Comment by chrisfosterelli

Software engineering isn't some magical, special branch of engineering in which no one piece of software resembles another, no well-studied steps can be replicated, and the design of which is equivalent to rocket science.

If you're truly creating such unique and valuable software that it is to be compared to the world's engineering megaprojects in its challenge then perhaps it is beyond being beholden to a budget. Who am I to say?

But 99.9% of this industry isn't doing that and should probably be able to estimate their work.