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Engineering management

Agents Don't Do Standups: Building the Post-Engineer Engineering Org — Mike Spitz, PFF

Agents Don't Do Standups: Building the Post-Engineer Engineering Org — Mike Spitz, PFF

A case study from PFF reveals how a two-engineer team, by leveraging AI agents, achieved a 25x increase in deployment frequency and 10x the output of a ten-engineer team. CTO Mike Spitz explains their core principle: shifting focus from making engineers faster to making AI agents faster. This talk deconstructs the resulting transformation, which eliminated traditional agile ceremonies like stand-ups and sprint planning in favor of an automated, spec-to-PR workflow, redefining the roles of engineers and processes in a modern software organization.

How Building with AI Can Double the Throughput of Your Engineering Team — Brian Scanlan, Intercom

How Building with AI Can Double the Throughput of Your Engineering Team — Brian Scanlan, Intercom

Intercom doubled its engineering throughput in under a year by treating its AI coding agent not as a simple tool, but as a new senior engineer. This involved a full onboarding process onto their 15-year-old Rails monolith, creating a library of durable skills for recurring tasks, and providing audited access to all internal systems.

“Engineers are becoming sorcerers” | The future of software development with OpenAI's Sherwin Wu

“Engineers are becoming sorcerers” | The future of software development with OpenAI's Sherwin Wu

Sherwin Wu, head of engineering for OpenAI’s API platform, discusses the radical transformation of software engineering. He shares how 95% of OpenAI engineers use Codex to manage fleets of AI agents, cutting code review times from 15 to 3 minutes. Wu explores the widening productivity gap, the changing role of managers in an AI-first world, and why "models will eat your scaffolding for breakfast", urging developers to build for where AI is going, not where it is today.

Paying Engineers like Salespeople – Arman Hezarkhani, Tenex

Paying Engineers like Salespeople – Arman Hezarkhani, Tenex

Arman Hezarkhani, CTO of Tenex, challenges traditional time-based compensation models for software engineers. He argues that in the age of AI, incentives must be directly tied to value shipped, not hours worked. This talk details Tenex's outcome-based system where engineers are paid per story point, exploring the mechanics, cultural shifts, and risk mitigations that drive a high-velocity, high-trust engineering team.

How Block is becoming the most AI-native enterprise in the world | Dhanji R. Prasanna

How Block is becoming the most AI-native enterprise in the world | Dhanji R. Prasanna

Block CTO Dhanji R. Prasanna shares how the company is becoming AI-native. He discusses their internal open-source AI agent, Goose, which saves employees 8-10 hours weekly, how they measure productivity gains, and the organizational changes that have had an even greater impact than AI tooling.

Tech Leadership Challenges: Communication & AI at Financial Times • Alice Bartlett & Charles Humble

Tech Leadership Challenges: Communication & AI at Financial Times • Alice Bartlett & Charles Humble

Alice Bartlett, Tech Director at the Financial Times, offers a deep dive into her leadership role, managing a 70-person team responsible for FT.com and the mobile apps. She discusses the transition from principal engineer to director, the art of managing stakeholder relationships, strategies for tackling technical debt, and her nuanced perspective on the impact of AI on software development and team dynamics.