---
schema: 1
type: video
title: >-
  Why (Senior) Engineers Struggle to Build AI Agents — Philipp Schmid, Google
  DeepMind
description: >-
  A `deleteItem` endpoint is obvious to the developer who built it. An agent
  only sees the function schema and docstring. Philipp Schmid from Google
  DeepMind argues this is why senior engineers struggle most: they carry years
  of implicit context that agents do not, and design tools assuming it. He names
  four other shifts: text replaces structured state, errors are inputs not
  restart triggers (especially costly when an agent has been running for 15
  minutes), evals replace unit tests because the right question is how often it
  works not whether a fixed input always produces a fixed output, and build to
  delete because you will rebuild the same agent with a better model anyway.
  Speaker info: - https://x.com/_philschmid -
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipp-schmid-a6a2bb196/ -
  https://github.com/philschmid --- Watch along with the corrected transcript,
  summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page:
  https://ai.engineer/talks/3_gYbhABcAE-why-senior-engineers-struggle-to-build-ai-agents
  Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing
  page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs
  and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference
  returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS
  2026 in Sydney ---
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updated: '2026-10-24T13:04:46.239Z'
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# Why (Senior) Engineers Struggle to Build AI Agents — Philipp Schmid, Google DeepMind

A \`deleteItem\` endpoint is obvious to the developer who built it. An agent only sees the function schema and docstring. Philipp Schmid from Google DeepMind argues this is why senior engineers struggle most: they carry years of implicit context that agents do not, and design tools assuming it. He names four other shifts: text replaces structured state, errors are inputs not restart triggers (especially costly when an agent has been running for 15 minutes), evals replace unit tests because the right question is how often it works not whether a fixed input always produces a fixed output, and build to delete because you will rebuild the same agent with a better model anyway. Speaker info: - https://x.com/\_philschmid - https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipp-schmid-a6a2bb196/ - https://github.com/philschmid --- Watch along with the corrected transcript, summary, timestamps and resources on this talk's official AIE page: https://ai.engineer/talks/3_gYbhABcAE-why-senior-engineers-struggle-to-build-ai-agents Join our upcoming AI Engineer conferences (see https://ai.engineer landing page): - AIEi Shanghai, November 5–6 — the first for meeting top Chinese labs and engineers - AIE CODE in SF, November 10–12 — the top AI Coding conference returns - AIEi Sydney, December 7–8 — the first AIEi run alongside NeurIPS 2026 in Sydney ---

Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/watch/3_gYbhABcAE · Channel: [AI Engineer](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md)

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