Agreed, except in cases where the code will never be maintained again (e.g. game releases on N64). In my experience an &quot;over-estimate&quot; that leads to the so called &quot;do it right&quot; syndrome happens if <i>someone else</i> estimates for a developer. When the developer makes the estimate him&#x2F;herself and doubles it, you can be damn sure they are going to need all that time and then some to even get it in the ballpark of long-term acceptable.<p>(That being said, the company needs to have standards for code acceptability in the first place, which doesn&#x27;t always happen)