 4_1; Line 4_2; Line 4_3; Line 4_4;
Line x_1; Line x_2; Line x_3; Line x_4;
Opening in Excel to edit something and saving it, then opening with another text editor then you have:
Line 1_1; Line 1_2;;;
;;;;
Line 3_1; Line 3_2; Line 3_3; Line 3_4;
Line 4_1; Line 4_2; Line 4_3; Line 4_4;
Line x_1; Line x_2; Line x_3; Line x_4; Note the additional ";" in lines 1 and 2
And yes... I know, but that's the csv I get from customers... First line is variable and can be less or more than the data part (at least data is a "rectangle")
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nelek wrote: but that's the csv I get from customers
Glad I'm not the only one! I have one customer's csv import that looks like this:
"1201,05-41-2100-AP,12033.32,07-01-2020,07-31-2020"
Yes, each line is encapsulated in double quotes not to mention the blank lines and subotals/totals spread throughout. This is what they give me, and if I can possibly make things work, I handle it...in this case checking each line for a 34 at the beginning and ending, except where matching pairs occur without a comma, etc. 
After 20 years of dealing with imports, nothing surprises me anymore! It has resulted in some highly customizable options bloat.
One gripe I have about working with .csv files is the fact that Excel will automatically strip leading 0s simply by opening the file, even without saving. 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Bah! That's nothing. How about a "CSV" file which is actually multiple tables of data interleaved? Each line begins with the name of the table it belongs to.
Something like this:
Teacher,Name,Subject,Room
Student,Name,Grade
Class,Name,Teacher,Room,Limit,Enrollment
Teacher,John Smith,Logic,42
Student,Jane Doe,12
Student,John Doe,12
Class,Advanced Logic,John Smith,42,20,Jane Doe|John Doe
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At my last job the vendor and I had to transfer data between two different databases. This was at the height of the XML solves everything craze. When my boss, who was also the company owner, came to us and said to use XML we both looked at him and said no, we've already solved this issue with CSV files which are far easier to read and write.
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Best to do it without writing it to disk at all though, read from one database and write to the other.
CSV is evil. Particularly in the absence of a standard. I try to avoid it.
My boss was on a JSON kick for a while, he'd read a blog post. It seems that he is incapable saying "no".
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Is there a solution to this? Seems this is the case everywhere (maybe almost!) and don't see getting it changed.
Think, it's just live with the reaction for saying No.
And the best option probably would be to provide best guesstimate and take whatever comes on the way as much possible.
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I often work with people from other cultures (programmers, customers, etc) where NO is forbidden. It makes life more polite and unnecessarily difficult. Even if I ask something as simple as "Do you understand?" and the heads politely nod 'yes' regardless of whether they followed me or not. 
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SteakhouseLuke wrote: I often work with people from other cultures (programmers, customers, etc) where NO is forbidden.
I thought the same thing when I read that a dev actually said no to someone.
Most places there is no possible way to say no. They want an estimate and you give them one.
Completely meaningless, but very polite. 
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SteakhouseLuke wrote: I often work with people from other cultures
I've had that experience - it definitely requires learning how to phrase questions differently, like "tell me what you understand from all this?"
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Working with the Japanese can be soooo frustrating. I built an entire solution based on their response only to find out it was completely wrong. We had to send an interpreter to Japan to get straight answers.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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In English we have "The customer is always right."
In Japanese they say "The customer is God."
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Marc Clifton wrote: The irony is that this project manager went from being a bull in a China shop to a mouse - no facilitation, no responses to our emails when we actually need some information from the client that he could "facilitate", in fact, no communication at all except an hour before the scheduled weekly meetings "Are you guys ready?"
Decades ago I worked with a QA lead who very much felt that he needed to have some visible authority and that he was constantly getting his hands tied behind his back. He stopped caring and only showed up to collect his regular paycheck. Then he was accused of "not being a team player".
I saw him a few years after he was laid off, and was making the claim that "[Company Name] put an end to my IT career". I'm pretty sure he did that himself. As much as I don't like office politics, you have to learn what the rules are, and play by them. Don't sulk for months until you get fired just because you're not getting things your way.
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The more I worked in the field, the more I understood the wisdom of two year olds.
When I was green I was asked to move a deadline on a 3 month project, up a month. I said maybe. My mistake.
Since then I have not been afraid of "no."
I realized part of my job was to protect management from themselves. Not in the job description, but when the project fails, who gets blamed? It is my responsibility, because it's my behind if it gets behind.
Real programmers use butterflies
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honey the codewitch wrote: I realized part of my job was to protect management from themselves.
Yeah, so often the sad truth. Especially when the manager explicitly says "my boss is breathing down MY neck."
Oi. Talk about roll reversal, which it should be the manager's job to protect you!
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I agree. It was one of things I really didn't like about the field.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Quote: ...I was asked to move a deadline on a 3 month project, up a month...
I've been asked that recently in a similar timeline.
I said "OK"
Then I said "Which bits do you want me to leave out?"
I got some funny looks at that point, and the "nothing should be left out" response.
I then wasted another 15 minutes of my life explaining that the work they required would take 4 months, so they could either have all of the work after 4 months or some of the work after 3 months.
Now they've got me in overly frequent, regular meetings to review how we are against plan. The irony that these meetings are eating into my available dev time is completely lost on them
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And people wonder where Scott Adams gets his material. The man must have worked in development.
Real programmers use butterflies
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That's when you tell them things have slipped a week because of all the time wasted in meetings.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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