2026-05-14 22:43:05

I believe construction-estimating gets its fetish¹ for granularity² from its proximity to, and significant composition of, skilled trade workers, and their biased perception of the value of effort.

Generalizing, if I can do some electrical task to the bare minimum standard in ten hours, then I can do it meticulously, with an appreciable increase in quality, in fifteen. Past fifteen hours there is literally nothing more that I can do that could be argued to add value to the result.

Back to "bare minimum", the term has objective meaning in trade work. Absolute minimum quality is defined by governing codes.

Contrast with estimating:

I can complete an estimate for a million dollar project in an hour. I could reasonably spend ten hours or a hundred on the same project.

In estimating, minimum quality may be set by internal standards, but they may be bent or broken for the right job or the right customer.

[!summary] In skilled trade work, the road ends after the "extra mile".

In estimating, you can't even tell when you're on the extra mile, and after you pass it the shit just keeps going, and also we're paying for gas in this analogy.

Fetish is the right word for it if you've ever heard the justifications. I'll say no more. ↩︎
Granularity is a great word for it, I got it from jared-defanti. I was calling it precision before, but that's laden with positive value where granularity sounds as annoying as it is. ↩︎

1.6 KiB Raw Blame History

2026-05-14 22:43:05

1.6 KiB

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