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by ig1 4746 days ago
I'm not sure where you've worked, but doing resource estimation for projects has been pretty important for most greenfield projects I've worked on.

It's also good for sanity testing, it's a useful skill to be able to spot that something is out by an order of magnitude as it can allow you to catch problems early on.
2 comments
tomp 4746 days ago
Perhaps these kinds of questions would be met with less "wtf" looks if they were asked in reverse, as in: "My manager ordered 10 000 000 hard drives for GMail. Do you think we'll need them?" It's much easier to judge an estimate when you see it than to come up with it (especially in an interview where the emphasis is usually on whether you're right or wrong), at least for me.
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rorrr2 4746 days ago
Data-backed estimation is completely different from random guesses you will make during an interview.

Not only that, even if your guesses are decent, multiplying them can drive you orders of magnitude in the wrong direction.

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ig1 4746 days ago
The underlying data might be different but the process is the same, you need to figure out what are the contributing factors, how they relate and establish an upper and lower bounds for the values you're assuming.

Once you have data you can make corrections to those bounds, but other than that the process is the same.

It's a skill that a lot of first time startup founders lack. They have no-idea how to estimate the market size for their startup, you need to understand the process of how to build an estimation model.

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Ziomislaw 4746 days ago
Process is not the same, in one case you have real data, in the other one you pull the data out of your arse.
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ig1 4746 days ago
It sounds like you build estimation models by looking at the data you have and combining it together to try and figure out your goal.

The disadvantage with that approach you often end up missing factors (because you don't have the data to hand) and end up with a suboptimal model.

In the same way that a lot of startups end up analyzing user behaviour by page analytics rather than user analytics simply because Google gives them page analytics.

It's a good idea to know how to do both top-down and bottom-up estimation models, as best practice is to make estimations using several different models and compare the results.

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