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Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

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Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#381

The comments I see recommending selective use of cheaper models doesn't match the reality I experience working in the industry. I have the constant threat hanging over my head of being fired if I don't churn out code quickly enough. I'm not willing to gamble with my livelyhood by using a less effective model. Saving money on tokens isn't something that's rewarded during performance reviews; particularly because it's…

> I have the constant threat hanging over my head of being fired if I don't churn out code quickly enough. And the tragedy is that this isn't sustainable, and we all involved deeply in tech know this. There is eventually going to be a big reality check the companies will have to pay, because you can't force creativity and quality, not even with AI, because actual intelligence lies with us at least for now and for the…

How much creativity do you need to fix bugs in corporate code? Almost zero. It’s maintenance, not creative work. Nothing against it, it’s needed, but let’s be real, would anybody be really sad if this work is overtaken by LLMs? I certainly won’t be, let them do it.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree that the expectations are higher, but token output hardly correlates to code output worthy of merging.

On a task by task basis the code Claude generates is pretty good these days. The biggest issue I see is that it wants to rearchitect the code constantly and I have no faith in my tests anymore because Claude will just "fix" them

I think some tests should be considered to be part of the specification rather than the product.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone (including ANTHROP\C) "recommending selective use of cheaper models" is spending costly human time (which costs more over time) on correcting the machine (which costs less over time). This is a bad trade. In cost per line of code, we have verified this is always an error unless your time is worth less than the machine (unlikely unless you consider your time to have no cost rather than considering it as your ho…

I disagree heartily with everything here, both in personal experience from the models, and in values about coding. I don't care bout cost, I care about getting good results fast. Cost per line of code is not a suitable metric for anything. It's as silly as measuring engineers' performance by lines of code. More lines of code is worse than fewer lines of code. When you say "we have verified" whoever that "we" is makes…

I’d point out that smaller and simpler also makes their router code easier to review and that fewer lines will have fewer bugs (on average) and those bugs will be more obvious. But then, I’m old school and won’t let an AI work on code without reviewing it, and I mostly write code by hand.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#384
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where to, that's the question. The economy is in the gutters and the replace-people-with-AI craze is making the issue even worse.

> The economy is in the gutters Consumer sentiment is in the gutters certainly. But objective measures of the economy like unemployment and real wages look good to excellent https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

> But objective measures of the economy like unemployment and real wages look good to excellent

Oh hell no, ever since the tail end of Biden the trend for unemployment is showing upwards when corrected for seasonal effects [1], and for real wage growth the situation has been worse for an even longer time [2] - if not for the effects of the post covid stimulus packages plus emergency wage raises following the energy cost explosion thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The story the stonk markets tell is completely decoupled from reality, partially because the AI wash trading bubble keeps distorting the statistics, partially because no matter what the stonk markets only can grow up because pension contributions keep blowing up the market [3]. Not getting that difference was what blew up Biden's reelection and is now screwing over Trump.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...

[2] https://www.atlantafed.org/research-and-data/data/wage-growt...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48233492

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree that the expectations are higher, but token output hardly correlates to code output worthy of merging.

Code quality matters to engineers. Find a senior manager who cares. Or worse, find a customer who cares. While they obviously want a high quality product, no outages, a responsive system etc, I don’t think they necessarily understand why you need to avoid creating god-objects, need to reason about abstractions, etc.

Nobody cares until the code gets so twisted in knots that bugs and security issues predominate.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#386
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general economy that is not the stock market is looking less and less great. Answer to this is to tighten the belt and that means losing employees. Especially as there has not been any new great revenue sources outside AI in recent years.

> Especially as there has not been any new great revenue sources outside AI in recent years. Nobody can make a profit with AI. Any clever idea can be cloned with AI, competition makes it unprofitable. No moat, no arbitrage opportunity. "During the gold rush, the only people making money were the men selling shovels." We can definitely do amazing things with AI, and it makes us have superpowers, but so does everyone e…

The shovels are the datacenters. China and America are building them. Even after the valuations puff out, that infrastructure will remain as a massive competitive advantage to those economies.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#389
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where to, that's the question. The economy is in the gutters and the replace-people-with-AI craze is making the issue even worse.

> The economy is in the gutters Consumer sentiment is in the gutters certainly. But objective measures of the economy like unemployment and real wages look good to excellent https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

What is in the gutters is memories of 2008-2010. That was the last time folks experienced a bad economy. I remember Ed Elson saying something along the lines of "who cares about employment, what matters is inflation". Sure, if you're 27, you haven't got a clue what a bad economy looks like.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#390

The comments I see recommending selective use of cheaper models doesn't match the reality I experience working in the industry. I have the constant threat hanging over my head of being fired if I don't churn out code quickly enough. I'm not willing to gamble with my livelyhood by using a less effective model. Saving money on tokens isn't something that's rewarded during performance reviews; particularly because it's…

I think quantifying tokens used is analogous to quantifying the amount of sawdust generated on a construction site. Churning out useful code quickly is not solved by using more tokens per unit time. Most non-technical leaders can grasp this one and are likely more interested in the strategic game theoretical dynamics that are being forced by way of implied token consumption expectations (competition between developer…

To understand the token count thing - spending tokens is necessary and not sufficient to demonstrate that you are adopting AI.

Where we were 6mo ago is that a lot of big orgs realized they were behind, and needed some way of measuring if the tools were usable at all.

No sawdust at all on your job site, and you can tell nobody is cutting wood.

Now that tooling is more mature, you can measure things like % of diffs AI-generated, % of AI suggestions accepted vs edited, % of KB queries successful etc - all more useful than raw token count for quantifying how your org is using the tool.

So it’s a pragmatic metric that got a bit Goodhearted.

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