Agents Scale, Humans Don't: Hiring Without Slowing Down

One founder plus thirty agents ships more than a team of ten. Hire a second engineer and everything slows down: you didn’t add an engineer, you added a second team.

The talk covers the fixes that fail, the ones that work with Rails, and what a founder has to give up to get faster.

1. ✳ Svyatoslav is Percolating… (4m 18s · esc to interrupt)
2. Svyatoslav Kryukov Backend engineer · Evil Martians Inertia Rails maintainer turbo-mount, typelizer, skooma github.com/skryukov · x.com/skryukov_dev
3. Introducing secondperson.si AGENTS SCALE. HUMANS DON'T. HIRING WITHOUT SLOWING DOWN.
4. secondperson.si Svyatoslav Kryukov Founder · CEO · CTO · CFO · COO · Head of People · Head of Sales · Legal · Facilities · Reception · Office manager · Security · Compliance · Payroll · On call · Backup on call · Backup backup on call
5. ctx: 0% TEAM • Founder • Agents
6. ctx: 9% CULTURE Team lunches are inclusive
7. ctx: 18% CULTURE We celebrate every release
8. ctx: 27% THE PROBLEM shipped per week ┆ hire #2
9. ctx: 36% WHY They hired the wrong person
10. ctx: 45% THE PRODUCT Guardrails for your hiring pipeline Automated screening. Nobody who'd slow you down gets through. No human in the loop. Nothing is your fault.
11. ctx: 55% TRACTION We dogfood Open role: second person · Time open: 1 year · Status: open
12. ctx: 64% HIRING FUNNEL · LAST 12 MONTHS Applied 1,375 Screened by the system 1,375 Flagged: slow-down risk 1,375 Interviewed 0 Hired 0
13. ctx: 73% $ secondperson rejections --top 3 612 wants to read the code first 458 asked why the role is open for a year 305 the need to sleep 1,375 rejected · 0 escalated to human
14. ctx: 82% COMMUNITY Svyatoslav Kryukov @skryukov_dev · Jun 12 AGI has been achieved at secondperson.si. 412 2.1K Svyatoslav Kryukov 18.2K 1.4M @skryukov_dev · Oct 2 Nothing to share yet. It's that big. Svyatoslav Kryukov ··· ··· @skryukov_dev · Jun 12 AGI has been achieved at secondperson.si. 1.1K 4.8K Svyatoslav Kryukov 31K 3.2M @skryukov_dev · Nov 1 We're hiring! secondperson.si · DMs open 🚀 0 0 2 318 ···
15. ctx: 91% 98% CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
16. ctx: 0% ASK
17. Y A D O T S L O O T IC T TOP 5 AGEN #3 Claude Code #4 Cursor #5 Codex
18. You don't hire one engineer You hire a second team
19. Big companies know how to work in teams Style guides Security reviews Release checklists Team boundaries Code ownership
20. PART 2 The rules
21. Linters
22. gem "rubocop" BOZHIDAR BATSOV · 2012
23. .RUBOCOP.YML · STYLE/STRINGLITERALS: DOUBLE_QUOTES $ bundle exec rubocop app/models/order.rb:12:14: C: [Correctable] Style/StringLiterals: Prefer double-quoted strings. status = 'paid' ^^^^^^
24. Linters do more
25. gem "brakeman" 2010 gem "bundler-audit" 2013 gem "strong_migrations" 2015 gem "database_consistency" 2018 gem "archspec" AUG 2026
26. CI
27. ✓ rubocop the ones that don't matter ✓ brakeman no params in a query ✓ n_plus_one_control no N+1 in the test ✕ isolator a mailer inside a transaction ✕ strong_migrations blocks writes
28. Packs
29. gem "packwerk" SHOPIFY · 2020
30. gem "code_ownership" GUSTO · 2022
31. .GITHUB/CODEOWNERS · GENERATED /Gemfile /db/migrate/ /packs/billing/ /packs/auth/ .github/CODEOWNERS @founder @founder @second-person @founder @founder
32. GEMFILE gem "packs-rails" gem "packwerk" gem "code_ownership" # the folder # the check # the owner
33. Forget everything you know.
34. PART 2 The rules For the AI age.
35. Introducing Sensors "Developers have long relied on deterministic quality gates such as compilers, linters, structural tests and test suites…" THOUGHTWORKS TECHNOLOGY RADAR · APR 2026
36. gem "rubocop" BOZHIDAR BATSOV · 2012
37. Introducing Toxic flow analysis "…examines the flow graph of an agentic system to identify potentially unsafe data paths…" THOUGHTWORKS TECHNOLOGY RADAR · NOV 2026 · TRIAL
38. gem "brakeman" JUSTIN COLLINS · 2010
39. Introducing Verification loops "A verification loop is a repeating cycle where an AI agent checks its own work — running tests, linters, or custom checks — and fixes what fails before moving on." ANTHROPIC · JUL 2026
40. ✓ rubocop the ones that don't matter ✓ brakeman no params in a query ✓ n_plus_one_control no N+1 in the test ✕ isolator a mailer inside a transaction ✕ strong_migrations blocks writes
41. Introducing Human in the loop Risk-tiered human oversight: "aligns review depth with what a change could break." THOUGHTWORKS TECHNOLOGY RADAR · NOV 2026 · TRIAL
42. .GITHUB/CODEOWNERS · GENERATED /Gemfile /db/migrate/ /packs/billing/ /packs/auth/ .github/CODEOWNERS @founder @founder @second-person @founder @founder
43. Nothing changed We just need it much earlier Today · git log -- Gemfile 09:14 agent-12 Add Sidekiq 09:17 agent-31 Add Solid Queue 09:17 agent-12 Run both until we decide
44. But some things are new
45. PART 3 The agents
46. Linters only say no Agents do the work
47. What do you hand over? What do you keep?
48. Write the feature Research the options Fix the bug Analyze the usage Run the A/B test
49. Automate what can be automated Then delegate what can be delegated
50. Stay in the loop on the critical paths
51. PART 4 Communication
52. Rules and agents don't replace talking They clear the table for it.
53. Small companies keep the code in one head. Big companies keep it in nobody's head. Agents make both worse
54. # dev second-person 2:14 PM how do you get it to stop rewriting the tests?
55. ⋯ Pairing Tuesday, November 10 · 2:00 – 3:00pm Weekly on Tuesday, Thursday Join with Google Meet 2 guests · 2 yes Svyatoslav Kryukov ✓ SP Accepted second-person ✓ Accepted They drive, I watch. Then we swap. Going? Yes No Maybe
56. is:pr is:merged merged:>2026-11-02 0 Open ✓ 212 Closed Add refunds #1288 · agent-12 · merged 2 hours ago Retry failed webhooks #1287 · agent-31 · merged 2 hours ago Move invoice totals to a service #1286 · agent-12 · merged 3 hours ago Bump rails to 8.1.2 #1285 · agent-07 · merged 3 hours ago Fix flaky booking spec #1284 · agent-31 · merged 4 hours ago … 207 more
57. ⋯ Demo Friday, November 13 · 4:00 – 4:15pm Weekly on Friday Join with Google Meet 349 guests · 2 yes, 347 declined Svyatoslav Kryukov ✓ SP ✓ Accepted second-person Accepted agent-12 ✕ Declined Show it working. Not the diff. Going? Yes No Maybe
58. # dev second-person 10:48 AM why Sidekiq and not Solid Queue?
59. Decision log After every call · 10 min Does not repeat · happens anyway 1 guest whoever decided Awaiting Decided, or just happened? One file per decision. docs/decisions/0007-one-job-backend.md ⋯
60. ⋯ 1:1 Monday, December 7 · 10:00 – 10:30am Monthly on the first Monday Join with Google Meet 2 guests · 1 yes, 1 awaiting Svyatoslav Kryukov ✓ SP Accepted second-person Awaiting Ask why. Going? Yes No Maybe
61. Decide at the start Don't approve at the end
62. PART 5 The factory
63. Why not replace everything with agents?
64. "Building a software factory on our scariest code" LAUNCHDARKLY · AUG 2026 "Building a software factory for AI SDK" VERCEL · AUG 2026 "Inside OpenAI's agentic software factory" T H E P R A G M A T I C E N G I N E E R · S EP 202 6
65. 19% of pull requests approved with no human reviewer INTERCOM
66. "Read the dang code." HUMANLAYER
67. 2016 2026 We copied Google. We copy the solo founder. It's the same mistake
68. Don't build a factory
69. Automate what can be automated Delegate what can be delegated Decide the rest, with people Repeat Then the factory emerges
70. Don't skip the levels Will it grow into one? Who knows. Jumping straight there won't work.
71. secondperson.si Think adding people will slow you down? We'll onboard you.
72. But I still think we need people
73. People don't have to be better than the agents. They're the ones who decide They own the application. They answer for it.
74. A B A software engineer walks into a bar. I asked an agent to make CI green. Because he works at that bar now. It's on Buildkite now. Both mine
75. Agents Scale, Humans Don't Hiring Without Slowing Down Svyatoslav Kryukov · Evil Martians github.com/skryukov · x.com/skryukov_dev