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It's hard to read this take seriously, when you promoted a company spending $1k per engineer per day on LLM usage.

simonw 2mo ago
You mean Strong DM? I stand by what I said about them at the time: they're an interesting case-study in extreme AI-assisted software development, and they have a bunch of ideas that are worth learning from even if you're not going to spend that (absurd) kind of money. One of the hot topics since then has been how to validate software without reviewing every line of code by hand, which is exactly the kind of thing they were exploring before anyone else.
- duhhhhh1212 2mo ago
  Yes, Strong DM. How is that different from tokenmaxxing? Because of the article you wrote, a few companies went to them and starting adopting their methods and guess what happened in a few weeks into that process? Upper management started tracking engineers who weren't using AI enough (~1k a day). A few engineers got fired because they were slow to adopt StrongDM's process.
  - simonw 2mo ago
    Have you really seen engineers fired for failing to spend $1,000 on tokens a day because their bosses read my piece about Strong DM? https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/ I would hope that my commentary on those patterns would be less likely to lead to bad decisions than if people just read Strong DM's own description of their software factory approach: https://factory.strongdm.ai/ https://factory.strongdm.ai/
    - duhhhhh1212 2mo ago
      > Have you really seen engineers fired for failing to spend $1,000 on tokens a day because their bosses read my piece about Strong DM? Bruh, come on. Not directly is the best answer I have for that. Unfortunately, they didn't read your article carefully, because the idea of productivity gains was all the candy they needed to jump in the van.
      - simonw 2mo ago
        It sounds to me like you are blaming imagined job losses on anyone who wrote about an interesting experiment that a company did.
        duhhhhh1212 2mo ago
        Damn, not blaming you for job losses. Indirectly influencing upper management isn’t your fault. That’s on them. I’m saying if you look at what strongdm preached it leads to tokenmaxxing.
- brazukadev 2mo ago
  this content was brought to you by *Insert Sponsor name*

You mean Strong DM? I stand by what I said about them at the time: they're an interesting case-study in extreme AI-assisted software development, and they have a bunch of ideas that are worth learning from even if you're not going to spend that (absurd) kind of money. One of the hot topics since then has been how to validate software without reviewing every line of code by hand, which is exactly the kind of thing they were exploring before anyone else.

duhhhhh1212 2mo ago
Yes, Strong DM. How is that different from tokenmaxxing? Because of the article you wrote, a few companies went to them and starting adopting their methods and guess what happened in a few weeks into that process? Upper management started tracking engineers who weren't using AI enough (~1k a day). A few engineers got fired because they were slow to adopt StrongDM's process.
- simonw 2mo ago
  Have you really seen engineers fired for failing to spend $1,000 on tokens a day because their bosses read my piece about Strong DM? https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/ https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/ I would hope that my commentary on those patterns would be less likely to lead to bad decisions than if people just read Strong DM's own description of their software factory approach: https://factory.strongdm.ai/ https://factory.strongdm.ai/
  - duhhhhh1212 2mo ago
    > Have you really seen engineers fired for failing to spend $1,000 on tokens a day because their bosses read my piece about Strong DM? Bruh, come on. Not directly is the best answer I have for that. Unfortunately, they didn't read your article carefully, because the idea of productivity gains was all the candy they needed to jump in the van.
    - simonw 2mo ago
      It sounds to me like you are blaming imagined job losses on anyone who wrote about an interesting experiment that a company did.
      - duhhhhh1212 2mo ago
        Damn, not blaming you for job losses. Indirectly influencing upper management isn’t your fault. That’s on them. I’m saying if you look at what strongdm preached it leads to tokenmaxxing.
brazukadev 2mo ago
this content was brought to you by *Insert Sponsor name*