Is it the norm: Manager demands estimates before requirements can be analyzed

Posted by theeburneruc@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 117 comments

A new task has come my way. To even begin to understand it, I need to talk to business, to end-users, and to developers, in order to understand the breadth of the work. But, before I can even get to doing any of that, my manager (not project manager), is demanding that I provide everything from: the written list of requirements and design, and estimates, and dates, for dev, testing, qa, prod implementation, etc.. I gave him a rough list and rough dates, considering I have little to no information right now, yet he was not satisfied. Is this the norm and what are you supposed to do in this case.... I already explained to him that I need to talk to people before I can create any such estimate..