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Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

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Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#171

Post by justinparus »

symfoniq wrote: post #106
izanton wrote: post #29

What if... we stop for a moment, and then, after thinking for a moment, we stop hammering nails with a microscope, and stop using token usage as a metric of productivity? I know it's sounds stupid, but what if

There is a complete lack of courage in the leadership of tech companies today, and top-down AI mandates are just another manifestation. True visionaries think outside the box, but most tech executives are forcing their employees into black boxes, out of fear of not doing exactly what their competitors are doing. We have lemmings for leaders, and that means that—much like the LLMs that are being shoehorned into everyt…

Is keeping your company private the easiest way to get around this?

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#172

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

rr808 wrote: post #167
bachmeier wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Burns through tokens like water. Pretty sure I know what you're saying, but the visual on this one doesn't match the point you're making.

lol yeah I'm not a poet.

Just append a reactive metal. "Like water through sodium"

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#173

Post by CharlieDigital »

symfoniq wrote: post #106
izanton wrote: post #29

What if... we stop for a moment, and then, after thinking for a moment, we stop hammering nails with a microscope, and stop using token usage as a metric of productivity? I know it's sounds stupid, but what if

There is a complete lack of courage in the leadership of tech companies today, and top-down AI mandates are just another manifestation. True visionaries think outside the box, but most tech executives are forcing their employees into black boxes, out of fear of not doing exactly what their competitors are doing. We have lemmings for leaders, and that means that—much like the LLMs that are being shoehorned into everyt…

I'm going to offer a contrarian view here:

First is that despite a lot of waste, some innovation will arise from an enterprising employee finding some interesting use case. A lot of the tokenmaxxing is just waste, but out of that waste may arise a small number of genuinely powerful use cases.

Second is that many workers will be entrenched in their ways. If your executive goal is to achieve the above (find innovative ways of using AI), then you need to move everyone to use it. Most will just waste tokens, but someone may find a novel and useful way of using it that benefits the organization. It is difficult to achieve these without forcing people to act since their default is to follow the well-worn grooves.

So mandates like these are a top-down forcing function like a slime mold feeling out different paths to find resources.

Some devs in my org have fully embraced AI; some would not even use AI if not for leadership mandates and linking usage to performance reviews (I know, I think this is stupid, too). I can see why mandates could be useful since some folks definitely won't be inclined to use AI.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#174

Post by redwall_hp »

bee_rider wrote: post #91
mrkeen wrote: post #68

I always used to wonder this about software stacks even prior to LLMs, but it seems more relevant now somehow: When will Uber (or your favourite company) be 'done'? They've been writing software for 16 years. They match drivers to passengers. More software isn't going to increase the chance that I seek them out instead of taking a bus or train. Will their software be finished in 20 years? 80?

Weren’t they trying to do their own self-driving thing? I think this is partly a problem with companies that have had heavy investment. Uber’s value isn’t based on what they are doing, it is based on the idea that they are going to render ideas like owning your own car or taking public transit obsolete (I mean that’s an exaggeration but less of one than it ought to be).

They shut it down after they killed a pedestrian. (They also got sued by Waymo for illegally acquiring trade secrets, and settled.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#176

Post by duxup »

symfoniq wrote: post #106
izanton wrote: post #29

What if... we stop for a moment, and then, after thinking for a moment, we stop hammering nails with a microscope, and stop using token usage as a metric of productivity? I know it's sounds stupid, but what if

There is a complete lack of courage in the leadership of tech companies today, and top-down AI mandates are just another manifestation. True visionaries think outside the box, but most tech executives are forcing their employees into black boxes, out of fear of not doing exactly what their competitors are doing. We have lemmings for leaders, and that means that—much like the LLMs that are being shoehorned into everyt…

There was an amusing post about judging developers based on token usage where some user on HN here was pushing this idea “ICs don’t like it but this is the best way to evaluate” (something like that).

They have a whole management team and can’t seem to find a way to judge or god forbid encourage developers…

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#177

Post by Barrin92 »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #86

"He said that, based on talks with Uber's senior engineering leaders, he realized higher token usage did not translate into a proportional increase in useful consumer features." He's saying that like it's some grand epiphany and not the most self-evident, obvious thing I've heard this month. Some of the literal dumbest people on earth are in charge of these major companies.

>obvious thing I've heard this month

not only this month, but it is the basic statement of the single most well known 50 year old book in software project management lol. At this point we need to wipe the slate clean and start over, the industry is run by illiterates.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#178

Post by Aurornis »

izanton wrote: post #29

What if... we stop for a moment, and then, after thinking for a moment, we stop hammering nails with a microscope, and stop using token usage as a metric of productivity? I know it's sounds stupid, but what if

> and stop using token usage as a metric of productivity

I participate in some management-focused online communities. It’s crazy how many threads there are from frustrated managers trying to get their teams to stop thinking that their token use will be used as a proxy for their performance.

I think a few dumb companies did this and then it spread across social media, triggering a mass panic from engineers afraid their companies will be doing the same thing.

It’s getting so bad that the conversation is shifting to how to identify and coach the token-maxxers to stop wasting the team’s budget every week.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#179

Post by Aurornis »

abvdasker wrote: post #88
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #34

If any company announces that they use token consumption as an employee performance signal, for me that's close to a red flag to stay away from that company. No company with good engineering leadership should act like this is remotely a good idea.

Meta does this. Guess what one of the criteria for their recent layoffs was.

Do you have any source for this at all? I’ve seen so many different exonerations for Meta’s layoff criteria including claims that engineers using the most AI were laid off because Meta had them build AI tools to replace themselves.

Everyone is oddly confident despite all of the conflicting explanations.

Re: Uber’s COO says it’s getting harder to justify money spent on tokenmaxxing

#180

Post by arkadiytehgraet »

fsloth wrote: post #43
solenoid0937 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "amazing that it took months to figure this out" as if the answer to the question is obvious. But it's not. Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Other companies have no clue what to do with tokens, they've just told their engineers to max them. It really depends on how you're using the tokens . If you're just using them for Codex and Claude Code - yeah, tokenmaxxing is incredibly dumb.

> Some FAANGs are doing amazing things with unlimited tokens. Would love to know what things!

OP (solenoid0937) is an unfounded AI-hype peddler and an Anthropic shill (check their comment history), do not expect them to provide an actual example of their wild claims.
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