4 ms·

You say "amazing that it took months to figure this out" as if the answer to the question is obvious. But it's not. Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with u

You say "amazing that it took months to figure this out" as if the answer to the question is obvious. But it's not. Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Other companies have no clue what to do with tokens, they've just told their engineers to max them. It really depends on how you're using the tokens. If you're just using them for Codex and Claude Code - yeah, tokenmaxxing is incredibly dumb.

steveBK123 5mo ago
> Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Others have no clue what to do with tokens. Unlimited tokens is different from “use AI a lot or we will fire you, and we are counting token consumption as usage”. Obviously the latter is stupid and yet it was done in many places.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 5mo ago
  I'm not convinced it actually was done in many places, although I understand why in a bad job market people don't trust that it isn't happening in secret. Every time I've heard of a token leaderboard or such it's come with a denial that the company is using it as an employee performance metric.
  - steveBK123 5mo ago
    > it's come with a denial that the company is using it as an employee performance metric. Surely the anonymous employee feedback polls are totally anonymous too. BigCorp loves you, is family, and would never harm you.
morpheuskafka 5mo ago
> But it's not. Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens Giving someone unlimited access to a resources is not the same as directing or incentivizing them to use it for the sake of using it which is what the parent comment criticized. As for the other FAANGs, Meta and Google have (not good but still) frontier models of their own, so they are very different from a company paying API costs per token.
SecretDreams 5mo ago
Show me some fang that have made nice outwards facing products through a fully embraced AI workflow? AI is an accelerator that engineers should know and have access to, but it's not something that should have mandated usage and quotas around. It's also absolutely dangerous for young engineers and the like - it fundamentally denies you of the "learning" aspect. I'm now seeing in interviews young graduates being given AI tasks to complete and they come back with a correct solution and no concept of how it is working. You learn and reinforce learning by DOING and reading in depth. High level summaries don't teach anything and are the kinds of things only VPs care about. So, unless the intention in the future is for everyone to be a VP using AI to do the work, we need some middle ground here and some real thought around implementation of these tools or there's going to be a generational canyon gap of knowledge between being able to "say" and being able to "do".
fsloth 5mo ago
> Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Would love to know what things!
- arkadiytehgraet 5mo ago
  OP (solenoid0937) is an unfounded AI-hype peddler and an Anthropic shill (check their comment history), do not expect them to provide an actual example of their wild claims.
  - dgellow 5mo ago
    I checked their history and they seem alright ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - arkadiytehgraet 5mo ago
      Here, just a few examples over the last 9 days, in no particular order of exaggeration magnitude: Unsubstantiated claims of 3x-10x productivity at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174666 More claims of the same, still unsubstantiated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173995 Even more claims of the same, still nothing of substance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173975 Outlandish claim of using 300$ in tokens in 1 hour at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158438 Ostensibly great things with unlimited tokens at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48269185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48269185 Complaints about HN "not getting" AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245673 An attempt to validate vibe-coding in production: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243651 Whitewashing Claude degradation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211638 More Claude degradation whitewashing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245784 Whitewashing Anthropic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199951 Promises of coming AI revolution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48188104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48188104 All of this serves to hype up the LLM technology with absolutely outlandish claims, while also propping up Anthropic online.
saghm 5mo ago
In other words, people who are productive get more done when you scale up what they're already doing, and people who aren't productive will not magically become productive when you scale up what they're already doing. That's incredibly obvious, because we've seen how this plays out repeatedly in so many different ways (lines of code, commits, tickets closed, etc.), and it has nothing to do with tokens or even programming, but just how trying to manage people works.
dgellow 5mo ago
Where can I see those amazing things done by FAANGs?
- solenoid0937 5mo ago
  Join one!
  - dgellow 5mo ago
    Anything more concrete?
    - arkadiytehgraet 5mo ago
      You got baited by an LLM-hype peddler and Anthropic shill, do not expect anything of substance. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48272695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48272695

steveBK123 5mo ago

> Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Others have no clue what to do with tokens. Unlimited tokens is different from “use AI a lot or we will fire you, and we are counting token consumption as usage”. Obviously the latter is stupid and yet it was done in many places.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
SpicyLemonZest 5mo ago
I'm not convinced it actually was done in many places, although I understand why in a bad job market people don't trust that it isn't happening in secret. Every time I've heard of a token leaderboard or such it's come with a denial that the company is using it as an employee performance metric.
- steveBK123 5mo ago
  > it's come with a denial that the company is using it as an employee performance metric. Surely the anonymous employee feedback polls are totally anonymous too. BigCorp loves you, is family, and would never harm you.

morpheuskafka 5mo ago

> But it's not. Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens Giving someone unlimited access to a resources is not the same as directing or incentivizing them to use it for the sake of using it which is what the parent comment criticized. As for the other FAANGs, Meta and Google have (not good but still) frontier models of their own, so they are very different from a company paying API costs per token.

SecretDreams 5mo ago

Show me some fang that have made nice outwards facing products through a fully embraced AI workflow? AI is an accelerator that engineers should know and have access to, but it's not something that should have mandated usage and quotas around. It's also absolutely dangerous for young engineers and the like - it fundamentally denies you of the "learning" aspect. I'm now seeing in interviews young graduates being given AI tasks to complete and they come back with a correct solution and no concept of how it is working. You learn and reinforce learning by DOING and reading in depth. High level summaries don't teach anything and are the kinds of things only VPs care about. So, unless the intention in the future is for everyone to be a VP using AI to do the work, we need some middle ground here and some real thought around implementation of these tools or there's going to be a generational canyon gap of knowledge between being able to "say" and being able to "do".

fsloth 5mo ago

> Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Would love to know what things!

arkadiytehgraet 5mo ago
OP (solenoid0937) is an unfounded AI-hype peddler and an Anthropic shill (check their comment history), do not expect them to provide an actual example of their wild claims.
- dgellow 5mo ago
  I checked their history and they seem alright ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - arkadiytehgraet 5mo ago
    Here, just a few examples over the last 9 days, in no particular order of exaggeration magnitude: Unsubstantiated claims of 3x-10x productivity at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48174666 More claims of the same, still unsubstantiated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173995 Even more claims of the same, still nothing of substance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173975 Outlandish claim of using 300$ in tokens in 1 hour at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48158438 Ostensibly great things with unlimited tokens at allegedly a FAANG: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48269185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48269185 Complaints about HN "not getting" AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245673 An attempt to validate vibe-coding in production: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48243651 Whitewashing Claude degradation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48211638 More Claude degradation whitewashing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48245784 Whitewashing Anthropic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199951 Promises of coming AI revolution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48188104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48188104 All of this serves to hype up the LLM technology with absolutely outlandish claims, while also propping up Anthropic online.

saghm 5mo ago

In other words, people who are productive get more done when you scale up what they're already doing, and people who aren't productive will not magically become productive when you scale up what they're already doing. That's incredibly obvious, because we've seen how this plays out repeatedly in so many different ways (lines of code, commits, tickets closed, etc.), and it has nothing to do with tokens or even programming, but just how trying to manage people works.

dgellow 5mo ago

Where can I see those amazing things done by FAANGs?

solenoid0937 5mo ago
Join one!
- dgellow 5mo ago
  Anything more concrete?
  - arkadiytehgraet 5mo ago
    You got baited by an LLM-hype peddler and Anthropic shill, do not expect anything of substance. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48272695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48272695