Saw a post the other morning claiming a stack of AI agents is basically a team of developers. My first thought was sympathy for the people who work for that guy.
Here's the difference. My agents and I don't have a relationship. I tell them what to do. They do it or they don't, and when they don't, I've deleted the whole thing and started fresh more times than I'd like to admit. No hard feelings, because there are no feelings.
Developers are not that. When I managed developers, I managed relationships, not tasks. I handed someone a project and got out of the way. When something went sideways, we sat down and figured out what went wrong and how to fix it, together.
And when it came down to letting someone go, which happened more than I'd like to admit, I took it as a personal failure. I made the hiring call. I put them on that team. If it didn't work, that's on me twice, once for the hire and once for the fit.
I can delete an agent and start over in five seconds. Letting someone go cost me sleepless nights for a week. Agents cost me tokens. Letting people go costs me something I can't get back. That's the difference between managing agents and managing people.
Originally posted on LinkedIn: "I've Never Lost Sleep Over an Agent"