Why does it look like LLMs consistently overestimate implementation time?
3•bridgettegraham•3h ago
I have my suspicion: they estimate how long people would have taken to implement some feature, becasue they were trained on such data. I consistently see estimates of 2 week/3 weeks or 5 days, etc. But then implementation takes a day or 2 max using agents within Claude/GPT. Unless I am missing something? Anybody else notice this?
Comments
sieve•2h ago
This is very common as they have no conception of time. They are just using ballpark figures based on what they see in the wild. I see estimates for modules in weeks/months when it can produce it in a single afternoon of prompting.
kspetkov79•2h ago
They tend to turn a small change into the whole cleanup plan. Sometimes that is useful, but it makes estimates too large.
dnnddidiej•1h ago
You ask LLMs for estimates? Interesting.
Probably big model providers should do calibratuons for that and add an estimation skill.
schappim•1h ago
I've found that they declare estimates unprompted.
sieve•2h ago