Why PagerDuty wasn't built for the rate at which engineering teams now ship code

PagerDuty, traditionally designed for less frequent software deployments, is facing challenges as AI coding assistants accelerate the rate of code shipping, leading to more deployment-triggered incidents and alert noise. As engineering teams increasingly rely on AI tools like GitHub Copilot, the need for platforms that can handle high-velocity incident management in real-time has become critical. PagerDuty's architecture is web-first, creating friction during incidents as it requires manual coordination, whereas Slack-native solutions offer automated, seamless incident responses. The company's financial indicators, such as a net retention rate drop to 98% by January 2026, suggest a decline in customer satisfaction and value perception, largely due to the inability to match the pace of modern engineering demands. Competitors like incident.io are capitalizing on this by offering AI-driven, Slack-native platforms that reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) significantly, appealing to teams that need efficient incident management without the coordination overhead associated with legacy systems.