Ex-150-person eng lead: agents opened 1,363 of 1,575 PRs in 10 weeks
Efficient-Trick-4384 · reddit · 2026-10-26
A former engineering leader who scaled a 30→150-person org now runs a client project where agents do most of the work: 1,575 PRs in ten weeks, 1,363 opened by agents.
What carried over:
- Tickets are now spec+test: a separate step diffs against acceptance criteria; writing good tickets dominates his time
- Nobody approves their own work — separate agents read CI, check diff vs criteria, click through staging with screenshots; any can bounce the card
- WIP limits (15 stories), sized by how much humans can follow
- Blockers go to a visible Blocked column — standup without standup
What didn't:
- Cost per story: median $36, but 1 in 10 exceeds $147 — the tail is what he watches (a $1,000/week developer was once an outlier)
- Code review as main gate: 11% of agent spend; humans own requirements and final client sign-off
- Growing people: agents don't improve from feedback, only instructions do; nothing replaces coaching seniors into leads
He asks what others running agents on real projects have stopped and started doing.
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