If it's for a complex software project the first question you need to ask is "does this really need to be software at all?"

Honestly this is where most traditional engineers get stuck. They keep attacking the old problem with new tools and being frustrated. I agree that agents are not a great way to build "complex software projects" but I think the problem space that is best solved by a "complex software project" is rapidly shrinking.

I've had multiple vendors try to sell my team a product that we can build the core functionality of ourselves in an afternoon. We don't need that functionality to scale to multiple users, server a variety of needs, be adaptable to new use cases: we're not planning to build a SaaS company with it, we just need a simple problem solved.

But these comments are a treasure trove of anecdotes proving exactly my point.