--- title: Why Engineers Cannot Estimate Time | daily.dev description: No one no matter how experienced or genius they are can claim to know for sure the exact time a software project would take. Over-optimism, Dunning-Kruger... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-engineers-cannot-estimate-time-0---rvacj twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why Engineers Cannot Estimate Time | daily.dev og:description: No one no matter how experienced or genius they are can claim to know for sure the exact time a software project would take. Over-optimism, Dunning-Kruger... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-engineers-cannot-estimate-time-0---rvacj og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/0--_rVACJ.png og:image:alt: Why Engineers Cannot Estimate Time og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why Engineers Cannot Estimate Time **[The Startup](https://daily.dev/sources/swlh)** · 8 min read · 25 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary No one no matter how experienced or genius they are can claim to know for sure the exact time a software project would take. Over-optimism, Dunning-Kruger effect, pure uncertainty, or just math? Hesham Meneisi offers a statistical approach to explaining bad deadlines in engineering projects. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@onlyangel** · 1 upvotes > An eternal thurth of limitless missfortunes --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-engineers-cannot-estimate-time-0---rvacj) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why Engineers Cannot Estimate Time","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-engineers-cannot-estimate-time-0---rvacj","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-engineers-cannot-estimate-time-0---rvacj"},"datePublished":"2020-10-22T07:20:13.928Z","dateModified":"2021-10-07T14:17:10.317Z","description":"No one no matter how experienced or genius they are can claim to know for sure the exact time a software project would take. 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