[ethnicify]

Apologies, your perceived "view" of engineers had me fuming. I din't mean to attack you - but I understand where you're coming from.

It is not your fault if your leadership demands detailed answers as to why X is off by Y days. All you're doing is cascading that mistrust/poor management skills to your engineers. I understand what you're doing is the most reliable way to do it, but there is a better way. This is why I mentioned its a people problem.

The better way is to not break down things into hourly tasks but weekly sprints as most teams do. Let your engineers break that down into how much ever granularity they're comfortable with. If something goes off track, build communication trust that helps them keep everyone in the loop and work towards a common goal.

As a product person, I've had the fortune of working in two of the big 4 with some of the best engineers there is - so maybe that contributes to my worldview and it might be terribly biased.

Thanks for explaining :)