DoorDash CEO says AI is making engineers faster, but productivity isn't everything
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- Tony Xu says AI boosted productivity at DoorDash, but it hasn't yet changed the workforce structure.
- DoorDash is focused on unifying its tech stack and making all employees AI-capable.
- Unlike other tech execs, Xu emphasized AI productivity gains without workforce reductions.
One tech CEO says AI has not yet changed his workforce structure.
"We're seeing a lot of productivity gains right now from AI, about well north of half of our code, probably closer to two-thirds of our code is written by AI today," DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said on an earnings call on Wednesday. "But that doesn't alone articulate how workflows and team setup ought to change."
Xu, who cofounded the delivery app in 2013, said the company is in the midst of deciding how productivity gains may change team structures or head count. But two other things come first.
"The top priority for us right now is definitely making sure that we can get all teams onto a single tech stack," he said. "The second priority is to make sure that everyone in the company, not just the engineers, is as AI-capable as anyone else."
Xu said that while DoorDash is delivering features and projects faster, customers hold the company to a much higher standard.
"We're being more productive. We're shipping more code. But the ultimate question I have is, are we actually delivering better outcomes for customers?" he said.
Xu's remarks differ from what many leaders are saying about the technology this year.
Across tech, executives are touting AI-led productivity gains and saying that between 50% to 90% of their code is now AI-generated. AI is also increasingly being cited as a reason for layoffs.
In March, Australian-American software company Atlassian announced it would cut 1,600 jobs, about 10% of its global workforce.
"It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does," CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes wrote in a message to employees.
On Tuesday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong announced that the company would slash 14% of its workforce, or about 700 workers.
In a post on X, Armstrong shared an email that he said he sent to workers. He cited two factors for the cuts: a volatile market and AI changing the way people work.
"Over the past year, I've watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks," Armstrong said. He added: "The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically."