# After the Last Engineer, interviewed The show answers its own questions. This is the positioning, in the show's words. ## What is this? A podcast about what happens to business when software no longer scales with engineering headcount. **More software used to mean more engineers.** AI agents are breaking that relationship. Software can now move from requirement to production without a human reading every line. What happens next? ## What changes for the business? **Agents rewrite the business, not just the code.** When production stops scaling with headcount, companies rebuild their teams, their pricing, their procurement, and their idea of technical leadership. This show documents that transition. ## What is it like to be a guest? **Guests join a running argument** What does a company become when its software output no longer depends on its headcount? - **Format.** One conversation. 45 to 60 minutes, remote, video and audio. - **Audience.** CTOs, founders, senior product and engineering leaders. - **Rules.** We skip demos and pitches and dig into what actually happened. - **You get.** Ready-to-share clips from the video. For guests · every two weeks ## Can I watch something? Five moments from episode one, each under two minutes. - [What is a dark factory?](https://share.descript.com/view/u1zKggJpGfe) (1:08) - [We shipped code no human reviewed](https://share.descript.com/view/voPcnqCADXv) (1:44) - [The gap between business and engineering](https://share.descript.com/view/yxnwpzmmj02) (1:26) - [What happens after the last engineer?](https://share.descript.com/view/TqnlayXWIe3) (1:03) - [Everyone is becoming an engineer](https://share.descript.com/view/6UeAJdkaySz) (1:34) ## What happens after the last engineer? **Every company that ships software ends up with a factory.** The open question is who owns it, and where its people keep the lights on. For thirty years, more software meant more engineers, and companies rented that capacity by the head. Agents are breaking that deal. Some companies will build a factory, some will buy one, and some will rent one and stay dependent, which is the old model with new tools. This show documents that transition. Not the demos. What actually happened. ## What is a software dark factory? **The software dark factory** An operating model where autonomous agents do most of the building, testing, reviewing, and deployment, while humans design the system, define the constraints, and stay accountable for the outcomes. The engineers don’t disappear. The system moves them from writing the code to governing it. How dark a factory runs depends on how many rooms still have a person in them. We call that the darkness level, L0 to L5. ## What do you ask every guest? **Where do you still keep the lights on?** Every guest answers it. The answers so far run from one light (Patrick keeps someone who owns the factory) to three rooms (Milko keeps what to build, the architecture and the final sign-off). Over time that becomes a map of human checkpoints across real factories. [See the answers in the graph](/graph/#the-standing-question) ## Who is this for? - **Founders.** People who approve things they can’t read. They hear about factories from vendors and engineers, and nobody explains what it means for the business. - **CTOs.** People whose senior engineers now review more code than they write. They need to decide where a person stays in the loop, and on what evidence. Danail asks what a founder would ask. Vitaliy answers like an engineer. Terms like harness and eval get explained before they get used. ## What do you ask? - Can a business trust code no human has read? - Who is accountable when no one wrote or reviewed it? - Do you still buy hours, or verified outcomes? - What replaces the team as the unit of production? - When code is nearly free, what stays expensive? - Which companies should never build a factory? Questions we investigate with builders, operators, and leaders. And every guest gets the standing one: where do you still keep the lights on? ## What do you never say? - **Engineers are done.** Engineers move from writing the code to governing it, in Vitaliy’s words. - **Go fully dark.** What counts is what you can check: what shipped, what the evals caught, what it cost. - **Buy this tool.** The demo stays home, even when the guest sells one. We push back on renting engineering capacity by the head, and on vendor hype. We never push back on engineers. ## Who makes it? - **Danail Arapkuliev · Business systems.** A venture designer who explores what happens to companies when software output stops tracking engineering headcount. - **Vitaliy Filipov · Agentic engineering.** A senior engineer who builds autonomous delivery systems and tests where they survive contact with production. Both work at Camplight, where they build and test agentic software-delivery systems on real projects. Dany argues from the business side, Vitaliy from the machine room. Camplight appears in the outro, on the episode pages and here. It stays out of clips and titles. The show itself sells nothing. [Camplight](https://camplight.net) ## Can I come on the show? **Have you shipped software no human fully reviewed?** We’d love to talk. [Book a recording](/book/) [dany@camplight.net](mailto:dany@camplight.net) ## Can I quote you? - One line: A business podcast about software dark factories, for founders and CTOs. - Headline: Who owns your capacity? A business podcast about software dark factories, for founders and CTOs. - Headline: Where do you still keep the lights on? Conversations with people running software factories, for the founders and CTOs who have to decide. - Headline: More software used to mean more engineers. A podcast about what comes after, for founders and CTOs. - The hosts: Hosted by Danail Arapkuliev, a product person who is not an engineer, and Vitaliy Filipov, a senior engineer who builds autonomous delivery systems. Made by Camplight. For bios, show notes and anywhere you need one line. Quotes from guests: ask the show, it only gives the ones checked against the episode.