Why Experience Compounds in the Age of Agentic Software Development
I’ve been programming for a long time and have spent years in engineering leadership roles. What surprised me about modern agentic software development is not how disruptive it feels, but how clearly it exposes which skills still matter, and which ones quietly decay if left unexamined.
There’s a common narrative that fast-moving tools flatten experience. My experience so far has been different: experience compounds - if it stays adaptable.
Delegation as an ongoing technical practice
Working with teams taught me that delegation isn’t a management abstraction; it’s a concrete, learnable skill. That turns out to transfer almost directly to agentic systems.
In practice, that means:
- being explicit about goals and non-goals,
- providing just enough context,
- choosing an appropriate level of granularity,
- and reviewing outcomes rather than controlling execution.
I’ve also learned to think alone first, briefly, before involving an agent. Even a few notes on intent and constraints dramatically improve results. Delegation works best when ownership is clear.
Judgment matters more when output is cheap
Agentic systems are excellent at producing volume. Code, designs, alternatives: output is no longer scarce.
Judgment is.
Experience trains your eye for where problems tend to hide: fragile abstractions, risky assumptions, shortcuts that won’t age well. When generation is fast, deciding where to look deeper becomes the real work.
Speed of change favors contextual learning
The pace of change in this space is intense. New tools and claims appear constantly.
Experience doesn’t prevent surprise, but it does provide reference points. Patterns repeat. Ideas rhyme. Having lived through multiple cycles makes it easier to contextualize what’s genuinely new and what’s incremental noise.
I’m still learning continuously, but rarely from scratch.
Experimentation without attachment
One noticeable shift in my workflow is the number of experiments I now run.
Many don’t survive review. Some produce code that gets removed entirely after feedback. That’s not waste. It’s progress.
Speed enables experimentation. Judgment decides what survives.
Writing instructions as executable intent
Clear writing has become even more central.
Writing instructions, whether prompts, plans, or design docs, is about making intent explicit. Being precise without being brittle, contextual without overwhelming, and open to critique are skills I continue to refine.
Much of this collaboration happens through living documents that agents help maintain, but humans own. This aligns strongly with ideas from Co-Intelligence: the quality of collaboration depends less on raw capability and more on clarity of intent.
Adaptability is the real divider
Experience does not guarantee adaptability. If anything, it increases the risk of rigidity unless actively countered.
I deliberately invest time in learning new tools, understanding their limitations, and updating how I work as capabilities change. That comes with a real maintenance cost. Tools evolve quickly, best practices shift, and nothing stays stable for long.
Experience doesn’t remove that cost, but it helps manage it: filtering signal from noise, deciding when to adapt immediately and when to wait.
Working closely with younger colleagues helps enormously. They bring current tooling knowledge and fresh perspectives; I bring context and judgment. The combination is far stronger than either alone.
Experience as leverage, not authority
Agentic software development hasn’t made experience obsolete. It has changed how it applies.
Delegation, judgment, experimentation, clear instruction, and adaptability were always valuable. What’s different now is how directly they translate into impact, and how visible they become when missing.
For me, this doesn’t feel like reinvention. It feels like applying everything I’ve learned, while continuing to learn, at a much higher bandwidth.