zlacker

There are tasks you are experienced with that you can pretty much jump on and just do them, but there's also the other 90%.

What's weirdest about your story is that you were laid off a few weeks into your job. People usually get more time to get the hang of it even if they are senior, so I would mostly assume that it was a cultural fit rather than performance.

Some outsourcing/service (billed by the hour — which explains it for the most part) companies would look for very strict delivery cadence with focus on exactly the process you describe, but you'd be unlikely to have contact with the user in that case (just the customer).

Most importantly, if you ever get fired, be sure to ask for the explanation so you don't end up being baffled.

>>necove+(OP)
To clarify I was laid off few weeks after the feedback. I was on the job for a few months.

I asked for the reason, and it was indeed the performance.

It was just the diagrams in the original article that reminded me of this. It just didn't make any sense to me that one would "just solve" a problem at hand without considering other options.

But in my (15 years of) experience the "pi factor" is indeed quite accurate as there is always something surprising that comes up along the way, be it specification changes or technical issues.

>>kornak+4b
To me, 3x is not "accurate" at all: it might be the approximate average, but I've worked on tasks that take anywhere from 0.1x to 10x the original estimate (or rather, a guess). Some were even infinite, in that they were scrapped when the real cost was uncovered.

>>necove+Ol
That's true, the 3.14 is a good average to start with