GitLab CEO on why AI isn't helping enterprise ship code faster
AI coding assistants are boosting developer productivity, but most enterprises aren’t shipping software any faster. GitLab CEO Bill Staples says the reason is simple: coding was never the main bottleneck. After speaking with more than 60 customers, Staples found that developers spend only 10–20% of their time writing code. The remaining 80–90% is consumed by reviews, CI/CD pipelines, security scans, compliance checks, and deployment—areas that remain largely unautomated. Faster code generation only worsens downstream queues.
GitLab’s response is its newly GA’ed Duo Agent Platform, designed to automate the full software development lifecycle. The platform introduces “agent flows,” multi-step orchestrations that can take work from issue creation through merge requests, testing, and validation. Staples argues that context is the key differentiator. Unlike standalone coding tools that only see local code, GitLab’s all-in-one platform gives agents access to issues, epics, pipeline history, security data, and more through a unified knowledge graph.
Staples believes this platform approach, rather than fragmented point solutions, is what will finally unlock enterprise software delivery at scale.
Learn more from The New Stack about the latest around GitLab and AI:
GitLab Launches Its AI Agent Platform in Public Beta
GitLab’s Field CTO Predicts: When DevSecOps Meets AI
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GitLab’s CEO on Why the Next Great Developer Might Not Write Code | Bill Staples
Bill Staples has spent 30 years redefining how the world writes, ships, and secures code.
On this week’s Grit, the GitLab CEO shares what it takes to lead a public, all-remote DevSecOps company trusted by more than half of the Fortune 100.
He breaks down the discipline of managing energy instead of hours, why weekly operating cadences beat quarterly plans, and how AI will 10× software engineers by auto-debugging code and closing security gaps.
Guest: Bill Staples, CEO of GitLab
Chapters:
00:00 Trailer
00:42 Introduction
02:34 True joy in life
08:16 Winning teams
13:53 When the energy isn’t there
18:00 Super ambitious
21:01 It’s not just technology
29:27 Elevating quality and standard
41:36 Lifelong collaborator
51:22 Competent intelligence
54:22 Structuring goals and time
1:03:59 Who GitLab is hiring
1:04:17 What “grit” means to Bill
1:04:54 Outro
Links:
Connect with Bill
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LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
The New New Relic with Bill Staples
About Bill Staples
Bill Staples is New Relic’s chief product officer, responsible for driving the company’s market-leading platform strategy and leading New Relic’s product management, engineering and design functions. Staples is an execution-focused product and engineering leader who loves to build and scale cloud-based businesses. Previously Staples was at Adobe, where he led the 1,500+ employee global engineering team behind Adobe’s market-leading Experience Cloud. Prior to Adobe, Staples spent 17 years at Microsoft, including his last role as vice president of Microsoft’s Application platform. At both Microsoft and Adobe, he successfully led transformative product, culture and technical innovation agendas, helping both companies expand multi-billion dollar cloud portfolios with developers and IT as the customer.
Links Referenced
Main company site: https://newrelic.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bstaples
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamstaples/