I usually say what unit of measurement we’re counting in: days, weeks or months. For more detail, more specs are needed.
Users expect to buy a game, a product, not a service. There are enough examples always needing to be online games where local single player stops working when sunsetting the server or just a connection issue.
They’ll do an outlook: cut features from the desktop version until it’s exactly the same as the web version, because every interface needs to be a facsimile of the web, right?
It’s not stupid. It’s just the bastard child of Germany, Dutch, French, Celtic and Scandinavian and tries to pretend this mix of influences is cool and normal.
And that’s how an iPhone with an interface that even a toddler can figure out sold a few billion units.
Standard earbuds with a cable manager. It was the time that all phones had an audio jack.
The usual response is to overload them with work and basically hound them for ticket numbers, time allocation, budgets and adhere to a very rigid “no ticket, no work” version of the company policy. Preferably with all colleagues at the same time, just waiting at his desk before the boss walks in.
Finally very detailed climate simulations to know how hard we’re screwed
The most important thing is what you’ll get. A few static pages and stock images with the watermark still present, sure. Beyond that the meter starts running.
Best comment ever was “It used to work like this but person at client demanded it work like that on this date” when the client complained it shouldn’t work like that.
Except in this case it won’t be open and all profits go to the idea guy
Reasonably confident, yes. Fully confident, no.
Because the world is seen and directed by layers upon layers of abstractions that get divorced from reality but do give monetary benefits when manipulated in some way.
They are just the biggest asshole in the room
That’s always fun in sales. The vendor that brazenly promises two-and-a-half mirage for half the price will win the bid, and the sales people will move on to a different employer when the real budget for the project becomes clear.
One user during the night shift tested every possible key combination on the computer to see what would crash our software, so it became a race between the programmer locking the thing down and the user finding new holes. It ended when the user resorted to sitting on the keyboard and breaking the keyboard that got their bosses involved who told the user to knock it off.
Then you ask a PM for specs before you start, or at least a brief with what needs to be done, and maybe a rough planning based on estimates and not what the customer said what are the deadlines, and they get really offended.
Not always a good idea
https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/
fatal error: Too many errors emitted, stopping now