RedMonk: Developers were the new kingmakers — agents are next in line
rseroter · x · 2026-09-18
RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady argued in "The New Kingmakers" over a decade ago that developers, long dismissed as fungible mechanics, had become the real arbiters of what software wins — a competitive weapon that inflated salaries and spurred extreme talent grabs like acqui-hiring.
His new essay, "Agents: The new, New Kingmakers," argues that world isn't gone but looks very different: agents are moving into the kingmaker seat, deciding which tools and products win, and products are now being built assuming that reality. The piece traces the lineage from the earliest automatic text tools like 1960s spell checkers onward.
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