I like the analogy. It feels right. But I don't think it actually is, because it leans hard on the _feeling_ of failure, vs. the actual failure.
The failure that actually matters here is product failure. Angry users. Security incidents. Downtime. Broken workflows.
Stressed and uncomfortable developers have, historically, been a leading indicator of product failure. Software is complex and when devs can't handle the breadth of ownership + the depth of expertise at the same time, it means bad work that leads to product failure. It's not clear that agents fail in the same way, or that our collective intuition about how and when to trust agents is sufficiently developed to predict product failure in the same way.
As anecdata: I know a bunch of growth-SaaS/last-batch-of-IPO companies where the devs are all stressed, the feature ship rate is up, and incidents are down. All at the same time.
So yes, quick learners and just-in-time depth is important, but so is intuition about where discomfort is going to produce true failure. The discomfort isn't a feeling to throw away, simply trusting that you'll learn everything in time. Ownership requires holding a model of the system in your head and proactively steering where you dive.
The failure that actually matters here is product failure. Angry users. Security incidents. Downtime. Broken workflows.
Stressed and uncomfortable developers have, historically, been a leading indicator of product failure. Software is complex and when devs can't handle the breadth of ownership + the depth of expertise at the same time, it means bad work that leads to product failure. It's not clear that agents fail in the same way, or that our collective intuition about how and when to trust agents is sufficiently developed to predict product failure in the same way.
As anecdata: I know a bunch of growth-SaaS/last-batch-of-IPO companies where the devs are all stressed, the feature ship rate is up, and incidents are down. All at the same time.
So yes, quick learners and just-in-time depth is important, but so is intuition about where discomfort is going to produce true failure. The discomfort isn't a feeling to throw away, simply trusting that you'll learn everything in time. Ownership requires holding a model of the system in your head and proactively steering where you dive.