Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#401

Post by zarzavat » Sat, May 23, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #379

shomp wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You review the code on github also from your phone?

#1 -> part of scaling is you can't review every single line of code. LLMs don't really scale if you're still the bottlneck, or they only scale as much as you reviewing every line of code - that's not that much scaling... So I try to only review certain parts, like making sure they aren't changing tests to allow architecturally broken code to slip through (because they regularly try, even when given explicit instructi…

> LLMs don't really scale if you're still the bottlneck

This only works if there's no consequences if your code breaks. In the eyes of other humans you're responsible for what you commit. No amount of "scaling" will change that.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#402

Post by generic92034 » Sat, May 23, 2026, 4:49 PM UTC

ninkendo wrote: post #318

krzyk wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have such toxic environment, run.

If you’re sitting under a tree in the rain and it gets soaked through and you start getting wet, finding another tree won’t help you. The whole industry is adjusting to the reality that the expected output of an engineer is much higher than it used to be. It’s not local to one company. You may find a better environment for the time being, but this is the direction everything is headed.

*the whole industry in countries without strong worker rights

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#403

Post by marcosdumay » Sat, May 23, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #150

andrewl-hn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They lay people off and look good in front of investors. Then they hire people, talk about "growth", and once again look good in front of investors. This would never fly if stock market was rational. But it never is.

And if/when companies need to scale back their ai investments they can spin it too and the stock market will eat it up.

They are just being AI efficient, and doing more while spending less on it :)

I wonder if this will happen before they have some obligatory debloating of the investors exposition to the company.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#404

Post by generic92034 » Sat, May 23, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

willj wrote: post #334

ninkendo wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re sitting under a tree in the rain and it gets soaked through and you start getting wet, finding another tree won’t help you. The whole industry is adjusting to the reality that the expected output of an engineer is much higher than it used to be. It’s not local to one company. You may find a better environment for the time being, but this is the direction everything is headed.

It’s too bad that, yet again, instead of the productivity gains leading to shorter work weeks, the benefits accrue to the companies. Just once I’d like to see productivity gains lead to more leisure time, not higher expectation.

Be careful what you are wishing for. All the leisure time you would want while having no job or money could be the future we are heading for.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#405

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Sat, May 23, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #335

some-guy wrote: post #331

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.

Code quality also exists on different axes. I've seen the case where code quality was poor in some aspects, e.g., tons of technical debt, coupling making it difficult to make changes, but overall product quality was very high. It had to be: it was a medical device.

Most environments only care about the output. In the case I'm thinking of, Software made it perfectly clear to Management, most of whom were former engineers, that the product desperately needed redesign in some ways. But as long as the cost of that redesign exceeded the cost to get the next version out, it could be postponed. This went on for years.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#406

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Sat, May 23, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

drob518 wrote: post #385

Insanity wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. As long as poor code quality doesn't make a difference in the actual usage of the product, no-one but the engineers will care.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#407

Post by opsnooperfax » Sat, May 23, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #344

harimau777 wrote: post #266

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…

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…

Too many people see wages as a sunk cost and a constant. One problem though is AI costs per task are unpredictable, and management tends to prefer predictable outcomes over optimal outcomes.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#408

Post by majormajor » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #344

harimau777 wrote: post #266

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…

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…

> The single best fix for results-per-total-cost is to ensure it reads and thinks about whole content, not snippets, and thinks with the smartest model, not agents.

I haven't seen "just absorb a giant ball of context and do the right thing the first time" be cracked yet, even for Opus 4.7.

At the end of the day, code is code, and we have decades of lessons about how to make code more reliable and maintainable. Composable small modules, not god methods, are still the way to go, and they reward devs who use them to get focused context for agents with faster - and often better - results.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#409

Post by gchamonlive » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

rebolek wrote: post #381

gchamonlive wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> How much creativity do you need to fix bugs in corporate code? Almost zero.

Have you seen the state of current corp software? I'd say a lot of creativity is still very much needed. Let's see how long this is sustainable.

> would anybody be really sad if this work is overtaken by LLMs?

I'd not be sad about the job itself, but the dev which had a mortgage to pay but now is substituted by a machine churning crap code while their superiors get sore from patting themselves on the back.

Re: Microsoft starts canceling Claude Code licenses

#410

Post by UltraSane » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #245

comboy wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious if anyone around here stayed on 4.6 (having a choice to use 4.7)

I went to 4.7, didn't have a choice, found it unsatisfactory, then Claude quietly added in the option to use 4.6, so I'm back on 4.6, and I'm not the only one in my company. I had far more hallucinations with 4.7 than 4.6. I'll try it again after a few more months for them to get it right, but 4.6 is what changed my mind on LLMs as a tool, and 4.7 felt like a step backwards, so for now I'm sticking with something tha…

Opus 4.7 seems very smart but the adaptive reasoning makes me always uncertain how hard it is actually trying. And it is far too argumentative. It seems to think it HAS to contradict you in ever response.