[kelnos]

Yeah, I definitely agree that the business types just don't get it. If you give a wide range, they either think you're messing with them, or are incompetent.

Personally I tend to try to narrow the range as much as possible while keeping my upper bound as fixed as possible, but that doesn't always work either, and I think I still unconsciously try to go too far toward making everyone happy, and underestimate.

I think part of it is just our collective feelings of powerlessness that keeps us in this uncomfortable position. If a significant number of developers were to put their foot down and give real estimates that actually express uncertainty properly, and stick with them, management would start to understand, or at least accept, what's going on. But "getting a bunch of random people to change their behavior all at once" isn't a reliable strategy, so here we are, and here we'll continue to be.

[Zippogriff]

To make things a bit more fair I'd definitely allow that plenty of business-types do get it, but I think enough don't that treating them all like they do before you know them fairly well is probably a bad move, career-wise, especially if you're not senior and important-enough to thrive despite pissing some of them off. Enough either don't understand or don't want honest estimating that the best you can really do is play the game wisely and hope it goes OK, until/unless you develop a rapport with a "good" one. I'd further admit that being one of the "good" ones may not actually be that useful in a business-type, overall, especially so far as their personal career prospects. They're just... to be approached differently.