Managing the Super Bus Factor Risk

If you rely on complex scaffolding to build AI agents you aren't scaling you are coping. Thibault Sottiaux from OpenAI’s Codex team joins us to explain why they are ruthlessly removing the harness to solve for true agentic autonomy. We discuss the bitter lesson of vertical integration, why scalable primitives beat clever tricks, and how the rise of the super bus factor is reshaping engineering careers.

LinearB: Measure the impact of GitHub Copilot and Cursor

Follow the show:

• Subscribe to our Substack 
• Follow us on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
• Leave us a Review

Follow the hosts:

• Follow Andrew
• Follow Ben
• Follow Dan

Follow today's guest:

• OpenAI Codex: Learn more about the models powering tools like GitHub Copilot.
• Codex Open Source Repo: The lightweight coding agent that runs in your terminal (check out the Rust migration mentioned in the episode).
• Agent Skills Open Standard: The open standard and catalog for giving agents new capabilities.
• The Bitter Lesson: Richard Sutton’s essay on why compute-centric methods win in AI.
• Follow Tibo on X @thsottiaux | GitHub

OFFERS

• Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free.
• Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era.

LEARN ABOUT LINEARB

• AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production.
• AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance.
• AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil.
• MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.