[tsgagnon]

Unfortunately this bit of illogic is so common that I know it’s a waste of time to argue, so I’ve learned how to figure out what they want the estimates to be, give them that, miss them (just like everybody else does), and then get to work on actually providing the feature.

It gets even worse when you are in a line of work where the estimates are part of some kind of sales pipeline. Then you aren't just estimating based on effort required, but also against a likely number that the customer will ever agree to.