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by ylg 3987 days ago
This seems to me to be estimating the cost to get from a fixed spec to "works on my machine (or simulator)" rather than the total cost to go from an idea to shipped product with non-technical stakeholders (whom your estimator is targeting), a diverse product team, changing understanding of the target, i.e., all the bits that investors struggle to understand seem to be omitted or minimized.

I've found in many years of building apps for clients, the easy part is forecasting simple programming costs. The hard part is helping folks understand time spent keying in code is only a small part of shipping successful software--and one of the more predictable ones. So, the cynic in me reacts with: "great, another over-simplification that instills more of those unreal expectations that so often cause failure."

Minor points worth reiterating from others:

* The rates are off for areas other than yours (how about making rates/regions an option?). And, I'd make it much clearer that the viewer is likely looking at offshore outsourcing pricing as that is a very, shall we say, unique approach to new product development.

* "Man" hours is a small, visual irritant due to the problematic gender relations and inequities in our field at the moment.

4 comments

"Man hours" is not a visual irritant. It is not saying that only men can do work. It is not a statement on gender. It is the most common and easiest to understand way to express an idea. You are being overly pedantic and rabble-rousing for no good reason.
No. I'm making a pedantic (clearly) suggestion about a small visual irritant for the very good reason that because of the (hopefully) temporarily toxic environment in our field, some other human beings I care about might feel a bit put out by the choice of word A over word B. Words or humans? A different word could have been chosen at zero cost and made someone else feel better or less bad; so I'll suggest that door thank you--no it doesn't matter if those put out are being rational, expressing logic compilable by GCC, or otherwise fit with anyone else's ideas about what is proper and right, because it cost nothing to do.

I dislike thinking about stuff like this. It's a waste of time and a distraction from things that truly matter, e.g., Pluto! But, a bunch of jerks already set the stage and the tune and it behooves those of us wanting to profit on that stage to be aware.

If you have data or citations to back up the "most common and easiest to understand" please share, I'm always interested in seeing data. Here's what I have to offer, for what it's worth:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=man-hour&year_...

> I'm making a pedantic (clearly) suggestion about a small visual irritant for the very good reason that because of the (hopefully) temporarily toxic environment in our field, some other human beings I care about might feel a bit put out by the choice of word A over word B.

The problem is that an ugly little debate exists outside of this thread. You don't actually get to drag in small pieces of pedantry like that in isolation.

So, on the topic of this debate:

There are serious real problems in the world and in the software industry with people who are jerks, and (in particular, topically) unwelcoming and offensive to women. This is a very bad thing. And there are people who wish to fix this by changing the language we use. That's a legitimate position to propose and advance.

It's also a legitimate position to object to. But there are those come into the discussion wielding the hammer of Moral Authority, and often they suggest that if you fail to join the crusade to change a word like "man-hours" then you're an ignorant bigot riding high on all your privilege (you can already find some posts on this thread suggesting ideas from this group). Really, it isn't strictly about treating women decently, it's about demanding your subscription to and endorsement of a particular worldview and series of political prescriptions... it's about securing power and finding ways to stifle your opponents and detractors.

A POX ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES.

I think even your strawmen have strawmen.
100%, and that's what you get condensing a minor culture war into a paragraph or two on the Internet :P
There are plenty of other, worthwhile terms like "Billable Hours", "Person Hours" that are present in many existing contracts.

You're being mentally lazy for no good reason.

The essence of privilege is to define and defend a limited default. There is no reason to defend "man hours"; it is less accurate than "person hours" and only slightly longer.
Until those who don't recognise themselves as persons take offense to the obviously bigoted phrase "person hours." This whole argument reeks of fishing for things to be offended by. Any systematic problems women face in the tech industry are certainly not caused by something so insignificant as the use of the phrase "man hours."
It's not a cause, but a contributing factor
Holy shit, this entire comment chain is cancer.

Literally nobody commented on the actual content of the OP.

The idea that someone must be "fishing for things to be offended by" starts from the assumption that this is not a thing that would legitimately offend anyone.

That's what I mean by defining the default. The default, in your point of view, is the word "man," so therefore anyone who objects to that must be "different" in some way: overly sensitive, manipulative, deficient, etc.

When in reality, "man" is the default because men made it the default. That doesn't mean that it has to remain the default.

I'm not suggesting that we go back and edit Neil Armstrong's words--they were of their time and are amazing. I'm suggesting that we're in a different time now, and starting now, it is within our power to choose the words we use.

The idea is to recognize the history and context of language, not assign all problems to one word. No single drop thinks it is responsible for the flood, etc.

You could use "developer hours", which is gender-neutral, more specific, and seems to be used more often in the tech industry anyway.
Which ignores things like design, planning, and testing.
Those are all still developing. "Developer" (as opposed to "software engineer") usually has connotations of being a full-stack role where you do everything needed to get a software product out the door. I've been doing graphic design in Photoshop for the last couple days, for example.
You sound silly nowadays if you use "man hours". Everyone calls them person hours, hours, billable hours, etc.
You're using the wrong definition for man to qualify your visual irritant. Man in this case means "human, person". If I say this will help all mankind, I'm not excluding a gender. You simply misunderstood.
I'm more than upset that we can't treat a topic seriously without someone sidetracking on an personal offense for "mandays". The OP didn't even suggest another word, nor does the industry have another established gender-neutral word.

Besides, women programmers are often quickly promoted, so yes there's only men left at the bottom level.

> does the industry have another established gender-neutral word.

Full time employee hours.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22fte+hours%22&rlz=1CDGOY...

Which risks "othering" the part-time employees and contractors among us.
What about contractors? Interns?
Did you see how many of the links in that search talk about converting part time hours to FTE?

That's what the "equivalent" part means.

They can use worker hours, labor hours, etc.

However, it's true that criticizing man hours is not understanding language or etymology.

We could go on with things like cowboy and cowgirl. Why do we call adults boys and girls? On the other hand, they are just terms. Just like husband really isn't interpreted as "house bound". Bound, tied to a house, i.e. not free.

But... people being people we see others getting in trouble when son misunderstand etymology and meaning like when people use synonyms for frugality and people find offense. There will doubtlessly be other words which fall into disfavor for looking or sounding too much like a scoundrel word.

I agree completely. Language is, although defined, still up for interpretation and can be very vague. That's why we have to communicate more when there is some misunderstanding. And also why some of us spend an inordinate amount of time pruning our writing and speech. I hate to lose people just due to miscommunication. I don't want to offend anyone, because then my message is never sent. I get - Protocol error, do not resend!
Yes, "man" in this context is unequivocally gender-neutral. Hence my point that it's a visual irritant due to a very specific situation rather than saying it was an incorrect usage or a discriminatory term.
Then I think we agree. Because I really dislike the phrase "man hours".
Language is about more than sematics...
Sorry I wasn't trying to be flippant or dismissive. I really am trying to point out a simple miscommunication. If the word truly offended someone I worked with I would substitute it for something else. I don't even like the term to be honest. Never have.
Oh, I wasn't really objecting to the content of what you said there... It's open for debate whether or not there's a better expression than "man hours".

I just wanted to point out that said debate would hinge on more than a narrowly semantic question about the meaning of "man".

You can plug in your own rates at the bottom :-) just click "Show Details"

Man hours will be changed to something much more gender non-specific once traffic calms a bit, good spot. We have many female developers and none pointed it out! :-)

"Man hours" is a great sounding phrase. It sounds way better than "person hours". "Person hours" just doesn't flow as well. People aren't going to write song lyrics with the phrase "person hours" in them.

How about an acronym, like "thips", totals hours in persons. Throw a poet a bone.

I consider "man hour" a terminus technicus and wouldn't change it personally. It's only an estimation tool and fine due to that but the term is problematic due to other reasons (mystical man month). If you feel like you offend someone I think "billable hours" is what fits best (might sound too much like a lawyer though). Person hour et al. sound pretty strange.
I know you are joking, but the last thing this world needs in another acronym? If I was made a dictator in a fantasy world, all future suggested acronyms(related to computing) would have to be vetted by 12 well paid, top notch, Programmers. And only very few acronyms would be approved yearly--even the one that save time. I guess I'm just tired of so many acronyms? Or, maybe I'm just tired?
How about work hours, programming hours, developer hours, or perhaps even just simply hours?

Could in theory be done by a really talented member of anothery species.

> Could in theory be done by a really talented member of anothery species

Not sure we'll reach the point of highly intelligent, tool making chimps and New Caledonian crows writing their own applications. "Murderable" (of crows) hours would lead to some humorous situations though.

Obviously not programming, but perhaps the visual design [1] ;)

[1] http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/12-artsy-ani...

"Hours" implies that it's all linear; that one task can't go until the previous is done. "Man Hours" indicates that it's the amount of time needed to complete the task, but isn't solely dependent on linear ordering
> You can plug in your own rates at the bottom :-) just click "Show Details" Didn't see that and it helps.

Still i think the parent comment is important. If what you selling is just UI design and coding hours then you are not selling a completed app. Working with the client to go from a napkin sketch or idea to a shipped product involves a lot more work. Perhaps you could update the footnote at the bottom of the page about hosting costs etc to also mention the costs of requirements gathering and shipping. Nearly all of my past clients assume these costs are marginal at most if they think of them at all. Some of the more naive ones have assumed that ongoing support and training was somehow magicly included for free.

Yep, see your point, though the more detail you add the less accessible the tool is to at least give rough ideas of cost. Some people have crazy ideas of how much it costs to build apps. We had a customer this week who wanted a Kickstarter clone in 3 weeks! :-)
Plugging in rates would seem to be more applicable to me (a professional in the field) than to the target audience (people who don't know about app development.)

Maybe for the audience I think you're targeting: a few big buttons with labels such as "Thailand", "USA", "Western Europe", "Russia", "San Franspesive" and so on?

I can totally see a potential client pointing to this site when they hear my quote, except they've put the hourly rate at like $10.
If it's changed, won't you have to convert all the numbers too?
'man days' has now been banished from the site :-)

In our defence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-hour