DoorDash CEO: AI coding only boosts part of efficiency, full workflow needs AI integration

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu says vibe coding is just a small part of software engineering. Engineers spend only 25-50% of their time writing code, and AI helps with that part. But they also need to join product reviews, design meetings, and team coordination, which AI should help with too.

In May, Xu said AI has boosted efficiency at DoorDash, with over half (almost two-thirds) of its code now written by AI. But he stressed that code output alone can't decide workflow or team structure. The whole industry is still figuring out how to make AI-native go beyond code development into real business operations.

Andrej Karpathy, who coined 'vibe coding,' also admitted its limits. In an April talk, he said AI-generated code is often messy, bloated, full of copy-paste, with weak abstractions. It runs, but the code quality is poor.