How software engineering is changing: a tale of two eras

In this winning essay from The Pragmatic Engineer's five-year essay challenge, London-based software engineer Neil Kakkar compares his output at pre-AI PostHog with his current role at AI-native startup Tano, where he ships roughly 11x more pull requests per month. He describes how AI agents removed old constraints like mandatory code reviews and communication overhead, while introducing new ones such as context switching, thrashing, lost shared context and a lower bus factor.