Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

Post by kridsdale1 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

QuiEgo wrote: post #39

dsagent wrote: post #26

I think whats funny is that employees were most likely already covering the cost for these tools because they are useful. Companies didn't believe employees were using these tools and now have forced their usage and no longer have the costs subsidized. Similarly companies seem to reward high token usage as a sign of someone willing to play ball with AI and again have forced higher costs on themselves for people rewar…

There is no world where I can put my company’s data through an external site without their express consent and security sign off. I suspect at most companies there’s zero path for people to have been paying for it themselves.

Post by thewebguyd » Fri, May 22, 2026, 8:22 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #53

thewebguyd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gett…

You're starting from the assumption that its a 2x benefit. That's a massive leap.

Post by kridsdale1 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 8:24 PM UTC

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #15

andyfilms1 wrote: post #4

Surely a company as large as Microsoft is actively attempting to build their own models. They couldn't possibly have expected to stake the future of their software development on the conditions of a third party company?

> attempting to build their own models. At one point there were rumours that they'd do that. They also have the rigts to oAI models for a few more years still, so they could always use that but apparently they're also compute starved (like anyone else).

Post by ilovecake1984 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 8:28 PM UTC

thewebguyd wrote: post #50

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 gett…

Post by sidewndr46 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 8:29 PM UTC

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.