Addy Osmani: Managing coding agents is just management — and it beats prompt engineering

addyosmani · x · 2026-11-08

Google VP of Engineering Addy Osmani argues in a new article that engineers who spend all day with coding agents are effectively doing management: selecting tasks, writing instructions, delegating, following up, and evaluating results.

Key points:

The engineers who get the most out of agents aren't the best prompt engineers — they're the ones who learned to manage, intentionally or not; agent-management skills largely overlap with team-management skills.
He addresses the IC career concern head-on: not about becoming calendar-swamped managers, but about the core of producing good outcomes through clear delegation and evaluation.
The article's cover illustrates "you" managing four agents like an org chart; a Pangram check shows the text is 90% human-written.

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Addy Osmani: Managing coding agents is just management — and it beats prompt engineering

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