Scott Wu: Why Devin will write half of Cognition's code

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

May 4, 2025

Duration

1h 32m

Channel

Lenny's Podcast

Watch on YouTube

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📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

*Scott Wu* is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin—the world’s first autonomous AI software engineer. Unlike other AI coding tools, Devin works like an autonomous engineer that you can interact with through Slack, Linear, and GitHub, just like with a remote engineer. With Scott’s background in competitive programming and a previous AI-powered startup, Lunchclub, teaching AI to code has become his ultimate passion.What you’ll learn:

• How a team of “Devins” are already producing 25% of Cognition’s pull requests, and they are on track to hit 50% by year’s end
• How each engineer on Cognition’s 15-person engineering team works with about five Devins each
• How Devin has evolved from a “high school CS student” to a “junior engineer” over the past year
• Why engineering will shift from “bricklayers” to “architects”
• Why AI tools will lead to more engineering jobs rather than fewer
• How Devin creates its own wiki to understand and document complex codebases
• The eight pivots Cognition went through before landing on their current approach
• The cultural shifts required to successfully adopt AI engineers

*Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-devin-scott-wu *Brought to you by:* Enterpret—Transform customer feedback into product growth Paragon—Ship every SaaS integration your customers want Attio—The powerful, flexible CRM for fast-growing startups *Where to find Scott Wu:* X: https://x.com/scottwu46 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96/ *Where to find Lenny:* Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com X: https://twitter.com/lennysan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Scott Wu and Devin (09:13) Scaling and future prospects (10:23) Devin's origin story (17:26) The idea of Devin as a person (22:19) How a team of “Devins” are already producing 25% of Cognition’s pull requests (25:17) Important skills in the AI era (30:21) How Cognition’s engineering team works with Devin's (34:37) Live demo (42:20) Devin’s codebase integration (44:50) Automation with Linear (46:53) What Devin does best (52:56) The future of AI in software engineering (57:13) Moats and stickiness in AI (01:01:57) The tech that enables Devin (01:04:14) AI will be the biggest technology shift of our lives (01:07:25) Adopting Devin in your company (01:15:13) Startup wisdom and hiring practices (01:22:32) Lightning round and final thoughts *Referenced:*

• Devin: https://devin.ai/
• GitHub: https://github.com/
• Linear: https://linear.app/
• Waymo: https://waymo.com/
• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot
• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/
• Anysphere: https://anysphere.inc/
• Bolt: https://bolt.new/
• StackBlitz: https://stackblitz.com/
• Cognition: https://cognition.ai/
• v0: https://v0.dev/
• Vercel: https://vercel.com/
• Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch
• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons
• Assembly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language
• Pascal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)
• Python: https://www.python.org/
• Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
• Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/
• Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/bending-the-universe-in-your-favor
• OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai
• Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-replit-amjad-masad
• Windsurf: https://windsurf.com/
• COBOL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
• Fortran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran
• Magic the Gathering: https://magic.wizards.com/en
• Aura frames: https://auraframes.com/
• AirPods: https://www.apple.com/airpods/
• Steven Hao on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638/

*Recommended books:*

• How to Win Friends & Influence People: https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034
• The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Making/dp/052555999X
• The Great Gatsby: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Gatsby-F-Scott-Fitzgerald/dp/0743273567

_Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._ _Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed._

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Scott Wu

  guest

• Lenny Rachitsky

  host

• Narrator

  other

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Scott Wu and Lenny Rachitsky, Scott Wu: Why Devin will write half of Cognition's code explores inside Devin: How AI Engineers Are Reshaping Software Teams and Workflows Cognition Labs CEO Scott Wu explains Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer that companies use like a junior remote developer via Slack, Linear, and GitHub.

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