[deepsun]

Yes, but when a "pro" takes too long to deliver something, then that thing is considered hard, because even the "pro" cannot make it quickly.

Re. scaling -- probably, agree, just I never seen myself (working in distributed systems). On my personal experience it was always more-less clear, depending on what software/database/data types we intended to use. So before implementing an MVP, I could roughly answer what price/scalability it would have. But I can see it might have, especially in fields of statistics/ML/new algorithms. E.g. "try using SIMD for this new sorting algorithm" -- only tests could show if it's any better.

But in that areas, usually managers shouldn't judge by outcome anyway, but rather by how fast they make and test hypotheses.