Has anyone ever worked anywhere that actually had complete user stories to work on? Every job I've had requires me to ask clarifying questions for almost every part of a ticket before I work on it. I wonder how nice a job could be if acceptance criteria and expectations were known before a ticket was assigned.

At my last time I broke user stories down into individual tech cards and lead the estimation sessions on them. I did it all the time. I thought they were pretty well detailed, and I was pretty good at them.

at least they answer

@jestdotty Sometimes. But often it results in more questions and the story is more confusing.

A job where you get a ticket and you do exactly what it says on the ticket and then pick up the next ticket?

All things considered, I would rather eat a turd.

@djsumdog that would be my personal hee hell. Even after properly training people to do them, estimations are a waste of time. The more you have to do the more time wasted.

There are only priorities and they are influenced by collaboration and external deadlines.

There are of course extremes that also influence the priority but they are obvious.
They don't require an hour bitching about it and follow up bitching because the estimation was "wrong". It's just quick win can do that in a few and that's going to take a year and multiple teams are we sure this is the most important now.