I hate giving estimates, especially for projects when you hardly know the codebase. But yet everybody expects you to deliver everything and everything on time.
Just get off my back maybe then I can actually finish something.

Thank you for listening. <3

The part that gets me is how my manager always wants quality, with as few hours on clock as possible, as many corners cut as possible, and as soon as possible. But quality is the first thing to cut, every time.

I can take no pride in saying: "Check out this thing I made, it was done on time." If quality was at least somewhat more important than deadline, I could focus on the job. But instead it's all about focusing on just how many cut corners line up with some arbitrary date.

It never saves time in the end. Every cut corner is eventually a refactor job.

Morons.

Usually for new projects, managers want estimates because they have to make the contract. Most of them aren't technical or expert enough to estimate it on their own so they need the developer/solution architect. A 5-10% time buffer can be a reasonable addition. It only goes awry when they pressure you to build faster to meet client's deadlines or accomodate new feature requests. Just practice saying no politely.

Back in my old work, Managers ask for time to make the tasks of the sprint:

- Manager: Task A: Backend need to do A, B and C, time?

- Me: (new on the project, literally 0 idea of what is going on on it) hmmm I would say 8h aprox. (with unit testing included).

- Manager: That can not be, my tech minion said that the task could be done in 3 ~ 4h (minion nevever did a fucking unit test).

- Me: ( idk face ) well, you asked, I answered...

- Manager: ( face of 'you are taking me as a fool' ) I will put 4h, and I expect unit testing and integration testing to be included.

Surprise! Turns out that I needed like 8h! Next time put minion to work, and if I am slow for you, can kick me out.

Fun fact: I was able to do a few integration tests, but thats all, because we NEVER had a fucking enviroment for this prupose.

But in my case all was bad luck on a team full of morons...

It is true that they need somehow measure the project / sprint / task / whatever, and we can help with that.