“Why can’t they just tell you how long something will take?”— Because they don’t know.,(reply>), Exactly,  As a programmer of business software who has had to deal with this exact issue numerous times.... I learned to just have a progress bar showing % complete with a spinner nearby that advanced with actual program activity.  It's trivial to code that into an application, but so many don't.,(reply>), When a client and when their report will be ready. <br>"Definitely between today and sometime in the future.",(reply>)," if (daysRemaining &gt;= 365) {<br>	var progressDiv = document.getElementById("progress_div");<br>	progressDiv.innerHTML = "Doesn't look good -- you dont wanna know...";<br>}",(reply>), I wish I could tell that to my boss,(reply>), @Lemon Latte I do remember situations in Windows when copying files the remaining time estimate got so large it went negative.  There are other occasions where the remaining time estimate would fluctuate wildly up and down as different types of files and different size files were being copied (which would cause the computed average would go up and down).