I manage 10+ agents at Cisco. It doesn't mean longer hours, but the work can feel more intense.

Sergio Freitas said he manages 10 to 20 agents daily, which manage their own agents.

Khanchit Khirisutchalual/Getty Images Sergio Freitas is a senior director of engineering at Cisco and oversees 10 to 20 agents daily.

Now that agents are writing more code, it requires more review, Freitas said.

While he's not putting in more hours, he said the work is faster-paced and can feel more intense.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sergio Freitas, senior director of engineering at Cisco, based in Lisbon, Portugal.

His identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider.

This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I started as a software engineer, became a manager, and currently work as a director of engineering at Cisco, with four teams based in Portugal.

Sergio Freitas said that AI agents have changed the pace of work.

Sergio Freitas Software engineering has always gone through changes.

There are always new technologies you have to learn, like programming languages or frameworks.

Now, it's the way engineers work that's changing rapidly, and in the last year, it's changed significantly .

People have to adapt to that, and that can cause stress.

The biggest change came after frontier models launched at the end of last year, like Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5 .