Amazon employees are "tokenmaxxing" due to pressure to use AI tools

x187463

Measuring token usage as a productivity metric is like measuring keystrokes. Don't mind me, just over here rolling my face on the keyboard for an hour so I can take Friday off... ...except each keystroke has an associated cost, the sum of which may equal or exceed my salary.

guywithahat

This reads more like it's a single employees gripe than a real thing that's happening. They're not using the metrics in performance reviews, and it's a new AI tool that AWS probably wants legitimate usage data out of. That said, if you can't figure out how to use AI in a software job you should look into it. Not using AI at this point is a lot like not using CAD as an architect.

some_furry

Can't you just, wire your agent into a Python script and have it infinitely check its own work? That would hit the metrics, but do nothing useful. Hell, throw a Tarot reading in the middle of the loop so the agent has non-deterministic behavior too. https://github.com/trailofbits/skills/tree/main/plugins/let-... Amazon management wants to play five-dimensional chess? Play Balatro instead.

tyleo

I was thinking about this recently. I tend to run my AI at low context because the documentation states that they degrade with higher context usage. However I see tons of people on LinkedIn with ways of backing up context, not wanting to lose context, etc. This seems like another way the system is being misused. Higher context usage also uses more tokens. I suspect you get worse (and slower) output too than a dense detailed context.

tapoxi

I joked about this on HN a few weeks ago and I find it funny that we ended up here already. Goodhart's Law in action.

varispeed

Someone pressuring to do something at work gives off creep vibes. Is that in the contract to use AI tools? If not, then what are they on about.

i7l

The fact that management signed off on measuring AI use through token usage shows how incompetent management really is, including in allegedly technical conmpanies like Amazon. Tokenmaxxing was an entirely expected and rational response. IOW You measure employees in stupid ways, you're going to get stupid behaviour as a consequence.

christkv

Seems to be a clear case of Goodhart's Law that states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

pjmlp

I can tell they are surely not the only ones. Everyone I talk to has nowadays KPIs tied to AI usage on their performance evaluation.

Argonaut998

I swear the industry is being Garry Tanned. Senior management let go our localisation staff. Now they want us to use AI to translate. They still want manual review. We use Github Copilot at work, we get a measly 300 requests with the budget to go over if necessary. Opus 4.7 or GPT 5.5 would eat all of those up in a day. Are we supposed to be using more than the allotted amount, do management see that as a good thing. Or is it best to stick within the allocated amount. Who knows? Management are playing games everywhere it seems.

ex-aws-dude

Imagine selling a product where companies are foaming at the mouth to increase their spend and pay you more money It does not get any better than that Jensen, Sam, Dario: https://i.imgur.com/AI7rtCY.jpeg

baxtr

“Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.” ― Charlie Munger

asdev

People who don't code(management, leadership) think AI will 10x the company but it's really a 40-60% boost. But engineers have to feign adopting this tools in fear of layoffs

ortusdux

Reminds me of the managers that use 'lines of code added' as a metric

asdfman123

Saw a good joke on twitter about it. Something like: "You spent $23, over the $20 food limit. Be more careful next time. You spent $600 on tokens, $200 more than the average. Congratulations!"

HarHarVeryFunny

> They said the move reflected pressure to adopt the technology after Amazon introduced targets for more than 80 percent of developers to use AI each week, and earlier this year began tracking AI token consumption on internal leader boards. This measuring of tokenmaxxing as a proxy for something beneficial to the company has got to be the single dumbest thing I have ever heard of in my entire software career. It would be like some company in the dot com era measuring employee's internet download traffic as a proxy for productivity or internet-pilledness. Why not just reward employees based on who's submit the largest expenses claims? That might have some correlation to work too, right ?!

morelandjs

I have mixed thoughts on this. These thoughts are my own. On the one hand, it’s objectively silly to pretend like we’ve solved the age old problem of measuring developer productivity. Metric-obsessed leadership can also be intolerable, counterproductive, and it’s a good way to paint yourself into a corner undervaluing your best talent and overvaluing your mediocre talent. That said, I’m kind of having a blast using CC in corporate with all the connectors available at our disposal, and I baffled how little some of my coworkers know about what’s available and what the capabilities are. So it’s clear that perhaps some encouragement is prudent for those who are slower to embrace new technologies, but I’m not sure tokencounting and tokenmaxing are the answer.

retinaros

Vibecoded ppt, docs, frontends is an even bigger scam than crypto ever was. Ofc people getting sucked into it

dogscatstrees

Another stupid meme-latching name. Don't normalize these *maxxing nonsense words and just use plain language. Let's see, maybe just say they were optimizing for token count?

wenc

When did FT become Business Insider? I have an FT subscription and they keep moving toward this kind of narrative first reporting to get clicks. It’s no longer a believable paper.