About Wix
Wix is an Israeli technology company that develops a platform for building websites and digital businesses, with more than 200 million users worldwide. It developed the guild model in Israeli tech before anyone knew it was called a guild, and has since become a global name in the field: companies from Israel and around the world come to learn the model from Wix.
Why did Wix change its guild model?
The change didn't happen all at once. Wix has been working with AI since 2022. It built infrastructure and even developed its own internal AI-based coding tool, Astra, which competed with Claude Code, until it decided it was better to use what already existed. Along the way, it realized that AI changes more than the tools. It changes the basic definition of what an engineer is.
Until January 2026, each guild trained engineers to specialize in its own discipline only. Frontend stayed Frontend, Backend stayed Backend. The guild was the mechanism that paved the way to deep specialization. AI changed that equation. Suddenly a Frontend engineer can do Backend work at a sufficient level with the right guidance, and a team that depends on another team no longer has to wait weeks for that team to free up.
The experiment that preceded the announcement
Before announcing anything, Wix checked whether it was even possible. It took 20 engineers, split them into teams of 2 instead of 5 or 6, and sent them to build a feature end to end.
Each engineer got the basics of the other discipline, and each team worked across 3 roles:
- Builder: responsible for the entire technical side: Frontend, Backend, Mobile
- Creator: responsible for the entire product side: Product, UX, Design, Content
- Keeper: an expert who reviews the work and makes sure quality is maintained
What they found: a team of 2 can handle ongoing tasks at a sufficient level. Very complex tasks still require depth that takes time to build. What was missing was experience and expertise, not team size. Only after the experiment proved it was feasible did Wix make the announcement and move on to mandatory training for the whole organization.
What is an xEngineer?
The xEngineer isn't a classic fullstack engineer. Wix is very clear on the definition: an AI-Native engineer with at least one deep specialization. They don't know a little of everything. They're an expert in their own domain, and able to work in other domains at a sufficient level with the help of AI.
Aviran describes the model with the metaphor of a missile. The body is all the engineers who can work across domains, the wings are the specializations (Frontend, Backend) that steer it, and the engine is the AI infrastructure that makes knowledge accessible to everyone. The specializations don't disappear. They become what steers the missile.
What actually changed: from 5 weeks to 4 days
The most concrete example Aviran gave: Wix was working on a project that required a deep change to its tenancy model. The team that initiated the change depended on another team that owned the relevant code. That team was completely swamped, and the estimate was 5 or 6 weeks before it could get to it. Instead of waiting, the requesting team went into the other team's repo themselves, used Claude Code to understand the code, agreed on the solution with the other team, did all the work themselves, and only needed a review. 5 or 6 weeks turned into 4 days.
This is possible because the xEngineer knows how to use AI even in domains they don't specialize in: to understand code, to guide the tool the right way, and to contribute at a level of quality that allows a fast review. Before the change, this was impossible.
What challenged them more than they expected
Wix is in the middle of the process, and Aviran doesn't only tell success stories. A few things they didn't expect:
- People who don't make it: stars of the old world don't necessarily excel in the new one. Someone who can guide AI and think architecturally at speed can be more valuable than someone who writes perfect code alone. That was a surprise.
- Burnout: a new AI tool shows up every week. Wix moved from Cursor to Claude Code, and is now evaluating Codex. People feel real FOMO and real fatigue from the endless chase.
- The build became the bottleneck: when writing the code takes 10 minutes and the production build takes 40, all the CI/CD infrastructure built for humans turns out to be a poor fit for machines.
Prerequisites: you can't skip steps
Aviran was unequivocal about one thing: Wix went through a decade of separate guilds, with standards, guard rails, and Wix Academy, before merging them. Anyone who wants to jump straight to merged guilds without years of infrastructure is building on sand.
Culture is built by shared tools. The moment you have the shared tools, you can create a shared culture.
The manager's role became more critical, not less
In a world where AI writes code, it's easy to think the manager matters less. Wix found the opposite. The manager is the one who decides how much depth and how much breadth to give each developer, the one who hands out end-to-end tasks and not only domain-specific ones, and the one who, after someone finishes a task, asks: "Walk me through what you did and why."
Wisdom isn't running fast. Wisdom is running and making sure there's understanding too.
What Wix still hasn't solved
The next frontier Wix talks about, but hasn't reached yet, is Zero Maintenance: agents that work offline for you, analyze alerts, fix bugs, and run PR reviews. The idea is that developers never have to leave their flow. Wix is just at the start of that road.
Success stories: in the next podcast :)