I think you should work through the details with your team and own the project and defend your decisions. He can only humiliate you if you believe what he is saying. There are people you just can't please, however, that is how he is pushing you to be great. That is probably why he is successful.
To be honest I have never received even 4 hours per week from a manager, on a consistent basis. You need to manage him like he is upper management or a client, he will ask the impossible, not tell you how to succeed, and expect everything.
Build what he needs, and persuade him as to why it is great. He wont express the details because even he doesn't really know.
I agree, they obviously don't test what they roll out. It is very amateur, updates look like they are pushed right into production given the obvious nature of the bugs we have seen. They have multiple interfaces, when we were testing it out we saw lookup data was inconsistent across interfaces, and there was no built in customer validation of data. All data validation is done by the end approver. They actually subcontract out most of the development work, definitely not a modern technology driven solution.
I would start out by documenting all of the deliverables of the project. Then breaking out each of those deliverables into a manageable chunk that you can reasonably estimate the price based on labor and materials that it would cost YOU to perform the task.
Once you have broken out all of the components of the job, you will then evaluate all of the potential pitfalls or risk of the job where it would increase the price, try to quantify the price of those and what you estimate the likelihood that it will happen.
Based upon all your risks, calculate what will be the most likely scenario, more than likely at least one of your risks will materialize during the project. Now take the total of the base cost of what you thought the job combined with the likely risk value and add the profit you would like to make on the job.
If you negotiate up front with your client the deliverable items, and be very specific as to the cost for those items with your risk and profit built in you will be in a very good position. As the client asks for new features you will need to recalculate your risk and renegotiate the price. Its a good idea to never work without negotiating the scope of work and the price.
As a project continues you will need to evaluate how much its costing you to do the work that you thought you could do for X dollars. This is why its really important to breakdown the work into manageable chunks. More than likely, you will continue to perform at that efficiency going forward, and you will want to evaluate based upon that knowledge if you will be under or over budget.
I read the article, and your interpretation is wrong. Simply put, the Eskimo Diet != Fish Oil. There is simply no denying the efficacy of supplementing with EPA, DHA and Omega-3 fat, regardless of the source. If your concern is motivated by your ideological beliefs that you should not consume animal products then you should look into an algae based supplement.
The true value of an estimate is not about what you thought the project would initially cost, but rather, the true value of an estimate is as a tool to estimate the final cost of the project once the project is underway.
Trying not to get into too much detail here, but, when you devise your initial estimate you should have a list of deliverables and you should determine what you think those deliverables will cost to implement. Your initial estimate will then become your baseline, and is mainly used to keep track of what you initially agreed upon (scope) and as a way to measure your progress.
Imagine that based upon your original estimate you have a deliverable that to implement will cost $50,000, but you have already spent $30,000 to implement it and are only 10% done. Well then your new estimate would now balloon out to $300,000 and it will take 10x as long. If you replicate this process out across all of your deliverables based on their progress you will have a new estimate, as the project continues your estimate will become more and more accurate.
Beyond having a better understanding of what your project will actually cost, you will also have a tool to handle scope changes by management and/or the client. You will automatically have an idea of based upon your prior performance on this project the feature that they ask will cost them $X additional dollars and increase the duration of the project by Y Days, or, as a way to negotiate a reduction in scope in order to stay within your budget.
There are certain mega engineering firms that make all their money solely off of defining the estimate and scope at a very detailed level up front and then renegotiating the (hell out of the) price as new scope is introduced.
I had a sleep study done. Initially, it was done as response to high concentration of hemoglobin and low testosterone. I had been really tired for so long I didn't even realize how bad it was until I had my first night of sleep using a CPAP. The only way I could cope would be to drink caffeine continuously at work just to be able to focus, even sitting while at work was too much, I just wanted to lay down.
To be honest I have never received even 4 hours per week from a manager, on a consistent basis. You need to manage him like he is upper management or a client, he will ask the impossible, not tell you how to succeed, and expect everything.
Build what he needs, and persuade him as to why it is great. He wont express the details because even he doesn't really know.