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Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

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Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#41

Post by joe_mamba »

CoolestBeans wrote: post #18
tra3 wrote: post #5

There's definitely a way to use Claude code that is token conscious. I've tried throwing unsupervised agentic software factory workflows against the wall, and they burned through my tokens like nobody's business but didn't produce much. Supervised, human-in-the-loop process on the other hand is much more productive but doesn't consume nearly as much. Maybe that's why everyone's pushing agentic approaches so much.

The current thinking is automated agents is what turns this from an industry in the tens of billions to a multi trillion dollar one. So yes you are right on the money, agents stimulate demand for this thing they've built.

[flagged]

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#42

Post by thegreatpeter »

tra3 wrote: post #5

There's definitely a way to use Claude code that is token conscious. I've tried throwing unsupervised agentic software factory workflows against the wall, and they burned through my tokens like nobody's business but didn't produce much. Supervised, human-in-the-loop process on the other hand is much more productive but doesn't consume nearly as much. Maybe that's why everyone's pushing agentic approaches so much.

yeah, by using codex

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#43

Post by lawn »

kristjansson wrote: post #31
tracker1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience as well... I've only hit Antrhopic's 5hr threshold a few times, and two of them was within a half hour of the window. Also, all three times I'd already accomplished a LOT. I tend to work with the agent, and observe what's going on as well as review/test and work through results/changes. I spend a lot more time planning tasks/features than the execution, even using the agent as part of planning and pre-d…

I suspect subscription limits are quite a bit higher than the equivalent tokens their dollar cost could purchase. I similarly feel like I can get a lot done with a $20/mo Claude Pro subscriptions, but also can easily spend $10-20/day at API pricing with similar usage.

I don't understand why people are using the API pricing instead of the Pro/Max subscriptions? What am I missing?

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#44

Post by layer8 »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #13
tra3 wrote: post #5

There's definitely a way to use Claude code that is token conscious. I've tried throwing unsupervised agentic software factory workflows against the wall, and they burned through my tokens like nobody's business but didn't produce much. Supervised, human-in-the-loop process on the other hand is much more productive but doesn't consume nearly as much. Maybe that's why everyone's pushing agentic approaches so much.

At the enterprise level though, its going to be hard to want to use a service in which costs are not predictable, and keeping those costs under control requires employee training.

To be fair, the cost of software development has always been fairly unpredictable. What may be different is that the cost used to be roughly proportional to man-hours spent, while now the number of agents running in parallel may be less predictable.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#45

Post by brookst »

tra3 wrote: post #5

There's definitely a way to use Claude code that is token conscious. I've tried throwing unsupervised agentic software factory workflows against the wall, and they burned through my tokens like nobody's business but didn't produce much. Supervised, human-in-the-loop process on the other hand is much more productive but doesn't consume nearly as much. Maybe that's why everyone's pushing agentic approaches so much.

I get 98.6% cache hits on Claude code. Short of drastic arch changes it’s hard to imagine it getting much better.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#46

Post by brookst »

kristjansson wrote: post #31
tracker1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience as well... I've only hit Antrhopic's 5hr threshold a few times, and two of them was within a half hour of the window. Also, all three times I'd already accomplished a LOT. I tend to work with the agent, and observe what's going on as well as review/test and work through results/changes. I spend a lot more time planning tasks/features than the execution, even using the agent as part of planning and pre-d…

I suspect subscription limits are quite a bit higher than the equivalent tokens their dollar cost could purchase. I similarly feel like I can get a lot done with a $20/mo Claude Pro subscriptions, but also can easily spend $10-20/day at API pricing with similar usage.

Yep. I get $6k - $8k worth of tokens (at api rates) using the $200 max subscription.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#47

Post by ares623 »

rnxrx wrote: post #35

Thus does kind of beg the question: If developers are being laid off because AI is better/faster/cheaper or makes all their people 10x or whatever fig leaf, what happens if the required tooling ends up being more expensive? From the investor’s point of view is the drag of employee costs better or worse than a ballooning expense item?

There is no profit, expense, revenue. Those don't matter. Only thing that matters is stock price goes up, and laying off makes stock price go up. When laying off make stock price go down, then laying off stop.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#48

Post by brookst »

killerstorm wrote: post #12

The way coding agent work is fantastically wasteful. All the megabytes of code are processed over and over and over, sometimes withing just one session. There are papers describing KV cache precomputation for commonly used documents (e.g. KVLink), but, of course, it's not a priority for model providers: they'd rather sell you more tokens, also they would rather get to AGI/ASI first than optimize usage of existing mod…

Claude code gets >98% KV cache hits. It’s not reprocessing unless you let the cache go cold (5 minutes, which is annoyingly short).

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#49

Post by giancarlostoro »

lawn wrote: post #43
kristjansson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect subscription limits are quite a bit higher than the equivalent tokens their dollar cost could purchase. I similarly feel like I can get a lot done with a $20/mo Claude Pro subscriptions, but also can easily spend $10-20/day at API pricing with similar usage.

I don't understand why people are using the API pricing instead of the Pro/Max subscriptions? What am I missing?

Enterprise customers don't get that option. But also if you want a fully custom harness, you also don't get that option.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#50

Post by thewebguyd »

rnxrx wrote: post #35

Thus does kind of beg the question: If developers are being laid off because AI is better/faster/cheaper or makes all their people 10x or whatever fig leaf, what happens if the required tooling ends up being more expensive? From the investor’s point of view is the drag of employee costs better or worse than a ballooning expense item?

I suspect AI would have to get drastically more expensive before it starts looking worse than payroll. If one developer using Claude Code can effectively substitute for 2 developers, you are already coming out ahead at current API pricing assuming very heavy usage, your cost is going to be ~1.5x developer (factoring in beyond salary - benefits, PTO, the other overhead that comes with having employees).

So you're getting 2 for the price of 1.5. Scale that up to 500 devs at a big company and it's a big chunk of change saved on payroll.

Keeping your headcount or hiring humans instead, AI would have to start to cost upwards of $15k/month/developer or more before it costs more than hiring. You're looking at about 4 billion tokens per month before humans start to break even or are cheaper.

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