Software development Memes

Ah, the classic "sell the dream, build it later" startup strategy. These two are basically running the tech equivalent of a Ponzi scheme with PowerPoint slides. They've mastered the ancient art of "requirement gathering" by letting the customer unknowingly fund the entire development cycle. The beauty is that by the time the customer realizes they've paid for vaporware, you've either built something that kinda works or secured another round of funding from some VC who thinks "pre-revenue" is a legitimate business model. Ten years in the industry and I've seen this cycle repeat more times than git commits on a Friday afternoon. The smug expressions say it all – "Can you believe they actually bought that demo we cobbled together last night?"

The four horsemen of software estimation in their natural habitat! The noob, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, thinks everything can be done in a day. Bless their optimistic little heart. The junior dev has learned to pad estimates—3 days should cover those unexpected Stack Overflow deep dives and the inevitable "why isn't this working?!" moments. The senior dev doesn't even bother with numbers anymore. Just grunts "uhh... size: story" because they've been burned too many times by the cosmic law that states: however long you think it'll take, multiply by π and add a random number of meetings. And finally, the principal engineer, who's seen enough estimation disasters to last twelve careers, is genuinely shocked people are still playing this dark ritual of pretending we can predict the future. "You guys give estimates??" Translation: "I stopped playing that game years ago when I realized software estimation is just astrology for programmers."