4 ms·

If any company announces that they use token consumption as an employee performance signal, for me that's close to a red flag to stay away from that company. N

If any company announces that they use token consumption as an employee performance signal, for me that's close to a red flag to stay away from that company. No company with good engineering leadership should act like this is remotely a good idea.

LaurensBER 5mo ago
Tokens are the new "lines of code per engineer". Easy to graph, easy to "manage".
- KellyCriterion 5mo ago
  ...and easier to bill! Back, then noboday had the idea to charge per "lines of code", but today it seems accepted to charge per words processed?
- mig39 5mo ago
  The new TPS reports!
  - suprfnk 5mo ago
    Oh, so that was actually a Token Per Second report! Wild!
an0malous 5mo ago
I worked at a YC company that was doing this and left last month. I wonder where this all started from, VCs and tech execs are such a monoculture
- ben_w 5mo ago
  The where may be the decision makers chasing social media trends. A friend sent me a link to this, this morning, about devs rather than managers, but I suspect it's the same: https://youtu.be/IW3Sbe0Hbgg https://youtu.be/IW3Sbe0Hbgg
- gusfoo 5mo ago
  https://x.com/garrytan/status/2018368316033946021 https://x.com/garrytan/status/2018368316033946021 "I am currently averaging about 10k LOC per day (35% of the lines are tests) so wow, 15k/day is #goals" Garry Tan - YC CEO and LLM psychosis victim (but he doesn't realise that yet)
abvdasker 5mo ago
Meta does this. Guess what one of the criteria for their recent layoffs was.
- loeg 5mo ago
  Meta tracks token consumption, but has explicitly stated that it is not a primary performance metric. Instead, employees are evaluated on "impact."
  - hcnews 5mo ago
    Sure, and I have a bridge to sell you. Or alternately refer you to the inevitability of Goodhart's law.
  - KaiserPro 5mo ago
    Indeed, they also said that previous time off for ill health wasn't a reason either. but looking at the number of people who had taken leave, it suggests otherwise.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - loeg 5mo ago
      You can believe whatever conspiracy theories you want, of course, but the most straightforward explanation is that when you lay off X,000 or XX,000 people, some number of them will be on leave.
      - shepherdjerred 5mo ago
        My understanding is that they must layoff some workers on leave, otherwise they would be discriminating
        dvfjsdhgfv 5mo ago
        In Europe people on sick leave are protected (under certain conditions).
toasty228 5mo ago
You'd be surprised, I know a few devs in very big tech companies, not faang but you definitely know them, and they all have some kind of token leaderboards, a few told their dev "we don't want you to write a single line of code manually anymore", etc. I assume the execs perspective is something like: if the top 20% of worker produce 80% of the code with LLMs and the company still works then we can get rid of the bottom 80% of devs and save money
- JeremyNT 5mo ago
  I think there's probably something to token use as some kind of metric. If you aren't using these tools much, you're definitely not going to remain a top contributor. The world is evolving quickly here. But it's just one signal out of many, and more isn't somehow inherently better beyond a certain point.
- OptionOfT 5mo ago
  Problem is that those 20% depend on the code reviews of the 80% for some form of pushback.
- no-name-here 5mo ago
  But even if the end goal was to lay off 80% of programmers, shouldn't the 20% to keep be the developers delivering the 80% of the code, regardless of whether they spent the most to do it? Like what if the 20% of workers spending the most tokens were actually the bottom 20% in terms of delivery because they were using the worst prompts and having AI constantly implement 5 different versions of everything, then throwing it all out because their prompt was so bad anyway?
  - recursivecaveat 5mo ago
    Ah, but "who uses the most tokens" is a number, a number generated by a computer no less. Questions like who delivers lots of high quality work require you to do research and make judgements, which is work.
nickvec 5mo ago
I worked at Uber from 2022-2025. The engineering culture was pretty abysmal, so it checks out.
missingcolours 5mo ago
As I have snarkily observed at work: if I go $100 over the meal allowance on my business trip, I'll have to have an unpleasant conversation with my manager or finance. If I use $500 in AI tokens unproductively I'll be recognized for being a top AI adopter.
- rickydroll 5mo ago
  I have seen this type of behavior happen many times in different companies. For example, at more than one company I've worked for, if you wrote shitty code but got it into "testing" faster than anybody else, you are considered a superior programmer. And then, if you fixed the hundreds of bugs found in your code seen as an extraordinary programmer going above and beyond the call of duty. Management is always measuring the wrong thing.
citrin_ru 5mo ago
The problem is that many companies which had reasonable leadership in the past with the advent of LLM AI started to make rushed (and dubious from my point of view) decisions - using token usage to evaluate an employee performance is just one of them.

LaurensBER 5mo ago

Tokens are the new "lines of code per engineer". Easy to graph, easy to "manage".

KellyCriterion 5mo ago
...and easier to bill! Back, then noboday had the idea to charge per "lines of code", but today it seems accepted to charge per words processed?
mig39 5mo ago
The new TPS reports!
- suprfnk 5mo ago
  Oh, so that was actually a Token Per Second report! Wild!

an0malous 5mo ago

I worked at a YC company that was doing this and left last month. I wonder where this all started from, VCs and tech execs are such a monoculture

ben_w 5mo ago
The where may be the decision makers chasing social media trends. A friend sent me a link to this, this morning, about devs rather than managers, but I suspect it's the same: https://youtu.be/IW3Sbe0Hbgg https://youtu.be/IW3Sbe0Hbgg
gusfoo 5mo ago
https://x.com/garrytan/status/2018368316033946021 https://x.com/garrytan/status/2018368316033946021 "I am currently averaging about 10k LOC per day (35% of the lines are tests) so wow, 15k/day is #goals" Garry Tan - YC CEO and LLM psychosis victim (but he doesn't realise that yet)

abvdasker 5mo ago

Meta does this. Guess what one of the criteria for their recent layoffs was.

loeg 5mo ago
Meta tracks token consumption, but has explicitly stated that it is not a primary performance metric. Instead, employees are evaluated on "impact."
- hcnews 5mo ago
  Sure, and I have a bridge to sell you. Or alternately refer you to the inevitability of Goodhart's law.
- KaiserPro 5mo ago
  Indeed, they also said that previous time off for ill health wasn't a reason either. but looking at the number of people who had taken leave, it suggests otherwise.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - loeg 5mo ago
    You can believe whatever conspiracy theories you want, of course, but the most straightforward explanation is that when you lay off X,000 or XX,000 people, some number of them will be on leave.
    - shepherdjerred 5mo ago
      My understanding is that they must layoff some workers on leave, otherwise they would be discriminating
      - dvfjsdhgfv 5mo ago
        In Europe people on sick leave are protected (under certain conditions).

toasty228 5mo ago

You'd be surprised, I know a few devs in very big tech companies, not faang but you definitely know them, and they all have some kind of token leaderboards, a few told their dev "we don't want you to write a single line of code manually anymore", etc. I assume the execs perspective is something like: if the top 20% of worker produce 80% of the code with LLMs and the company still works then we can get rid of the bottom 80% of devs and save money

JeremyNT 5mo ago
I think there's probably something to token use as some kind of metric. If you aren't using these tools much, you're definitely not going to remain a top contributor. The world is evolving quickly here. But it's just one signal out of many, and more isn't somehow inherently better beyond a certain point.
OptionOfT 5mo ago
Problem is that those 20% depend on the code reviews of the 80% for some form of pushback.
no-name-here 5mo ago
But even if the end goal was to lay off 80% of programmers, shouldn't the 20% to keep be the developers delivering the 80% of the code, regardless of whether they spent the most to do it? Like what if the 20% of workers spending the most tokens were actually the bottom 20% in terms of delivery because they were using the worst prompts and having AI constantly implement 5 different versions of everything, then throwing it all out because their prompt was so bad anyway?
- recursivecaveat 5mo ago
  Ah, but "who uses the most tokens" is a number, a number generated by a computer no less. Questions like who delivers lots of high quality work require you to do research and make judgements, which is work.

nickvec 5mo ago

I worked at Uber from 2022-2025. The engineering culture was pretty abysmal, so it checks out.

missingcolours 5mo ago

As I have snarkily observed at work: if I go $100 over the meal allowance on my business trip, I'll have to have an unpleasant conversation with my manager or finance. If I use $500 in AI tokens unproductively I'll be recognized for being a top AI adopter.

rickydroll 5mo ago
I have seen this type of behavior happen many times in different companies. For example, at more than one company I've worked for, if you wrote shitty code but got it into "testing" faster than anybody else, you are considered a superior programmer. And then, if you fixed the hundreds of bugs found in your code seen as an extraordinary programmer going above and beyond the call of duty. Management is always measuring the wrong thing.

citrin_ru 5mo ago

The problem is that many companies which had reasonable leadership in the past with the advent of LLM AI started to make rushed (and dubious from my point of view) decisions - using token usage to evaluate an employee performance is just one of them.