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How software engineering is changing: a tale of two eras
Software engineering output has increased tenfold for AI-native teams, but the gain comes with new constraints like high context switching and 'thrashing'.
What: Engineer Neil Kakkar reports shipping 200+ pull requests per month at an AI-native startup compared to his pre-AI baseline, facilitated by AI agents and the elimination of manual code reviews. The trade-offs include mental exhaustion, a loss of shared team context, and the tendency to prioritize 'quick fixes' over long-term architecture.
Why it matters: Engineering culture is currently undergoing a painful shift where legacy processes (like human-gatekept code reviews) are being replaced by automated agents, forcing companies to move faster while grappling with significantly higher rates of change.
Deep dive
- Throughput: AI agents enable one engineer to handle the entire stack, reducing the need for cross-team communication.
- Reviews: Automated CI/CD agents perform initial reviews, though risky changes still require careful handling.
- Migrations: Complex, multi-month migrations can now be completed in weeks, though moving fast increases the risk of subtle bugs.
- Thrashing: Engineers are increasingly reactive, fixing small bugs immediately rather than focusing on deep work.
- Bus factor: The reduction in shared context (no one reads every PR anymore) creates a vulnerability where only one person understands specific product areas.
- Guardrails: To prevent burnout, engineers are adopting strict rules like leaving work laptops at the office to stop the 'always-on' nature of AI agents.
Decoder
- Thrashing: A state where a system spends more time switching between tasks (context switching) than actually performing the work.
- Bus factor: The minimum number of team members who must disappear from a project before it stalls due to lack of knowledge.
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