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Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

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Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#21

> 95% of Uber engineers now use AI tools monthly with 70% of committed code originating from AI. Well, that’s to be expected when using AI tools becomes relevant in your performance evaluation.

When managers and VPs all say, you must use AI or else you will not work here, then yes, people will use it.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#22
post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

They keep forgetting to put "make no mistakes", "think deeply" and "get it right the first time" in their prompts.

When people have no ability to understand what they are doing, they will just rerun it endlessly hoping they get something passable. When that doesn't happen they burn money.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#24
post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

I'm on the same page. Do people not analyze the problems themselves? Are they just copy/pasting their entire ticket description into Claude Code and having it iterate until they land on something that works?

I don't get it.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#25
post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

> responsibly

There’s your problem. You’re trying to be responsible instead of trying to burn tokens so you can have your name on top of some leaderboard for most wasteful AI users.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#26

> 95% of Uber engineers now use AI tools monthly with 70% of committed code originating from AI. Well, that’s to be expected when using AI tools becomes relevant in your performance evaluation.

It's actually incredible the extent to which non devs imposing KPIs on devs underestimate how badly this will get gamed, whether it's AIs, PR/line counting or whatever.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#27

> 95% of Uber engineers now use AI tools monthly with 70% of committed code originating from AI. Well, that’s to be expected when using AI tools becomes relevant in your performance evaluation.

I don't understand this critique. (1) Did you previously think you weren't getting paid for doing what a company wants you to do, aka what THEY thought was productive? (2) Do you think all this AI generated code is useless? Edit: y'all are some whiney folk, ain't ya?

you're missing their point; LLM use is often a part of your evaluation at some of these larger companies and they expect you to use them heavily or you will get a lashing

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#28
post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

Several options on how to burn that amount of money without being specifically looking to tokenmaxx

- Agents that spawn other agents

- Telling agents to go look at the entire codebase or at a lot of documents constantly

- MCP/API use with a lot of noise

- Loops where the agent is running unattended.

I do think it's not really responsible use and a loop where the agent is trying to fix CI for one hour for something that would take you five minutes (for example) is absurd. But people do that.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#29
post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

I'm on the same page. Do people not analyze the problems themselves? Are they just copy/pasting their entire ticket description into Claude Code and having it iterate until they land on something that works? I don't get it.

> Are they just copy/pasting their entire ticket description into Claude Code and having it iterate until they land on something that works?

That is exactly what they are doing, yes

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#30
post #17

I take a peak every month or so at spend for my company and notice more and more are consumed $1k in tokens a month and it is bewildering to me how. I use llms daily, and see anywhere from $200-$400 tops. This is using the most expensive models, in deep thinking mode. So I'm not a Luddite against the usage of them. I just can't figure how _how_ to burn that much money a month responsibly. I genuinely challenge someon…

Really depends on the repo you’re working in.

If it’s very large, especially if the tool needs to refer to documentation for a lot of custom frameworks and APIs, you often end up needing very large context windows that burn through tokens faster.

If it’s smaller or sticks with common frameworks that the model was trained on, it’s able to do a lot more with smaller context windows and token usage is way lower.

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