Work is ridiculous

Everyone has those days when they feel like they're actually in an episode of The Office, instead of just enjoying the insanity from the comfort of their couch. You are no longer just working in an office, but you are actually carrying on a conversation with Dwight or Angela, and you absolutely cannot wait to get home and have a glass of wine. (Or sparkling water as the case may be for the pregnant in the bunch.)

Maybe it's because I'm 36 week preggo. Maybe it's because I'm tired and need a long weekend away from work. Or maybe, just maybe, it's because work is as crazy as I think it is. Part of my job is estimating how much it will cost to do new tasks. Typically I use technical understanding and historical evidence to come up with these costs. I'm not going to say I'm brilliant at this, but at least most of the time I feel like I've got some kind of basis for what I'm doing.

Today I'm supposed to provide cost estimates for something. This something is currently being worked by the smart guys downstairs, so I go downstairs to talk to them about what they're doing. Understandably, they're happy to talk about what's going on (we're nerdy nerdy people who enjoy talking about complicated problems - leave us be). Anyway, we talk about what the problem is an how they intend on developing a solution. A solution which I am supposed to provide a cost estimate for implementing in software. Only they don't know what the solution is. Or even really an order of magnitude of how complicated it is. Everything is totally unknown. It's crazy to think that I could reasonably estimate how difficult it will be to do this. It could be the most complicated thing we've ever seen. It could take a few months from start to finish. There's absolutely no way of knowing. Regardless, I have to come up with something.

So I will estimate a worst-case scenario. This worst-case situation will cost much more than the powers-that-be will want to fund. They'll come back and tell me I'm crazy and give me a "challenge" to do the work for much less than what I've estimated. I'll have no choice but to take this challenge. Then we'll finish the work but it won't be completely right, because we had to do SOMETHING, but not necessarily what the end user really wants. Then we'll spend a ton of time fixing things that wouldn't have been broken if we could have just waited a few weeks until the guys coming up with the plan had time to actually plan it.

Instead, we're going to do that other thing I just said. It's ridiculous. Fortunately, while we're doing all these things I'll be at home with the baby. I hope everything works out okay...