[bicijay]

I mean, unless you know all the variables in the feature scope it is pretty much random...

[poszlem]

Critics of estimation often use a sneaky trick called the motte and bailey fallacy. They mix up two different ideas: one that's pretty reasonable and easy to defend, like "we can't know _exactly_ what's going to happen in the future," with another that's way out there, like "the future is a total mystery, so trying to learn anything about it is useless because it's all just random noise."

[bicijay]

"Critics of estimation" usually do this because managers don't actually know the concept of "estimation" and define your worth and paycheck on this concept. So it's just easier to simplify it to "just random".

[jf22]

You know some. You don't need to know every variable to create an estimate.