WeAreDevelopers Logo WeAreDevelopers
Sign in
For You LIVE
Coffee With Developers • Jun 1, 2026

25 Years After Agile, And Yet We're Building Waterfall Agents - Martin Hynie

Martin Hynie

Martin Hynie warns that modern AI agents have regressed into rigid waterfall workflows. They blindly pursue flawed logic. Discover how ritualized dissent forces these autonomous systems to self-correct.

Pause
Mute Enter Fullscreen
#1 about 2 min

Background and career journey in regulated software systems

Transitioning from highly regulated environments to fintech provided a fresh perspective on quality and compliance in software engineering.

#2 about 4 min

How AI agents replicate waterfall instead of agile development

Current agentic workflows execute long-running tasks linearly rather than continually revisiting underlying strategic assumptions.

#3 about 4 min

The limitations of vibe coding and agentic strategy iteration

Rapidly generating and discarding code highlights the failure of current agents to fundamentally rethink flawed initial strategies.

#4 about 9 min

Designing AI agents to exercise doubt and evaluate risks

High-stakes applications require autonomous systems that log their chain of thought and recognize when to pause and reevaluate their approach.

#5 about 7 min

Triggering strategic resets for long-running autonomous tasks

Tracking initial assumptions against discovered knowledge enables agents to restart complex tasks with better-informed baseline strategies.

#6 about 5 min

Overcoming the sunk cost fallacy in software generation

Autonomous agents can discard failed work and restart tasks without experiencing the frustration or ego constraints of human developers.

#7 about 7 min

How AI tools alter developer hiring and architectural design

Lowering the barrier to entry for coding shifts the engineering focus toward architectural expertise and problem recognition over syntax recall.

#8 about 3 min

Publishing research and speaking at tech conferences

Reengaging with the developer community involves sharing new frameworks and proving concepts within live startup environments.

Matching moments

2:34 min

Balancing developer autonomy with the adoption of coding agents

Clemens Wasner Clemens Wasner +4 · World Congress 2026 Europe

3:56 min

The evolution of AI programming and agentic workflows

Fabian Hedin Fabian Hedin · World Congress 2026 Europe

3:33 min

Navigating developer bottlenecks and human accountability

Werner Vogels Werner Vogels +1 · World Congress 2026 Europe

4:08 min

Transitioning software engineering teams to AI-native development workflows

Florian Deter Florian Deter +4 · World Congress 2026 Europe

2:06 min

Rethinking team structures around AI agent capabilities

Mike Mike · World Congress 2025

8:54 min

Preserving engineering fundamentals in agentic development

Chris Heilmann Chris Heilmann +1 · LIVE

More from Coffee With Developers

Using Agents to Curate the Content You See Online - Dan Gish thumbnail
12:47
28 days ago

Using Agents to Curate the Content You See Online - Dan Gish

Dan Gish

AI Vector Search at Scale - Ewa Szyszka - Ewa Szyszka thumbnail
11:14
28 days ago

AI Vector Search at Scale - Ewa Szyszka - Ewa Szyszka

Ewa Szyszka

What is Cross-Origin Storage - Thomas Steiner thumbnail
34:51
28 days ago

What is Cross-Origin Storage - Thomas Steiner

Thomas Steiner

Women in AI - Nalini Garg thumbnail
42:19
29 days ago

Women in AI - Nalini Garg

Nalini Garg

Agents and People Dynamics in Shared Chats - Sam Liu thumbnail
37:41
about 1 month ago

Agents and People Dynamics in Shared Chats - Sam Liu

Sam Liu

Why Token Reduction Isn’t Cost Reduction - Dave Anderson & Sarel Weinberger, PhD. thumbnail
41:09
about 1 month ago

Why Token Reduction Isn’t Cost Reduction - Dave Anderson & Sarel Weinberger, PhD.

Dave Anderson, Sarel Weinberger, Phd

Related videos

AI Killed DevOps... What Now? - Lee Faus thumbnail
57:43
Coffee With Developers • 10 months ago

AI Killed DevOps... What Now? - Lee Faus

Lee Faus

Engineering Mindset in the Age of AI - Gunnar Grosch, AWS thumbnail
45:09
Coffee With Developers • 12 months ago

Engineering Mindset in the Age of AI - Gunnar Grosch, AWS

Gunnar Grosch

Rethinking Workflows in the Agentic Era thumbnail
27:07
World Congress 2025 • about 1 year ago

Rethinking Workflows in the Agentic Era

Eric Jadi, Rene Pajta

The AI-Native Engineering Org: What’s Real, What’s Hype, What’s Next thumbnail
28:33
World Congress 2026 Europe • 3 months ago

The AI-Native Engineering Org: What’s Real, What’s Hype, What’s Next

Taroon Mandhana, Sebastian Kister

What Production Knows: Closing the Loop Between AI Agents and the Systems They Build thumbnail
26:33
World Congress 2026 Europe • 3 months ago

What Production Knows: Closing the Loop Between AI Agents and the Systems They Build

May Walter

Code Is Cheap. Software Isn’t. thumbnail
29:55
World Congress 2026 Europe • 3 months ago

Code Is Cheap. Software Isn’t.

Markus Eisele

Related articles

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.