How are software engineers objectively measured when problems span such large difficulty ranges and there are multiple ways to implement solutions?

Question

Always been curious how “workload” is assigned and estimated for software engineers.

In: 92

Answer 1

Generally the person assigning work is a senior developer of some description – that’s not necessarily their job title, but they’ll be an experienced developer themselves

Since they’re relatively experienced they have a rough idea of how long things take. They’ll also have a reasonably good idea which tasks are most at risk of delays and will endeavor to spread them around the team so that one person doesn’t get hit with them all and end up way behind schedule.

A good project manager will then add some slack to this timeline, and then the developers start the work

Then if it takes longer, the developer informs the project manager as soon it becomes likely and they adjust timescales, manage stakeholder expectations etc. if it’s faster, the developer just starts the next task early.

With experienced team members doing the assignments, managing expectations etc, it’s usually pretty smooth unless unrealistic expectations are being dictated from further up the tree