Jan van den Berg · 2026-10-27 · notable
Jan van den Berg — The Mythical Man-Month in the age of AI
Jan van den Berg asks whether Brooks's Law still holds when the extra workers are AI agents. His answer: it changed shape. Sequential work stays sequential, and someone still has to define done, review and merge.
Brooks's Law in 2026: more agents on unclear requirements just get you the wrong answer faster.
What is it?
Jan van den Berg's essay 'The Mythical Man-Month in the age of AI' revisits Brooks's Law, Frederick P. Brooks Jr.'s 1975 rule that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later". He asks whether the rule still holds now that the extra hands can be AI agents that need no onboarding and no stand-ups.
How does it work?
The argument is that the law did not vanish, it mutated. The 'baby problem' remains: nine agents still cannot deliver a baby in one month, because sequential tasks stay sequential. The overhead moves from managing people to managing agents, and van den Berg warns that agents without clear orchestration will rewrite each other's work in a high-speed loop.
Why does it matter?
Teams are adding parallel coding agents to speed up projects, and the essay is a short reminder of where that stops working. A human still has to define "done", review the code, catch hallucinations and stitch the pieces together. His proposed 2026 version of the law: "Adding agents to a project with unclear requirements gets you the wrong answer faster."
Who is it for?
engineering leads running multi-agent coding setups