Engineer compares two generations of software engineering: AI-native company merges 200+ PRs per month
Understand this story
Software engineer Neil Kakkar, in a Pragmatic Engineer essay contest, compared his work data from PostHog and AI-native startup Tano across two eras: at Tano he merges 200+ PRs per month, about 11 times the rate during his PostHog period. According to his account, code review has also changed: a review agent built with Claude Code now completes it automatically in CI.
AI overview based on source reports · Updated 2 days ago
Coverage timeline
Follow the coverage to explore different perspectives.
- Pragmatic EngineerHow 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.
Activity for this story
- Current comparable activity
- 3
- Peak comparable activity
- 10Nov 4 02:00
- Change in the past 24 hours
- -49%
Trends compare the same fully observed participants, which may cover fewer participants than current activity. Move the pointer or tap the chart to inspect hourly activity; use the left and right arrow keys with a keyboard.