DoorDash CEO Tony Xu has challenged the common belief that AI dramatically improves software engineers' productivity through coding alone, stating that writing code accounts for only a portion of an engineer's workday. Speaking on an episode of the Uncapped podcast released this week, Xu said, “Only certain parts of a software engineer's day are writing code, and it's great that we have models today to write the code for us. That helps maybe the whatever 25%, 30%, 50% of our time that's actually shipping code." He added that engineers spend much of their time on product reviews, design discussions, and cross-functional collaboration. Xu, who co-founded DoorDash in 2013 and led the company through its public listing in 2020, said AI adoption should extend beyond engineering teams. During the company's May earnings call, he said, "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. But that doesn't alone articulate how workflows and team setup ought to change.” He also pointed to opportunities in food-preparation robots and autonomous delivery vehicles.