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The premise of this article is incorrect - MS isn't cancelling Claude code internal usage because of AI costs too much, they're cancelling it because GitHub cop

The premise of this article is incorrect - MS isn't cancelling Claude code internal usage because of AI costs too much, they're cancelling it because GitHub copilot is the compete product and they want their employees to use their product. It's the same reason Teams got so much attention during lockdown.

mkozlows 5mo ago
Yeah, they conflate Microsoft's actions (which are not about cost) with a random quote from the "vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia," who says that compute costs more than people on his team -- but his team isn't using LLMs for software development, they're literally a deep learning team that is burning compute in deep learning development ways. If people would do even a little bit of math, they'd see that Microsoft can't possibly be paying more for AI than for developers: They have about 80K employees in product development roles. Senior developers probably cost them $400K all-in. Do they have a $32 billion Claude bill? I suspect they do not.
charles_f 5mo ago
Both things can be right: Claude costing too much and migrating employees to copilot, which hopefully will decrease cost as it owns the product, which will in turn increase usage and feedback. > It's the same reason Teams got so much attention during lockdown Not sure I see the parallel with the point you were making
- bentcorner 5mo ago
  Anecdotally from people I know from MS is that adhoc slack usage was popular up until lockdown, at which point more resources was poured into Teams due to everything going remote and internal slacks were frowned upon. I see a parallel here where a competitor's product is taking over and MS leaders see it becoming an existential problem and are putting their foot down and pushing internal users to the company's products. Also if half the company don't even want to use something made by the other half it's a bad look lol
  - charles_f 5mo ago
    I see, thanks for clarifying (I also know people who used to use slack internally to MS).

mkozlows 5mo ago

Yeah, they conflate Microsoft's actions (which are not about cost) with a random quote from the "vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia," who says that compute costs more than people on his team -- but his team isn't using LLMs for software development, they're literally a deep learning team that is burning compute in deep learning development ways. If people would do even a little bit of math, they'd see that Microsoft can't possibly be paying more for AI than for developers: They have about 80K employees in product development roles. Senior developers probably cost them $400K all-in. Do they have a $32 billion Claude bill? I suspect they do not.

charles_f 5mo ago

Both things can be right: Claude costing too much and migrating employees to copilot, which hopefully will decrease cost as it owns the product, which will in turn increase usage and feedback. > It's the same reason Teams got so much attention during lockdown Not sure I see the parallel with the point you were making

bentcorner 5mo ago
Anecdotally from people I know from MS is that adhoc slack usage was popular up until lockdown, at which point more resources was poured into Teams due to everything going remote and internal slacks were frowned upon. I see a parallel here where a competitor's product is taking over and MS leaders see it becoming an existential problem and are putting their foot down and pushing internal users to the company's products. Also if half the company don't even want to use something made by the other half it's a bad look lol
- charles_f 5mo ago
  I see, thanks for clarifying (I also know people who used to use slack internally to MS).